Hi all, I'm a 52 year old man who has been riding and wrenching both dirt and street for 43 years.
I recently bought a 1990 KX500 basket case for $100. So far I have had the Frame, suspension and brakes apart and everything looks real good. I've replaced the brake hoses and pads and checked everything in the suspension against spec. I sandblasted the frame and there seems to be no cracks.The radiators and the plastics and seat look great.
The engine is where things look a little dicey. It seems the last owner split the cases and installed all new lower end bearings and seals as the old ones are in the box of old parts. The bike came with Two jugs and three heads, two of witch look pretty good with only a few small nicks. The piston skirt is completely shattered and it looks like the PO went to the trouble of having the crank pressed apart and than back together again with too short of a rod. The genius than put the whole thing back together again but didn't bother to to turn the engine over by hand but put a mighty boot to the kickstarter with predictable results. The piston went down and shattered against the crank. Since the bike only made about a half a revolution and never started I can't imagine any of the pieces harmed the bearings So to sum it all up it looks like a pretty straight forward job of splitting the cases and installing a new rod. One of the jugs is sleeved and measures 87.376mm with some slight scaring and has a hole bored just in front of the reed cage presumably for some kind of a NOX set up.The other jug is factory spec with well worn plating and cracks in the narrow bridging in the transfer port. Could these be welded and the bore replated? I have had other big two strokes but this is my first water cooled kawasaki so any advise would be very welcome.
Cheers
Pat
