andoor
Been Around the Block
So now that the Honda is mostly done I have been looking to get a newer bike that is bit more comfortable for longer trips and highway cursing. I would love to get a brand new ride, but there is no way I can swing an extra bill every month. It just so happened that one of my buddies had a broken 92 Katana 600 (16,000 miles).
This bike was bought by my buddy from another mutual friend with it stuck in 1st gear. My buddy does not have the tools or the ability to diagnose and fix a problem like this so the deal was if I could get the bike able to be driven out of the garage where it was I would buy it from him. He was only looking to get what he had in it so for $400 I couldn’t pass it up. Worst case if I couldn’t get it going without removing the engine I would have wasted a few hours of my time, and my buddy would have a parts bike to sell.
Anyway the fix was pretty simple I pulled out the clutch basket and where the gear selector engages the shift star there was a loose bracket that was jamming everything. A bit of loctite and it was all good. The bike still shifts pretty rough into 1st and 2nd and lunges quite a bit with the clutch pulled, so I found a NOS clutch basket on eBay and will be getting a new clutch soon. The old basket is gouged up really bad. I think it is not letting some of the plates disengage.
The bike runs really well, but needs some work to get the idle stronger and a ton of maintenance work which is labor intensive but parts are pretty cheap. Bikes similar to this are selling for about $1000, so I will not feel bad if I have to spend a few hundred on parts.
Once I give everything a once over, and get it running well I will be ditching the scratched, and extremely ugly plastics and making the thing look a bit more attractive. I am trying for the opposite of the Honda build, get it running first then tear into it! Going for a bit of “fighter” styling, but I still want to keep it 2up and comfortable.
Here some pics of it after I got it to my place. It only died once on the 45min trip!!
This bike was bought by my buddy from another mutual friend with it stuck in 1st gear. My buddy does not have the tools or the ability to diagnose and fix a problem like this so the deal was if I could get the bike able to be driven out of the garage where it was I would buy it from him. He was only looking to get what he had in it so for $400 I couldn’t pass it up. Worst case if I couldn’t get it going without removing the engine I would have wasted a few hours of my time, and my buddy would have a parts bike to sell.
Anyway the fix was pretty simple I pulled out the clutch basket and where the gear selector engages the shift star there was a loose bracket that was jamming everything. A bit of loctite and it was all good. The bike still shifts pretty rough into 1st and 2nd and lunges quite a bit with the clutch pulled, so I found a NOS clutch basket on eBay and will be getting a new clutch soon. The old basket is gouged up really bad. I think it is not letting some of the plates disengage.
The bike runs really well, but needs some work to get the idle stronger and a ton of maintenance work which is labor intensive but parts are pretty cheap. Bikes similar to this are selling for about $1000, so I will not feel bad if I have to spend a few hundred on parts.
Once I give everything a once over, and get it running well I will be ditching the scratched, and extremely ugly plastics and making the thing look a bit more attractive. I am trying for the opposite of the Honda build, get it running first then tear into it! Going for a bit of “fighter” styling, but I still want to keep it 2up and comfortable.
Here some pics of it after I got it to my place. It only died once on the 45min trip!!
