Project My Zeal Resurrection

Haha. Think that's a bit over kill. Will start with what I already have at home, white vinegar, and see what happens.

 

What a week. Everything was put on hold, because I got married! But now that I’m home again, and going back to work tomorrow, I thought I would have a quick catch up on the Zeal.

Whilst I was away I left about a litre of white vinegar in the fuel tank to see if it would do anything to the rust. Unfortunately even after a week it had done very little. This is what I poured out. It had started to strip some of the lighter rust, but wasn’t working quick enough.


I was going to try electrolysis, but it just seemed like a lot of faffing about to set up. I was doing some research and came across a product called Evapo-Rust. It’s safe for the environment, safe to touch, reusable and safe on paint… but it monsters rust. A few people have used it for tanks, and it seems to do a good job.

So, I scoured the local Supercheap Autos, and picked up 15L of the stuff.


Before I could pour it into the tank, I had to seal the fuel tap hole in the tank better than the leaking duct tape I had used with the vinegar. To do this I used some scrap aluminium, a drill and the old gasket. I smeared some sealant on both sides of the gasket, and bolted the plate to the tank. So far, touch wood, it’s sealed tight.


With some strategic placement of some wood and a tub, I got the tank as flat as possible and filled with all 15L of the Evapo-rust. The tank has a 15L rated fuel capacity, but it didn’t quite fill the tank.




Whilst I was away I also got some sweet packages from overseas. The first was a set of legit JIS screwdrivers from Japan. These are to Japanese standards, which is very slightly different to the Phillips cross profile. The difference is subtle, but enough that if you try to use a standard Phillips driver in a JIS screw, it’ll strip out like it’s made of cheese (as the screwdriver tries to “cam-out” by jumping out of the slots). JIS drivers will slot in and fit perfectly. The carbs on this bike (and most bikes) use JIS screws and are super common for stripping out when JIS drivers aren’t used.


Revlimiter has an awesome write up on the differences between Phillips and JIS.


Another package I got was the set of LiteTek carb and fuel tap gaskets. This means I can put my fuel tap back together, and start work on the carbs.


I started putting the fuel tap together


I used a small bit of 2000 grit wet/dry paper to smooth out the rough edges on the pitting, so it wouldn’t damage the new gasket. Happyface.


And in goes the new gasket. Scaredface.


Bits


The completed fuel tap. So this has been stripped, ultrasonic cleaned, new seals, and the screws treated in Evapo-Rust (which worked really well for a couple of hours soaking. The screws where heavily rusted, with thick coating of crud). Now it’s ready to go on the tank again when that is done.


And what it looked like before


Next I took the carbs off the bike. Not hard to do, once the airbox is off it’s only 4 hose clamps and 3 cables to disconnect. So much grot by the starter that I need to clean out too.


I tried draining the float bowls, and only liquid came from cylinders 1 and 2. And I say liquid, because you can’t call it fuel. It was yellow, and smelt like paint stripper.

Using my awesome new JIS screwdrivers, I then removed the float bowls. Most of the screws cracked ok, but some needed a little help (and one needed the help of some vice grips). It turns out the flats on the driver are perfect for a spanner.


With all of the bowls off it was easy to see why I was doing this. Cylinders 2 through 4 had gritty sandy stuff in the bowl, and cylinder 1? Well, that’s where all the fuel in the rail drained to when the bike was sitting (leans to the left on its stand).


The carb jets will obviously need cleaning, and the bodies are filthy. They will need stripping and soaking in the ultrasonic for a bit.


I need to work on my plan of attack. The LiteTek site has an awesome write-up on how to rebuild the carbs, so I’ll go over that and get cracking on it.

I also need to work out what to do with the frame. I’m slightly leaning towards stripping the bike and getting the frame blasted and powder coated, but it’s a lot of work, time and money.

 

Who would've thought that bleeding a motorbikes brakes was so easy..... Its all just, right there (except the rear brake res, which is tucked up under the frame and has to be unbolted to get the cap off. The designer of that needs a shooting).

Brake fluid was a gross cloudy brown, and now both brakes are firm. No more spongy pedal or lever. Not sure if brakes are still stuck on as bike is stuck in garage, but its promising that i wont need to immediately rebuild the system.

Having some issues with the carb rebuild, waiting on a couple of replacement brass screws that self destructed.

 

It’s taken a bit of working to get the motivation to write this post. Work on the bike has kinda slowed to a crawl, but I stripped the carbs and have started putting them together again.

So I removed the carbs and took the float bowls off them in the last post, to discover that carb one had a lot of gunk in it, and the other three were a little crusty from sitting.

The next day I started to strip down carb one, to see how bad it was. I took the floats and jet housings off first


These are the jets from carb two. You can see the difference in size between the two jets. The pilot jet lives down the deep recess between the two other jets.


Speaking of pilot jets, the pilot jet for carb one was completely blocked solid, and took a lot of soaking in carb cleaner and poking with a thick strand of wire to clear it. The other two jets on carb one also had debris in their holes, but the pilot was the worst.

Remember, this is what the jets looked like. It’s no surprise.


I then started separating the carbs, as they are all linked together


The seals on the main fuel feed were in very bad shape with multiple cracks in the rubber. Thankfully I ordered replacements from Litetek.


I pulled the cap off carb one, removed the spring and needle


And removed the slide. Under the diaphragm was this black stuff. Its been on all the carbs of the carbs so far. It’s almost like powered plastic shavings? Theres no obvious wear on the slides.


I cleaned all the black stuff out and removed the choke needle


Organisation is key


This first carb was a bit of an experiment on following the instructions to a tee. I’ll soon learn not to do that. Following the instructions I removed the throttle plate and shaft


This was to replace the shaft seal, which wasnt worn or hard anyway


Next up I removed the pilot mixture screw. This was covered in some sort of oily mixture. Just FYI too, all my carbs had this screw set at 2 full turns from fully in.


I purchased a small 2.5L ultrasonic cleaner, so gave it a shot with the carb body since it was stripped. It started out like this


I filled it with about 50:50 water:simple green, got the mix to 65c, and dropped the body in. I soaked it for about an hour and it came out like this, with no scrubbing. It was pretty effective, although im sure if I just used some brake clean I would have got the same results in minutes; and I did, on the other carbs (I scrubbed with a tooth-brush and brake clean whilst I waited on the cleaner to finish). At least I know the ultrasonic cleans out all the tiny little holes and channels in the carb.


My makeshift parts washer


You can see I didn’t remove the slide housing. I tried to pull it out earlier and it wouldn’t budge, so I left it.

Now, that’s where I left the carbs that day. The next day I finally had my syphon arrive (thanks to a run-around by the useless couriers), so I could drain the Evapo-Rust from the tank. It had done a pretty decent job of stripping the surface rust. The inside is mostly clean, but unfortunately it did spring a small leak at the back of the tank where there is a seam. This was the nail in the coffin, I had to do it properly.

I used the syphon to drain the tank back into the bottles. The liquid came out pretty dark, but I should be able to get a little more use from the solution.

 

I also had some small bits just chilling in the bottom of the tub the tank was sitting on (to catch leaking liquid, which it did well), sitting in the fluid that had leaked out.


All of these bits were really rusty, including the idle adjustment screw (which I thought was a write off). The idle screw came up really well


Its pitted, but no longer rusty. Compared to how it was, it’s a miracle.


All the screws and hose clamps that I left in the solution came out well too. It’s quite powerful stuff. Once its taken out of the solution I rinse in water and then coat in WD40 to stop it rusting again.

Since the tank was now leaky, I couldn’t just stop here and put it back on the bike. Looking around, I decided to purchase a tank refurb kit which comes with a cleaner, rust remover and a tank sealer. The sealer should stop it rusting again, and will block the tiny leak. I was trying to avoid having to seal the tank as it is likely messy to do, but this should mean it lasts a lot longer. It should arrive in a couple of days.

I was feeling a bit unmotivated so left the bike for a bit. A couple of days ago I decided to get back into the carbs and see if I could get one back together again. I tried a bit harder and got the slide housing out of carb one


This is where I should have gone off script and just left it alone, but I didn’t. I had the seals, so decided to do them. I removed the seal at the top and the square seal


The top seal was quite flat, but in decent condition really (not hard and no cracks). I fit the new seals and slotted the housing back into the carb body


And then it all turned to custard. The instructions say to push the housing down and to nip up the screw, but don’t rely on using just the screw to pull it together…. clearly I didn’t push hard enough. The first screw went ping, and snapped into two pieces. Nuts. Because im a muppet though I forgot to use the washer under the screw, so I thought “hmm, maybe thats why it snapped”. So I grabbed the screw from carb two… and snapped that too. Good thing I purchased a set of Easy Outs a while back.


They are little hollow brass screws, so very little structural integrity.

I rage quit and went back into the house and left it there. I ordered three new screws out of the states for a few bucks each, so they should be here in a week or so. Sigh.

Yesterday I couldn’t be bothered with the carbs but wanted to do something to feel useful, so I bled the brakes. Both brakes had really bad feel. The front lever was really soft and spongy, and the rear wasnt much better. I had figured I was probably up for a rebuild of the cylinders and calipers anyway, so what harm is there in bleeding it and seeing what happens?

It’s funny how much easier bike brakes are to bleed than a car. I can lean on the lever whilst closing the valve to do the front, and pump the rear with my foot whilst working the valve. No need for a second person.

The res was full of slime when I got it, but I flushed that all through


And both calipers played nice and bled well. Minimal air, but foul fluid


Now both brakes actually have solid feel and feel pretty good. I don’t know if the calipers are still sticking as the bike can’t move, but at least I might be able to put off spending too much on the brakes immediately. All the hoses look visually good with no cracking.


Whoever the bloody sadist is that designed where the rear brake fluid res is located should be slapped hard. Its located in such a way that to get the cap off you have to remove a side panel, unbolt the res and have it hanging in the air, otherwise the cap doesnt clear the frame, and there is no way you could pour fluid in it.


Moving along; This morning I was considering just selling the damn bike for parts as it was pissing me off and I was getting pretty demotivated with it all. So much work to do, and nothing going right, but at the end of the day that’s not how I work.

So having a short day at work today, I shot home and went straight into the garage. I swapped the O-ring on the slide housing back the old one, and using the screw from carb THREE, I managed to get it nipped up nicely without snapping it.


All the jets also went back in after a thorough cleaning.

The float needle seat went in next, with its new O-ring


And then the needle, float and bowl


Finally it was the slide, needle, springs and cap, to top it off

That’s carb one, done and ready to go.

I then stripped, cleaned and assembled carb two


Now I have a pair of carbs. Just need the screws to arrive and I can do the other two and then bench sync them. I’m hoping to have the carbs ready to go when the tank is ready, so that I can assemble and fire it up on my stand and see what the gearbox is like. After that, it’s a full tear down to do the frame.

Oh yeah, I think I forgot to mention that I got a rear stand. No room to use it where the bike is at the moment, but once the car is living outside and I’m stripping the bike it will have all the room for activities.

 

Im also having a small (for now) issue with my clutch lever. The lever on the bars has too much play, and i found its because the cable isnt retracting far enough. If i push the clutch lever down on the gearbox (that the cable pulls on) away from the cable it tightens up and the lever on the bars sits normally. As soon as i pull the lever though it doesnt return to where it pushed it by hand.

Obviously there is a spring on the clutch lever on the box, which i presume is to help pull the cable tight. Now, i dont know because i cant ride the bike, or even run the bike for more than a second, if the clutch works. Could it be sticking plates causing this, and should it return to normal once i can run the bike through some gears, or is something bigger wrong?

The spring is 21 in this diagram

 

Screws were ordered from http://www.boats.net/

PN 1HX-14565-00-00

 

I have been a tad lazy with the updates on this, but rest assured, progress is happening.

Slowly but surely, most days after work I have been plugging away at the Zeal.

Coming off the last post where I had started to reassemble the carbs, I got stuck in and cleaned the rest of the carbs, replaced the seals and reassembled them. I finally got my replacement brass screws, so took great care not to smash these ones to bits. Made in Japan, sent via USA to NZ.


I also received my cool little set of carb brushes from Aliexpress.


They were pretty good at cleaning out passages and jets. Most of them were clean, but I did manage to clear out a bit more baked on crud from the No1 main jet with them.

All the carbs mounted together


And with the choke rail mounted back on


The de-rusted idle adjuster looked much better


The only other thing left to do with the carbs was to bench sync them. Bench syncing the carbs is to make sure all the throttle plates open the same amount. The throttle cable acts directly on carb No3, with the other carbs all being triggered off that carb with a series of tabs and springs. There are adjustment screws on each carb linkage so that you can fine tune the interaction between the carbs.

There are many ways on the interwebs to bench sync a carb. I chose one of the easier ones, which is to use the idle screw to open the No3 carb slightly, and adjust the idle screw so there is a slight drag on whatever you use as a feeler gauge. In my case I used one of the carb cleaning wires.


Slightly open


And then use the same feeler gauge to slowly fine tune how far the throttle plate is open on the other carbs, working out from carb 3.


This should get the carbs all in the ballpark of being fairly similar.

Once I had finished that, I moved back onto the tank. Because the damn tank was now leaking, thanks to rust, I had to line it. I purchased a KBS tank repair kit off trademe. They seem to have good ratings and it was a good price.


I used the kit to degrease, and remove any rust the other rust remover missed. It seemed to do a good job. Then the tank sealer went in. I rolled the tank around a lot, to try to get a nice even coating. Unfortunately due to the design of the Zeal tank it was hard to drain the excess, so there is a little pooling and some runs in the tank, but it’s pretty well covered, which matters.


Once cured for a few days, I filled the tank with water and left it overnight to make sure it wasn’t leaking. Sure enough it was still dry on the outside the next morning, so the sealer has done its job. Yus.

In preparation for refitting the carbs to the bike, I wanted to attend to the nasty looking carb manifolds. They are a metal base with rubber top, and it was all cracking and flaking off. Not a good look.


I removed any flaking rubber, wire brushed the metal parts, and then used Sikaflex to seal them.


This is what I used. Sikaflex 227. It comes highly recommended for this job. Strong, fast curing, but stays flexible.


I smothered it all over, and filled the cracks


The old vacuum hoses were brittle and broke when removed, so I needed to make new ones.


And the refreshed manifolds were fitted to the engine


The carbs were great fun to refit… not. A lot of wiggling and jiggling got them in place, and then lots of fiddling got the damn throttle cables back into place.


Looks a little nicer than when I got the bike


I couldn’t help myself. I rigged up my trusty fuel tank syringe, used it to gravity feed the fuel bowls, poured some gas down the carbs, connected the battery and hit the starter. (yes, this video wasn’t the first first start, but it didn’t take much to fire up anyway)



It was a tad smokey, blowing plumes of smoke and even wisping smoke out when the engine was off. Filled my garage with smoke, even with both doors open.





It sounds great though, so much noise from the carbs. It wont idle without choke at the moment, and isn’t running prefect, but the carbs do need some tweaking and tuning, and maybe a tweak of the idle screw. My latest purchase arrived the other day which will help with this, a Carbtune Pro


The smoke was starting to clear up when I decided enough was enough, so that’s a good sign. The coolant was also warming up and circulating, and everything seemed to be going well… except one thing. The gearbox/clutch.

I’m suspecting this is an electrical issue, as there are a couple of them (like the engine run switch allowing the engine to start no matter which position it’s in, and not cutting the engine when set to STOP). When the engine is running in Neutral, it will idle and run happily, but the moment you put it into gear the engine will cut. I don’t think its related to the clutch, but feels like when it’s shifted from Neutral it cuts off.

With the clutch lever out, in gear, it won’t try to crank. With the clutch lever pulled in, the engine will crank over in gear but wont try to start (yet as soon as you shift to neutral it will start straight away). I’m guessing something weird going on with the neutral switch? Will need to investigate.

Now that I know the engine runs OK, hopefully I can sort the gearbox issue and make sure that works OK and then I will strip the bike down and deal with the frame. Fun Fun.

 

Stand is up, but im wondering if the switch is sticky or something. Will have a look.

 

Another day, some more progress.

In my last post I commented that whenever I put the Zeal into gear the engine would cut. Some awesome members (thanks!) of a couple of forums I post this on mentioned that it was probably the side stand switch. The switch is designed to do just that; cut the engine if you put it into gear with the stand down… only problem, since my bike is on a paddock stand, the side stand is up.


Time to investigate. The switch lives here, down by the stand (sans a bolt I already removed)


It was a tad dirty down there. Here it is removed


I gave it a real thorough hose down with WD40 and Contact Cleaner whilst actuating it. I cant find any way to disassemble it, so that will have to do. I suspect the bike was on its stand for most of the last 5 years (going from the pooling of fuel in carb No1), so the contacts have probably corroded.

I checked the connector in the under seat area, and it looked all good.

