H1, Chapter 3

I spent my weeknights trying to get that one stuck cylinder off. I got it up about an inch and now it's really stuck. More on that later.  This weeks progress, I'm still sanding foam. Good thing I live by myself, I'm making a huge mess of my basement.  I screwed up when I did my mockup. I forgot to take into account the width of the seat hinges and latch in the fender templates. Since I want to be able to use the stock hinges and latch, the fender/seat frame needs to be wider than i originally planned. I used 1" blue foam for all this stuff.

One of my other hobbies is RC airplanes so I know my way around blocks of foam and a hot glue gun.  I started by shaping the side skirts, notching around the shocks and seat hardware. Then I glued foam to the fender hump to reshape the curve. I think I'm done with the foaming. My shape is close enough, now I've got to get a gallon of bondo to get my final shape down.

Yay for Bondo!  Actually, Bondo brand bondo is one of the worst fillers on the market. It cracks to easily, it sands like concrete, and it sucks up moisture like a sponge. But, it's all I had available. I'll use a higher quality filler for the final bodywork. Little known fact: bondo eats styrofoam, but very slowly. As a result, if you bondo over styrofoam, it will eat it's way in and once it's set it grips the foam fantastically and makes a good base for further bodywork.

That's where I am. I'm basically spackling the foam with the bondo. Then I'll sand it to where I want it to use as the buck for mold #1. I hope to have the mold layed up by the end of the day tomorrow. Real actual spackle would work just as well and sand easier, but the bondo sets faster and grips the foam better. Closer and closer..

On the H1, I got my buck final sanded. For future reference: hand sanding that much Bondo with arms so sore they barely move from working out is...uh...fun...yeah, that's what it is...fun... I did learn that if I keep the shop vac near by and suck up the dust instead of blow it off, the basement stays remarkably clean. I would have had it 'glassed too, but my SuperSecret™ mold release didn't dry fast enough, it's rather cold in the basement these days...  I should have the buck glassed for mold #1 in a few days.

Since I used to work with street rods and kit cars for a living, I know my way around fiberglass. I got the buck glassed for my first mold. It's almost as simple as putting the glass on the foam/bondo, but not quite. The problem is that polyester fiberglass resin will rapidly attack foam dissolving it to nothing.

I have a SuperSecret™ and very low cost solution to that. Elmers Glue. Yup, plain old regular Elmers glue. It provides a barrier that the resin's solvents will not penetrate. I brushed 2 heavy coats onto my buck and let it dry a few days.

I used 2 full bags of the Bondo fiberglass packets they sell everywhere(24 sq/ft total), and just under 2 quarts of resin. Unlike the Bondo brand body filler, the Bondo resin is perfectly fine. For the most part, polyester resin is polyester resin. The Bondo stuff is also really just repackaged 3M resin. MAKE SURE YOU USE FRESH HARDENER. I made the mistake of not using fresh stuff once. No Bueno, it never fully set and I had to start over again. When ever you do 'glass work, it's always best to plan where you're going to put the cloth and in what order. Things get sticky quick, and trying to cut cloth at that point sucks. Here you can see all the different pieces that went into my mold. I used 12 sq/ft of woven cloth for the first layer, then 12 sq/ft of the mat for the second layer. The cloth goes around corners better, and the mat offers more build thickness.

Here's what I ended up with. You'll note the excessive use of garbage bags over the bike, and plywood to keep the floor clean. Fiberglass work of any kind tends to make a sticky mess.  I mixed the resin a little cold(slightly under catalyzed), and it's fairly cool in my basement. I wanted to make sure I'd have enough time to play with the glass to get it layed how I wanted, and to work the bubbles out. Too much catalyst will generate too much heat as it cures and melt the foam too. 

I let it sit like this for about 5 days. I want to make sure it's good and cured before I de-mold it. You don't generally think of fiberglass as something that will sag and flex, but it can, and does(especually when it gets hot). If it's demolded to quickly, it could twist or warp(that's why you NEVER buy a cheap kit car).

After all that, I seem to have miscalculated... On ALL my tests, Elmers glue made a great mold release/solvent barrier and the glass peeled right off the foam. Doesn't seem to be the case now.  My guess is that the extra long cure time is at fault, all my tests were mixed considerably hotter. So now I'm scraping foam, and I'll soon be sanding Bondo. Good thing this is only a temporary mold to make the part to make the mold...

