Gouraami's 400 bandit project

[Gouraami]

Hi Everyone

Finally creating a project thread, will help me remember how long it took to get her on the road and help you by making you look busy behind your PC at work

She is (I think) a '91 Bandit 400 limited edition. I am not sure as I must still receive the paperwork. The bike currently belongs to a girl friend (please note the space between the two words). She has had the bike for around 4 years, but unfortunately was unable to get the bike running properly. During this time the frame was sprayed and tank repaired, apparently it had a dent in it as the bike had been dropped by the previous owner. The main problem I believe, was too many cooks in the kitchen. There were way too many people working on the bike and it had become a social thing, so drinking while working was a very important part of the project. I didn't help during these times, I purely went to drink  I had enough of my own vehicle problems to sort out.

After being unable to get the bike running properly she started losing interest in the project, to the point where it was standing for around a year (most of 2014). Before this it had been standing at a mechanic for a few months but unfortunately he passed away while the bike was in his care. I don't think he worked much on the bike before his passing.

I decided to ask if I could purchase the bike, as I would see it simply sitting there in the garage every time I went to visit. I had also finished studying so finally had the time and money to look into repairing it. Initially I was told no, but around two weeks later I got a message saying that she had changed her mind, someone else had also approached her, but she said she preferred I had it.

The problem is she won't take any money for it, the deal is once I have her in roadworthy condition I get the paperwork and that's it. I still need to convince her to let me pay for it.

Anyway, I am sure most of you have skipped the past three paragraphs, time for the pictures!

I will post the pics when I get a chance, I am having issues using Photobucket at the office.

The day of collection: The owner and I dropped the bike as we were loading it onto the trailer  great start to the project (collected 01/02/2015)



Note how dusty the bike is, by this time I had pumped up the tires, both were under inflated.

[Gouraami]

Not much happened for the first 5 - 6 weeks when I had it. I was waiting for the Litetek viton carb rebuild kit. During this period I had removed the carbs and cleaned them as best as I could. Luckily the bike came with a spare set of carbs, so I took the best parts from both to create one good set.



Once assembled I had a continual problem with it running on three cylinders  (and not very well either), number 3 was getting spark and there was fuel in the carb, but no go. The cylinder head sounded very noisy. I then decided to check/redo the valve clearances. Wow, they were way out. Once assembled, there was no spark (at all). This led to a long afternoon of ringing out wires, and general checking of continuity. With no luck and a flat battery I decided to go drink beer. My dad apparently fiddled with it after I left and got it to start. According to him he cleaned up the contacts on the coil and frame and it started. I found this very strange as I had already checked for continuity there...     Unfortunately, #3 was still without fire after this.

At this point I decided a compression test was in order, as I suspected a valve problem. I was unable to find a 10mm spark plug hole adapter for our car 14mm  compression tester. This led to me having to make one out of an old spark plug.



The results revealed good and bad news:

The good news: All cylinders had relatively the same pressure
The bad news: That pressure was 45 Psi (75 Psi less than the minimum allowed in the manual)

I was glad that the cylinder head was fine, but realized the timing must be out as this is the only way the pressure can be down on all 4 cylinders. This also meant that there was a problem with cylinder 3's carb as it couldn't be getting fuel into the cylinder. This led to the carbs being removed, stripped and put back on many, many times (most bandit owners seem used to this procedure by now  ). I wanted to get it running on all 4 cylinders before fiddling with the timing. This didn't happen.

I then moved on to changing the timing:



A lesson from working in the dark:



I Broke the left oil passage pipe between the inlet and exhaust cams  I simply didn't see it bending while I was loosening the bolt. Luckily I was able to source one from a second hand bike shop, Craigs. I was very lucky, parts for these bikes are very scarce in sunny South Africa.

Changing the timing didn't go as well as planned. I couldn't get the timing spot on as in the manual, it kept being either half a tooth below or above the top of the tappet cover sealing edge of the head. There isn't much that can be done to change it, so ended up picking half a tooth before the top edge of the head. During reassembly I broke a journal bolt off in the head  This made me very worried as being high tensile bolts drilling it out was going to be a huge problem, including I would have to remove the engine to have enough space to work. It made no sense however as I hadn't even compressed the valve springs properly yet. After looking at the bolt that broke off the following was found:





One of the previous owners didn't seem to understand what torque settings are. Luckily, with lots of patience, I was able to remove the broken bolt with a small screw driver, turning it 1/10 of a turn at a time.










 

[Squishy]

Are you sure you held the throttle wide open during compression check?
Or is it already working and is this a write of the past;)

[Gouraami]

The carbs were off at the time (as seems to be the general case with a bandit  ), so yeah WOT

This is what has been happening in the past 3 months since I got it. I am trying to catch up with the story up until now. It is more or less running now, but I am really struggling to find time to work on it.

[greg737]

Since a compression tester is like a doctor's opinion I'd get my hands on a second compression test kit and compare the results.

[Gouraami]

I must still get to that in the story, not finding much time to type it out

[Gouraami]

The next problem was finding replacement journal bolts.  I was unable to find a reliable source to provide the tensile strength of suzuki #9 bolts. After some phoning around I ended up buying 12.9Mpa Allan caps. Luckily these just fit within the space provided under the tappet cover. 

After this the no spark gremlin returned. After more testing I found that the cable running from the signal generator had broken. The wire must have been on its last, but when removing the cover to set the timing it must have broken it completely. It was leaking oil badly from the signal generater cover gasket, so decided to cut a new one. I had to remove the cover again to solder the broken wire, so did both jobs at the same time.







The bike definitely had a tumble in the past, it wasn't me who repaired the cover. This sorted out the temperamental sparking problems.

