Rescued M900 Rebuild Thread

[junior varsity]

fun thread for sure.  i did one of these before.    i made the mistake of trying to upgrade things at every step along the way rather than focus on getting it running and working, generally, first and that dragged out the process a lot.  So if you can hold off on that until after you've got something that simply "works", you'll (a) save money and (b) have a working motorcycle much earlier, haha!




and ballsy color choice, that's fun.

[junior varsity]

Very interested to see how your engine combination perfoms  as I am planning a similar engine rebuild in the future.

944 hi comp (904 hi comp at present), more porting, bigger inlet valves. I haven't made up my mind on the cams. Currently running stock cams advanced, but thought I would go to stock specs with 944. Also undecided about using 900 ie or ST2 cams with the long manifolds.

Does the valve increase include both inlet and exhaust or just 44mm inlet valves like I am planning?

A very interesting build.

The ST2 cams, a unicorn if there ever was one.  I'm cautioned by some tuners to quit looking so hard for those and simply grab the IE cams since they are supposedly "very" close, but Brad's data shows clearly different figures: http://www.bikeboy.org/duccamspec.html   How much is "felt" in the difference, I don't know.

[AdmiralKit]

Thread book marked... because I think I talked to that same guy about that same pile of parts!

Does it have the guage plate that holds the half-moon LED tach?

Great start, btw.  Can't wait to see how it turns out.

It's got the crescent tach that sits over the idiot lights, but it looked mechanical rather than LED.  I'll be honest, I really haven't gotten around to paying that much attention to those parts of the bike beyond a cursory inspection that they were, well, intact. 

Seems like about four or five forum members and probably more than a few other people talked to that guy, too, which made it a lot easier for me to haggle the price down.  Nice guy but a crazy SOB - I didn't realize until after I'd bought it that he was the guy behind the jet-powered school bus.  I drove up and he had the school bus sitting on a trailer and the Impala sitting in front of his house, not to mention four jet engines sitting in his yard as well waiting for projects.  Certainly made me laugh when I pulled into the driveway.  The pics he posted on Craigslist hid the giant dent in the tank and there was a fair amount of surface corrosion on the metallic surfaces of the bike, plus I was disappointed at how badly the frame was chopped up (though I think he stated that outright in the CL ad).  Such is the life of wheeling and dealing, though, and all said and done I was looking for a good project to wrench on anyway.

fun thread for sure.  i did one of these before.    i made the mistake of trying to upgrade things at every step along the way rather than focus on getting it running and working, generally, first and that dragged out the process a lot.  So if you can hold off on that until after you've got something that simply "works", you'll (a) save money and (b) have a working motorcycle much earlier, haha!




and ballsy color choice, that's fun.

I know what you mean about upgrading things at every step of the way, but since it's in boxes it's kind of a "No time like the present!" situation for making the changes that I'm doing.  I'm leaving the heavy lifting mechanical stuff to the dealer since it's still beyond my skill level at this time (I'm taking notes!), but once the engine is put back together I'm going to put everything else back together myself until it's time to tune the carbs and dyno it.  My big concern is going to be the wiring harness - a lot of the contacts are all corroded, which will make for a lot of fun testing.  Depending on how everything comes together, I may look into building a custom box to stick the electrics and redoing the wiring harness to fit that, just to clean up the look of the bike.  Then again, I might not.

The ST2 cams, a unicorn if there ever was one.  I'm cautioned by some tuners to quit looking so hard for those and simply grab the IE cams since they are supposedly "very" close, but Brad's data shows clearly different figures: http://www.bikeboy.org/duccamspec.html   How much is "felt" in the difference, I don't know.

I saw a set of used ST2 cams come up on the forum for about half of what I paid for mine new.  I asked the shop to look around and see what they could find, but I wasn't dead set on ST2 cams unless they could be located.   Thanks for the link, BTW - I've added it to my bookmarks for future reference.

Current update: the horizontal head has been cleaned up nicely, but I'm having trouble getting all of the paint stripping goo out of the crevices of the vertical head.  I'm tempted to get a sand blaster for Christmas, but I doubt I'd use it enough to make it worthwhile.  I expect some pictures of painted engine parts to be ready sometime during the weekend, though.

[junior varsity]

You should comb over the bikeboy.org website, the information is incredible.

[dropstharockalot]

It's got the crescent tach that sits over the idiot lights, but it looked mechanical rather than LED.

Yep, same guy / same bike.

If your rescue plans don't include that tach and plate, PM me.

[junior varsity]

if its the little digital light-up tach that goes over the giant rectangle of idiot lights, i'm not sure you are going to want to use it... I've heard gobs of problems with their erratic behavior or lights dying.  Then again, the DP kit with the big dial and relocated idiot lights isn't exactly the most accurate device of all time...

[AdmiralKit]

Progress is slow, unfortunately, but it is being made.  I think I spent about two and a half weeks stripping paint off of the heads, which was a fiasco and a half.  Started off with the heat gun, until 45 minutes into it I realized that I was essentially trying to heat a giant heat sink, and just couldn't get it hot enough to strip paint.  Next move was paint stripper, and while effective I figured out too late how much of a pain getting it out of all of the inter-fin crevices it would be.  Finally broke down and bought a soda blaster after scraping the damn things for a week.  Cleaned it with acetone, and have just completed priming the heads and cylinders.  The engine block is yet to come.

Cleaning the heads:




Primed Cylinders:




Primed Heads:




Next step is to paint them, and then get the heads back to the shop to finish the reassembly while I'm out of town all next week.  When I get back I'll be getting to work on the block itself, which needs cleaned up pretty well, but at least doesn't have all of the damn fins to have to clean around.

[Raux]

just your tape job is beautiful. can't wait to see the finished product

[Nottsbiker]

Its easy to mask stuff like that it you take your time and have a sharp stanley knife blade, and strangely therapeutic if you are sat on your sofa watching tv whilst doing it 

[Slide Panda]

Apparently the Admiral has a feline helper too.

[AdmiralKit]

Apparently the Admiral has a feline helper too.

He claims that he was doing a quality inspection, actually.  I doubt he would ever deign to assist unless it involved copious amounts of pettins as payment.

[thought]

just your tape job is beautiful. can't wait to see the finished product

haha, the tape was the first thing i noticed too... anything i wind up taping up looks nothing like.  the term to describe mine would be... "functional".

[AdmiralKit]

It's been a month and a half since the last update, and a half dozen out of state business trips, two family visits, and two trips back to my hometown for a birthday and a funeral have not exactly given me the time I need to work on this.  To keep things moving, I have dropped the engine off at a local painter to get this taken care of properly. 

Also, I picked up a super secret project the other week which I will start work on as soon as the M900 is street-worthy again.

[zooom]

Also, I picked up a super secret project the other week which I will start work on as soon as the M900 is street-worthy again.

hints?

[junior varsity]

internal combustion, has wheels, throttle is a twist grip.