I had to scrape the bondo out of my mold with a putty knife and a heat gun, then sand it smooth. Then I put another coat of straight resin on it. Once it set, I buffed the heck out of it with my buffer and some rubbing compound so the surface was nice and shiny. Followed that with 3 coats of wax, then 2 coats of Elmers Glue, then another thick coat of wax that I did NOT buff off.

With the mold prepped, I layed in about the same amount of glass I used for the mold, and another quart or so of resin. Let it set up for a few hours. On the advise of a coworker, the "body" guy at work, I pulled the part while it was still green(only a few hours in the mold).

Once it was set, with minimal effort the thing came right out. I think it was the wax that did it(forgot that the first time). The Elmers Glue layer peeled right off like it was supposed to. I made a part! I'm super excited 'cause I actually did something, and it worked 100% like I planned.  You know why?  Cause I'm awesome.  But seriously, when you've forgotten to eat, and are...um...uh...er...less than 100% coherent...because you've been working around styrene fumes all afternoon in a basement with inadequate ventilation, you probably shouldn't post on the internet...haha... And I forgot my camera at work, so no pics of this step.

H1, Chapter 2

I finally was able to make some progress. I got a lot taken apart so I can start cleaning and refurbishing. This whole putting the bike in the basement idea is a super good one, I didn't have to put my snowsuit on to go work on it :)  I only had one stuck cylinder I'll have to make a tool for, everything else came apart remarkably well given it's age.

I know where my seat needs to be, but I wasn't sure how and where I wanted the fender. So, I had some Photoshop fun. The tank suits it MUCH better with the Cafe style seat and fender.  I also moved the headlight and gauge pod down.  Here's my "artist's" rendition of the picture in my head.

It was Christmas Eve, and I was all alone. Ice storm canceled my plane for me. "What should do with a day all to myself?" I asks. "Work on the H1 of course!" I quickly replied. I soon realized that I was talking to myself and should probably seek help. But the Kaw was more enticing, so I got more stuff done. My one stuck cylinder is getting annoying, I've tried all the recommended tricks, and it just won't come off.  So I quit and went back to the bodywork. I got the seat and rear bodywork roughly mocked up.

The Photoshop is nice, but actually physically seeing it, even in plywood and cardboard, give a much better feel for how it's going to work, and I could start figuring out how I wanted to mount and hinge the seat.

The seat is right where I want it for my height and preferred riding position, and it's reasonably comfortable.  I had one criteria for the fender, it had to hold a can of starting fluid. This one is just big enough. I think I want to make it a little longer though.

Although I'm pretty good with sheetmetal, my plan is to make my fender and seat pan out of fiberglass. I want the seat to be able to hinge up so I've still got storage space in the fender, so it'll need to be multiple pieces. Fiberglass is just easier to work with for what I want to do(I also didn't have a welder at home at the time).

Legend has it that when Cortez set off to conquer the Aztecs, he burned his ships so that retreat wasn't an option, no turning back. I'm at the point of no return on the H1. The rear section of the frame is in my way.  It is too long and sticks out past where I wanted my fender to stop.  Out comes the sawzall :)  I whacked it off just in front of the blinker tab.  You should have heard the H1 purists on the Kawasaki Triples forum howl about how I was desecrating such a piece of history.  I was entertained by how mad people got about what I wanted do with MY motorcycle...

The next step in my fender making process was to make myself a block of foam to start carving. 2" polystyrene foam from Menards and some Gorilla Glue later, I had a pretty good size block...

Next came the fun part, shaping the foam. It should be noted that this makes a heck of a mess, and it's a sticky mess because foam loves static electricity. It also sucks to breath it, and scratches like hell if you get it in your eyes. Fiberglass and bondo dust have nothing on foam dust.

I rough roughed in the outside with a wood saw, using my cardboard pieces as templates. I also had the shop vac on right next to where I was grinding/sanding to help keep the dust under control. I started with my 4.5" grinder and carved away the bottom a little at a time so it would sit down on the frame how I wanted it to. Then I started on the top. I got the shape roughed in with the grinder, then shaped it further with sandpaper. Still a lot of shaping left to do, but it's getting there.

It's all relative...

Just another photo placeholder.  I'm having a discussion on a forum about RC car scales, and how they're not the most accurate.  "Scale" is a fairly loose term with RC cars, and this pic illustrates it rather well.  Left is a 1/10 Short Course truck(with monster truck tires and a plow added), center is a 1/10 on road car, right is a 1/8 scale 4x4 buggy, top is a nearly full scale house cat:

 

My H1, from start to finish...