Compression test 2:
All cylinders were roughly 75 Psi.
The reason I think the results were still low was due to my compression tester adapter. I was unable to put a hose clamp etc around the pipe to seal, as the diameter of the spark plug hole is too narrow. not even a cable tie worked. As the pressure climbed I believe it blew past the pipe, not giving actual readings. Two different gauges were tried and similar readings were obtained.

It was still running on 3 cylinders, I simply couldn't get #3 cylinder to run.

I decided to swap out for the other set of carbs. The reason I started with the other set was due to them being bought as a "recon" set. This was the preevious owners last attempt to sort out the running problems. The cleaning and rebuilding process started all over again. The main issue with this set was that somehow a previous "machy" had stripped the pilot screw on cylinder 1. It was stuck in a position that would create a very rich mixture at low rpm. Before sorting that out I decided to see if this set of carbs would make it run on all cylinders.

Finally! All four cylinders were running. There was definitely an issue with the other #3 carb. I still haven't figured out what it is, I cleaned and blew out all passages etc.

The pilot screw on #1 was causing problems though, the spark plug would foul quickly, resulting in 3 cylinder running until it was swapped out again  .

Drilled out the pilot (was really hoping I wouldn't F it up)



Luckily the thread in the carb wasn't too damaged, so just replacing the pilot worked fine.  I ended up looking for the 4 best pilot screws out of the 7 I had left, as I then noticed that they had been over tightened at some point, making them not conical anymore. It is difficult to see in the picture (The bottom one is damaged):

[Gouraami]

One thing I forgot to mention was that I also replaced the inlet manifold o rings (where it presses onto the head) as these were beyond their service limit. The main problem wasn't actually the o rings it turned out. The inlets were catching on the head on cylinders #2 and #3, preventing them from sitting flush. I used a dremel to cut away some material and paint. The inlets are however convex (Where they meet the head), I should sand them straight. I will check again to see if they are leaking, they weren't at the time after the repair.

 At the same time I noticed how  badly aligned the ports are. I tried swapping and turning them around on the different ports, but they always end up misaligned. Is this common with the inlets? Do all early 400's have this problem? I don't mind using a dremel to align them up properly, but will get to this at a later stage.



The bike was finally running relatively well at low rpm. It did sound rough, but I still hadn't done a carb sync as i didn't have the gauges to do it. I manually synced them while rebuilding, but that isn't good enough.

The problem now (and allways was from the start, even when running on 3 cylinders) was that it wouldn't rev/ride over 6000rpm in any gear or 10000 rpm in neutral. I ended up joining Bandit Alley's forum due to this problem.  I was quickly helped out, a real  moment for me 

The thread can be followed here:

http://forums.banditalley.net/index.php?topic=13917.0

[TJS]

Stick with it! 

[Gouraami]

Thanks TJS

Since the bike was finally running on all 4 cylinders, it was run for longer periods of time, finally getting warm. Once the pressure built up it would start leaking water from the thermostat housing. Initially I thought it would be a simple o-ring change, however once taken apart i found that the plastic housing was actually buckled. I would accept this as a common problem as the design is not great. A third securing point would ensure this would not happen.

I decided to true both plastic and aluminium surfaces and go from there. Using sandpaper and a piece of glass, this was achieved.



I think I ended up using the old o ring... but I am not sure anymore...maybe I bought a new one. After tightening, the plastic housing started bucking again, as I said earlier, poor design. It  however does not leak, so I am going to leave it as is.

I gave her a wash, initially so that I could identify further oil leaks, but ended up washing the entire bike. Some after pics:





She has many kilometers on the clock:



I had never had the plastics on the bike, so decided to see what she would look like:

[ventYl]

I thought that Limited version had the same gauges as naked but it looks like the opposite is truth. Visually similar to naked with same redline and top speed. Either original or retrofitted from GSX-R 400?

is the temperature meter working?

[Gouraami]

No, the limited edition has different gauges, similar to the GSX-R 400. I think the GSXR ones are black?

The temp gauge didn't work originally, it was wired up incorrectly. I was relieved to see it working once corrected.

[Gouraami]

Sorry about no updates in the past month. I have been really busy with other things, leaving little time for the bandit. I have taken some photos of things I have done, will update some or other time.

The bad news, I thought I would save some time by sending the bodywork in  to be sprayed. What a complete disaster. Three weeks passed while it was "Sprayed".

The "sprayshop" has dented my tank and all the panels are in worse condition than when I sent it in  . I am really angry and despondent about the project now. The tank was perfect.

Currently all the panels and tank are lying in my car ( and have been for a few days now), I don't even feel like taking it out.

Lesson learned: you want something done properly do it yourself. I absolutely hate customer service in South Africa.   

Once I feel like fiddling with the bike again I will try and blow the dent out using a compressor.

[Gouraami]

Finally I have some time to update again. This is what as been happening over the past weeks.

I was unhappy with all of the brackets on the bike. The paint had started coming off due to rust underneath.

I started with the Fairing bracket, as you can see it is surprisingly detailed.



This is why I wanted to repaint all the parts, most of them looked like this:



After a lot of work, down to bare metal. Ready for primer and paint:

[Gouraami]

This is what happens when you put others needs before your own and you don't primer the same day: Had to do the job over again 



while I was trial fitting the fairing I found, yet another, broken off bolt. This time on the frame. I struggled a long time to get this one out. I am not sure if it was a stainless bolt that was in there, but I wasted a few hours and a couple of drill bits trying to get it out. Once out I needed to retap the hole. The tap then broke off in the hole  . It ended in an entire Sunday afternoon being wasted on sorting out one hole.



Stripping the clock holder to bare metal:




I didn't take pictures off all the parts I stripped of paint, im sure you get the idea by now.

Finally, some parts after paint: