Project My Zeal Resurrection

So this is what happens when I’m on Trademe (local auction site) at midnight…. I accidentally the whole motorcycle.

Yup, once again trademe is to blame for this. This had been on my watchlist since it was listed, with a low start reserve. When it came to the day it was closing, and the bidding was still really low, I couldn’t help but watch and see what happened. Sure enough, being midnight, no one was around to bid. One person had set an autobid, so once I exceeded that, it was mine.

The photos showed a complete bike, and one that didn’t actually look bad. The seller had this to say

I had a skid on this and got spooked, so it ended up sitting in the yard until the registration lapsed. It’s was running when I parked it up, but has been sitting so long now it’s probably only good for parts. So, so sad

So yes, the rego is lapsed, and it hasn’t been on the road for 4 years. Apparently it last ran 2 years ago, but not since. It’s also been sitting outside this whole time, and it’s taken its toll.

This is the photo that caught my eye


It’s a pretty cool looking bike.

So, what is it?

It’s a 1993 Yamaha FZX250 Zeal.

It’s a JDM only (except for a few late-model ones released new into the Aus market) high revving four-cylinder, four-stroke bike. It has about 40hp, 6 gears, and a slightly more upright, relaxed riding position. Despite what my better half says, it’s a fairly small bike but should suit me well.

I finally had the bike transported from another suburb, to my house today. I couldn’t do it myself as my only car with a towbar was the Subaru S401 and that’s now gone.

The transporter was very good, and kept me updated on when it was picked up


And when it was delivered (since I was at work)


I came home after work and after getting it into the garage, had a good poke around it. The first issue was immediately obvious; either the front, rear, or even both, brakes are seized and binding. This makes it a real dog to push around.

I got there though


Cosmetically, it’s not bad. Some paint fade, some scuffs and scratches, and a badly torn rear seat are the bulk of it. Theres also some surface corrosion, and general grot (and lots of spider webs and spiders)


A quick check of the basics was in order.

Oil? Check. Black and thick, but it has some.

Front brake fluid? Check, it has some, but it’s gross.


Rear brake fluid? Check. Also has some, but a spider tried to come at me bro when I went to take the cap off. I presume it’s also gross.

Coolant? I saw something sloshing around in the bottle, so I guess so.

Fuel? Once I freed up the lock on the cap, and pried that open, yes, its half full of the most rancid smelling petrol ever. Will turn it into a 50:50 new:old mix for the mower. Free fuel, and better than disposing of it. The Victa will love it.

The tank opening had some rust (and grot), as did the cap. It’ll clean up OK though. I can’t see much inside the tank, but the fuel wasnt obviously full of flakes of rust, and what I could see in there appeared to be nice clean metal. Hopefully it’s not all rusty.


Unfortunately the front forks will need rebuilding too. One seal is completely buggered, the other is leaking, and the forks are really soft.


Once I worked out how to get the seat off (key on the side. Turn it one way and the helmet holder slides open and closed, turn it the other and the rear seat pops up. One 8mm bolt to release the front seat) I opened it up and checked the wiring and battery.


Battery is flatter than a flat thing. Will try reviving it with my charger, but it’s likely toast now.

The clutch lever has a lot of play, and doesn’t seem to be disengaging the clutch. The lever looks like its been rotated forward too.



The plan?

Drain and replace ALL fluids.
Recondition/replace front and rear braking system (hoses appear OK, no swelling or cracking)
Free up clutch and gearing
Rebuild forks
Remove, strip and rebuild carbs
Drain and inspect fuel tank
Replace fuel filter
Replace spark plugs

I want to try to fire it up sooner rather than later, so I can check that the engine isn’t complete junk, so I wont be doing it in any real order. Brakes, fluids and fuel will be the priority.

It should be a nice rewarding project. Eventually I’ll get it back on the road, legally, and enjoy winding that engine up to the 15,000rpm redline.

 

I couldn’t help myself, I had to do some more digging on the bike and see what’s what.

First port of call tonight was to remove the battery and see if it could be charged. Seat off, and out came the battery. Before taking it out though, I had to connect a jump pack and see what happened. The good news is that it didn’t burst into flames, and when the key is turned the dash lights come on. The bad news is the fuel pump is making some ugly noises.

The battery is dead dead though, the charger didn’t even recognise that a battery was connected. Will need to look for a cheap replacement.


Since the seat was off…. it was only another couple of screws to remove the side trims for further digging (battery on the floor is the new one for the Fit, since that packed a sad the other day)


Taking these trims off allowed me access to some critical things.

One of which is the radiator. It wouldn’t be an automobile of mine if it didn’t spill coolant on the ground….