The very first post of this blog is the video I made chronicling the rebuild and customization of my 1975 Kawasaki H1F.  I had, at one time, a whole long build thread on it, but that forum is now defunct.  Fortunately, I had the foresight to save all my posts before the forum went down for good.  Since my Dad is about to start restoring an old bike of his own, I figured that now is the time to show the journey my H1 took thinking maybe he'll pick up some tips and tricks.  To this day, I consider my H1 to be the only project vehicle I've ever actually finished.  Since this is essentially a repost of a long forum thread, the time scale will be shortened considerably, and some bits may be slightly out of context with lots of past and present tense intermingling.  I'll do my best to fix that. 

If you're not familiar with the Kawasaki H series of bikes, they were all three cylinder two-strokes, ranging in size from 250cc to 750cc.  The first of the series, the H1A, was 500cc's.  When the original H1 debuted in 1969, it was, for all intents and purposes, the world's first superbike.  No other production bike could match it's performance.  Handling was atrocious and the brakes were marginal at best, but when you got on the gas in a straight line, everything else was left behind.  While sluggish down low, when it hit the powerband it took off like a missile with eyeball melting acceleration.  It was so quick that it was dubbed the Mach III.

My bike story started like so many others, a friend's neighbor had this old bike sitting in a shed.  I'd never even heard the term "triple" when I first went to look at it.  I wasn't all that impressed at first glance, but I wanted a new project and have a fondness for Kawasaki two strokes, so it followed me home for the princely sum of $450.  It wasn't until I later did some research that I realized I'd acquired much more than a generic 70's Japanese motorcycle.  Since I'd always like the Cafe Racer style, and I can never leave well enough alone I decided to build a custom Cafe bike instead or a factory restoration.  I also I wanted to see how cost effective I could keep it, just because.

Here's how it looked when I got it home, dusty, dirty, hadn't been ridden in 15 years:

First thing I did, before I even washed, it was pull the giant windshield off :D Then I cleaned it, it actually cleaned up pretty good. I cleaned the carbs and got it running without too much fuss.  Not bad for 35 years old and 18,000 miles:

I discovered that I sit differently on it whether I'm pretending or actually riding. Since I'm going to make a seat and rear fender for it, I had to know where I'd be sitting on it with the bars I intend to make. I haven't found a supplier for the stainless tubing I'll need, so I had to make some mock up bars. It turns out that 1/2" Schedual 40 pipe is just slightly under the OD required, and I happened to have a piece laying in the garage. This is just a working mockup, I'll shorten the wires as necessary later on.

Next came a big change. I've never been crazy about the H1's gas tank. It's long and narrow. I like my tanks just opposite my women, short and fat. More to the point, traditional Cafe racers, the Triumphs, Nortons, and such, had more bulbous tanks, and many of them had knee dents in the sides. Being on a budget, I wasn't about to buy an actual British tank, or any of the aftermarket cafe style tanks. No way I'm spending as much on a tank as I did for the whole rest of the bike.

Having more time than money and being a pretty decent sheetmetal fabricator, my first thought was to make/modify a tank to suit my needs. While shopping a for a suitable donor, I discovered that a few Japanese production tanks came styled the way I want. I ended up finding a deal on e-bay of all places on a 1980 Honda CX500 tank. The best part of this tank, a petcock with a real actual "OFF" position unlike the H1's sucky vacuum petcock(pun intended).

This CX500 tanks fits beautifully. It's the same length as the H1F tank, is about 1/2" taller, and 2" wider. It looks bigger than that, but it's really not. I know it looks out of place now, but trust me, it'll work...


One thing that needed immediate changing with the new tank was the fuel lines.  The stock H1 petcock had three fuel lines coming off of it, one for each carb.  The CX500 tank only had one.  So, I made a fuel splitter.  I started with a chunk of aluminum scrap. I drilled a hole most of the way down it's length, then adjoining holes down one side and tapped them.

Out came the angle grinder. I knocked off all the corners and edges, and gave it an overall ovalish shape. With the shape where I wanted it, I sanded it smooth and polished it. I also polished the brass fittings before screwing them in. Looks pretty good for a fuel block that sits up under the fuel tank that no one will ever see :)

I also added some new Bridgestone BT45 tires and a Kawasaki Ninja EX500 front brake caliper. The dual piston EX caliper only requires a simple adapter bracket to be made, and is a HUGE improvement over the stock front caliper.  Neither of these pictures are mine, but you can see the difference.
Stock:

EX500:

After driving it around like that for a month or so, it started to get cold.  I am in WI after all.  So, into the basement it went, where the real adventure would begin...