I also mentioned that I had some issues with my clutch, way back in my first post and I made a post last night about it on the 250cc forum. The helpful guys over there pointed out that it was probably the cable needing adjustment at the engine side. Sure enough, when I looked at it today, it was hard up against the stop at its longest position (hard against the lock nut in the photo). I wound the adjuster out a few times and managed to arrange it so that the adjuster on the bar lever is in the middle of its adjustment, and with only minimal free play (as required)


This shows how it was adjusted, in the bottom LH corner


This allowed me to do this


I ran it through all the gears, and it does everything it should. The clutch comes on and off, and all the gears go in and out without issue. 6th has a little rumble, but that’s probably because it’s running on a stand. No nasty rattles or anything though.


As seen in the video too, I also had a play with the idle and got it to idle with zero choke when warmed up. Obviously I was playing too much, as I ran out of gas at the end of the video >_<

Since I was in the garage and I had to wait for the smoke to clear again, I decided to have another look at the gauges. I had previously had a go at fixing them in a previous post, using super glue. Unfortunately the moment I tried to fit the tacho cup the screw broke the glue and the mount came free again.

When I was in Repco the other day I noticed this on the shelf. Selleys Plastic Fix glue.


It’s a two-part system, where you paint on the primer with the pen, and then apply glue. Smoosh the two bits of plastic together and hold it for 30 seconds till it “grabs”. I’ll be damned if it didn’t “grab” and set solid almost instantly. It worked VERY well.


Whilst it was drying I had a crack at mounting the Speedo cup.


Looks good. So good that I had to jam on the Tacho and cup again.


Excellent.

I have a new headlight on its way to replace the rusty and dented POS there, so that will be sorted at some point. Next up I think its time to strip the bike down and get the frame sorted.

 

The Zeal has been slowly trucking along. I have been finding it hard to get motivated to do much, as it’s so cold and dark after work these days.

Since the last update, the Zeal has taken over the garage, kicking the daily outside (and into the rain).

It turns out, as I suspected, that the rust has more bark than bite, and looks worse than it is. The salty air of where it was sitting for the past few years has found its way up under the paint and has been creating this ugly flaky surface rust. Once you get through the flaky paint and rust, the metal beneath is solid, albeit a little pitted.

Remember, this is what I was working with


Obviously I cant leave it like that, it’s ugly and will only keep getting worse. The original plan was to strip the whole bike down and redo the whole frame, but once I got the rest of the plastics off, it was pretty easy to access the rusty parts, and let’s face it, stripping the whole thing was a huge job.

I sold Scooty the other day, and with the money from that I went and picked up a Ryobi One+ angle grinder, a flap disk and a twisted wire brush for it. I had heard that the flap disks were really good for stripping rust and paint, but I also knew the brushes were good too, so I thought I would put them to the test.


I found very quickly that although the flap disk is SUPER effective for stripping everything and leaves a nice smooth finish, it’s a little too aggressive.


The wire brush on the other hand only really attacks the rust and any flaky/bubbling paint. It’s no where near as aggressive, so I stuck with that for the rest of it.

To give me more room to work, I removed the complete exhaust system. Very easy to do, 8 nuts in the head, and two bolts along the pipe to hold it to the bike.


The system is in average shape with lots of surface rust. The only issues I can see is that both mufflers have a hole in the underside of them. Whether this is by design, or age/rust, I’m not sure. Will need to investigate further in the future. In the meantime, they will do.

I also removed the brake master and res for the rear as this takes up a lot of space. I hung this out of the way with a bungee cord.


I have spent the past couple of days attacking every bit of rust I can get my hands on, both with the grinder and with a normal hand powered wire brush.


The main focus was to remove all the loose bits of paint and rust, and give the rust converter something to work with. Of course where I could, I got it down to bare metal, but some areas just weren’t that accessible (like the mount above).

I used CRC rust converter, and so far im impressed. It sprays on well, sticks well, and seems to do a good job of killing the rust. It turns it into a black “primer” that can be painted over. It’s a tad messy but will do the job. Unlike the other rust converter I tried last time, it doesn’t eat/melt the paint around it either, which makes everything a bit nicer.



Its pretty ugly now. Very blotchy


The next step will fix that. The whole frame with get a rub down to key it, and then I’ll prime the whole thing. Once the primer is dry, it will get a couple of coats of paint. I’m not 100% on which shade, but I’ll be trying to match the original paint as close as possible. Thankfully once the tank and plastics are on you can’t see much of the frame, so it doesn’t need to be show bike quality.

Until next time….