This was great news though, it’s filled with sweet sweet green coolant, not rusty water. Mean.


One of the other things it revealed, was the rust on the frame. Its ugly. Very ugly, but thankfully even with some hard-core digging and scraping with a screwdriver, it’s all solid metal. No holes. It will need to be stripped back, rust killed, prepped and painted though. This bike sat for 4 years, outside, in a suburb near the ocean. Surface rust is to be expected I guess.


I got a good view of the carbs and surrounding area. Its filthy and has some surface rust in various places, but should tidy up. The carb manifold joins are cracking though.


First real view of the sweet four banger


Hard to believe this is an oil filter…..


Some more good news, is that the gear selector has freed up a bit, and I can now drop it down into first gear and pop back into neutral, and the lever now springs back how it should. The stand also springs a bit freer too. Good old WD40, working magic.


I’ll try to remove and drain the fuel tank tomorrow. I want to try get the engine running before I go too much further, but I don’t know what to do with the carbs. They will be full of old stale fuel and varnish. I will need to rebuild them, but I don’t want to go to that effort and cost until I know the engine runs.

I’ll grab some oil and a filter tomorrow and get that gross old scum out of the engine. At least then I know that’s good.

 

Before I could commit to any further work on the bike, I needed to know if the engine even ran.

Before I can even see if the engine runs I need to remove the fuel tank, drain it and see if im getting fuel to the carbs.

The tank is pretty easy to remove once the seat is off. You need to remove the little cubby box at the front of the tank


Under that, and at the rear of the tank under where the seat would be, are four bolts. Two long at the rear and two shorter at the front (they are removed in the photos already)


The guide I was using said to take the handle off the fuel tap. Not sure why, maybe just to reduce the chances of breaking it.


The top fuel hose on the fuel pump is the inlet, so off that comes, and then it’s a matter of lifting off the tank.


I forgot to take a photo, but under the tank is the air box (big black box in above photo). The filter in it was in good shape, so that’s one less thing to buy. I pulled the air box off, and finally had access to the carbs


Before doing anything else with the carbs, I drained the fuel tank. I had issues draining through the fuel tap and filter, there just wasn’t any flow, so I resorted to just tipping it out the filler. This was a bit messy, but quick. The bad news? The tank is rusty. What I thought was half a tank of gas, turned out to be about a litre of petrol and half a tank of rusty water. Guess that explains the flow issue.


The inside of the tank is rusty. Not too flaky, but will need to be worked to get rid of the rust. It doesn’t look deep, and there are no signs of it coming through that I have noticed. I can still see patches of clean metal around the place, which is a good sign.


There are a few different methods for removing the rust. You can fill the tank with water, nuts, and bolts and shake like mad. The preferred method (because I like to make everything more difficult) is electrolysis, or removing the rust using a sacrificial bit of metal and lots of electricity. I’ll look further into this, but I think the tank can be saved.

The other thing I had to do before I could crank the engine, was to drain the oil and fill with fresh oil and a new filter.

Remember the old filter?


Yeah that’s been replaced


And although the oil was thick, black and really bad smelling, it had no chunks or metal flakes in it.


I filled up with 2.7L of Penrite MC4ST 10W50 semi-synthetic motorbike oil. Nice golden colour.


Now, because I still haven’t purchased a new battery (don’t want to invest $100 into a battery if the engine is poked), I had to use the big 500CCA one I removed from the Rover…… Lets just say I don’t have a photo as it was bit of a dodgy setup using really long home-made jumper leads and clips just hanging on the bikes battery terminals…. but it worked

We have power!


All the lights work, even the hazards


Speaking of dodgy, this was my “fuel tank” to try to supply fuel to the carbs


Yeah, that’s probably not that safe. Oh well, fire extinguisher was near by!

Anyway, the carbs didn’t take much fuel at all during the testing. Whether that’s because they need to be fed with the fuel pump, or because they just aren’t in good shape, I don’t know, but I ended up feeding fuel straight down the throat of the carb.

After much cranking, something amazing happened….



It made vroom vroom noises. First start in at least 2 years (if not 4, depending on when the owner last started it). Engine ran good for the couple of seconds it was running, with no bad noises. Exhaust sounds awesome, even when it’s only hitting 5000rpm or so. Cant wait to hear it at 15,000rpm!

So the engine runs. The carbs are in dire need of a rebuild and the tank needs the rust removed, but otherwise its all fairly straight forward now. I don’t know if the gearbox does gearbox stuff, but I’ll deal with that later.

 

Thanks for the comments guys. The litetek carb kit is on my list of things to buy, for sure. He has a great writeup off redoing the carbs too.

