ITS ALIVE!!!!
sorry for the long wait guys and gals. life's been getting in the way. Had a trip to north dakota to see my mother and another out to vegas to look for a new home.
But, the long weekend as finally given me some time to sit down and wrench a bit and I now have a running quad - sort of.
I got the radiator fully mounted and all plumbed up. Found some carbs and got those all cleaned up and installed. Modified my throttle cable so it works with those carbs. Cut out the nasty exhaust you see above and welded up some nice clean new stuff using mandrel bent pipe. re-did the entire wiring harness to eliminate eveything not needed and then fought with the ignition for 3 weeks.
Couldnt get any spark at all on the thing. I went through way too much money buying new Ignitors for the hting and anotheing seemed to work, then i by accident, stummbled across a site that someone was converting a ninja 250 into a track bike that was having the same problems. Turns out, Kawasaki had this bright idea to add an "anti-teft" device to the mix. There is a tiny 100 ohm resistor buried in the stock key ignition that go to an arming lead for the ignitor. This is apparently so that someone could not simply unplug the stock ignition and hot-wore the bike. Naturally this was not listed in ANY wiring diagrams or anywhere in the service manual.
Anyway, got that sorted out and finally got spark. Put everything together and she runs!
Had to do a little modification to the gas tank to clear the carbs so I filled it with water, broke out the torch and went to town softening and re-shaping the bottom of the tank. all worked great but i am going to smear some gas tank exopy over everything to make sure i wont have problems in the future.
Now I am waiting on proper air filters and a new rear fender set (anyone have one for sale cheap?). Other than that, it is just a matter of finishing up the charging system (went seperate from ignition circuit) and then comes the fun part of taking everything apart again and finishing up some of the welds, reinforcements of the fram, and getting everything painted and cleaned up.
Will post pics and video later today. I was so excited once i got spark. i had like 3 different people and myself working that damn thing for too long. i was about ready to throw in the towel on this.
More coming later today.
- Justin
sorry for the long wait guys and gals. life's been getting in the way. Had a trip to north dakota to see my mother and another out to vegas to look for a new home.
But, the long weekend as finally given me some time to sit down and wrench a bit and I now have a running quad - sort of.
I got the radiator fully mounted and all plumbed up. Found some carbs and got those all cleaned up and installed. Modified my throttle cable so it works with those carbs. Cut out the nasty exhaust you see above and welded up some nice clean new stuff using mandrel bent pipe. re-did the entire wiring harness to eliminate eveything not needed and then fought with the ignition for 3 weeks.
Couldnt get any spark at all on the thing. I went through way too much money buying new Ignitors for the hting and anotheing seemed to work, then i by accident, stummbled across a site that someone was converting a ninja 250 into a track bike that was having the same problems. Turns out, Kawasaki had this bright idea to add an "anti-teft" device to the mix. There is a tiny 100 ohm resistor buried in the stock key ignition that go to an arming lead for the ignitor. This is apparently so that someone could not simply unplug the stock ignition and hot-wore the bike. Naturally this was not listed in ANY wiring diagrams or anywhere in the service manual.
Anyway, got that sorted out and finally got spark. Put everything together and she runs!
Had to do a little modification to the gas tank to clear the carbs so I filled it with water, broke out the torch and went to town softening and re-shaping the bottom of the tank. all worked great but i am going to smear some gas tank exopy over everything to make sure i wont have problems in the future.
Now I am waiting on proper air filters and a new rear fender set (anyone have one for sale cheap?). Other than that, it is just a matter of finishing up the charging system (went seperate from ignition circuit) and then comes the fun part of taking everything apart again and finishing up some of the welds, reinforcements of the fram, and getting everything painted and cleaned up.
Will post pics and video later today. I was so excited once i got spark. i had like 3 different people and myself working that damn thing for too long. i was about ready to throw in the towel on this.
More coming later today.
- Justin