Interesting about the front forks. IIRC they are specced as 10W oil standard, so ill try some 15W for sure. Not sure about spacers, can you buy them or are they just slices from a tube or something? I can currently bottom out the front shocks just by pushing down hard on them.

I was a bit disheartened when i saw the rust on the frame and in the tank, but getting the engine running has really been the push i needed to keep moving on it. Itll be a rewarding project.

I would love to give the frame a full strip down, blast and paint, but i dont have the space to take everything off/out of the frame. Only have a single garage between two cars, a scooter and the Zeal. Best i can do is strip what i can off the frame, mask everything off, hit the rust with a strip disk. Ill then use rust converter to kill whats left, and then prime and paint in high temp silver. Not too much of the actual frame is visible with the plastics and tank on, so it doesnt have to perfect.

Im undecided on how i will proceed on the tank. Electrolysis would be interesting and seems to do a good job, but im also interested in just using an acid or a product called Metal Rescue to kill the rust as its quick and works.

The next step is to take the front and rear calipers off so i can move the bike easier, and look at what i need to rebuild them.

 

I have time, so i guess ill give electrolysis a shot. No harm, just need to find an old battery charger (as my ctek one needs feedback from a battery to power on). Alternatively, could i use an old (but still good) car battery connected to my charger, to power the electrolysis?

I must give you guys credit too, i have been lurking around reading the threads on this forum and there is some utterly amazing information and tech tips on here. Thanks!

 

Since the Wellington train system can’t help but try to fall into the ocean each time there is some weather, I had some spare time today to do some more work on the bike.

Since attempting to drain the fuel tank the other day I was left with a small amount in the bottom of the tank that I just couldn’t get out of the filler neck (due to its design). The only way to get it out was to remove the fuel tap, and drain through that hole.


Removing the tap was easy enough. Two really tight, rusty screws and out it came.


Another screw on the filter and the lot comes off. That’s a tasty looking filter.


And this is what the fuel tap looked like. The tube is nice brass and cleaned up well, and the filters are intact and also cleaned up well.


This is what was sitting in the bottom of the tank


After draining it out, I took the tank out into the garden and hosed the utter shite out of it. Lots and lots of orange water poured out, so I kept flushing until the water ran clean. This is what came out of the tank. Chunky.


The great news is the inside of the tank looks awesome now. Minimal surface rust left, and there are no flakes left. Not much work to finish it off now.


It’s a damn sight better than it was.

The next part that got my attention was the fuel tap.


I cleaned off the outside of it, and then removed the two front screws and pulled the front off


And this is what greeted me inside the tap


Clearly the fuel level was at the reserve height for a while, as it was almost completely blocked with rust and scum. This is what came out of just that side of the tap


All the seals and O-Rings were flat and hardened, so out they came. New ones have been ordered from Litetek along with a carb seal kit.


When my ultrasonic cleaner arrives the tap will go in there for a proper clean, in the meantime I cleaned it up with WD40 and brake clean.

I wanted to have a quick look at the fuel pump. When I first got the bike the pump sounded like a tin of gravel being shaken and then it stopped working at all. I disconnected the pump and left it. Today I removed it for bench testing.


It seems it has an internal short. Whenever power is applied, it results in sparks and nothing else. I disassembled it to see if I could work out where the short is. Unfortunately I hit a dead-end, where I cannot access the windings for the main solenoid, so it’s a dead duck. Will try to source a good used one.


Traces of water inside the electrical cap


With that out of the way, I had to look at fixing the gauges. The tacho was almost falling off, and the chrome caps on both arent attached.


It looks like the tacho had a bump at some point, as one mount is broken off and the bracket is twisted. I pulled the gauges off and checked out the damage.


And the reason the caps aren’t attached. The mounts for the screws have been broken off both.


Some creative superglue work sees all the broken off parts re-attached. Will need to be careful with them in the future, but the superglue is pretty strong stuff.


Looks a bit naked without them


And the last fun task today, was to see if I could get a charge in the battery. Previously my charger wouldn’t even detect that a battery was connected, the voltage was so low. Today I cheated, and “jump started” the bike battery from the old Rover battery. I connected them with correct polarity (like jump starting a car). Left it for a minute or two, and then connected the charger. Zing, the charger detects it and is charging it. I checked before and with the charger disconnected im now seeing 12v at the battery.


If i can get the battery to hold a charge it’ll save me some money whilst i build the bike up. It will be replaced later on, but this will buy some time.

 

Hey, any reason i couldnt use a FZR250R fuel pump? Different part number to the one in the Zeal, but visually appears the same? I can get one for a good price, vs paying an arm and a leg for a proper zeal one.

 

I have some white vinegar here actually. Might give that a try and see what happens. If it doesn't work, no harm done.

Will grab that fuel pump too.