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My Shed Online

1976 Honda XR75

What can be said about the mighty Honda XR75?? What a bike - it probably started more people riding than any other single bike in History.

28 August, 2005:

Well after 30 years I've finally got one!!! A Honda XR75. How cool is that??!!?!

I guess to a lot of people that doesn't really mean much, but I bet if you are reading this, then you can also feel the excitement I feel when thinking back to those carefree days of minibikes and the local quarry. Long before the worries of taxation, families, jobs, bills etc. Back in the days when all we really had to worry about was getting mum or dad to give us a couple of bucks for petrol. They were grand old days, and to me, and doubtless to lots of others, those carefree days are best reflected in our memories of our minibikes. But I digress......

My "new" XR75. Its actually 30 years old this year, its a 1976 model. Of course its showing its age. You'll see from some of the "before" photos that its probably worse than "showing it's age", it's showing MY age. Which is a darn site more than 33 years let me tell you.

And how did I come across this little gem?? Well the truth is, I can't remember exactly. And that is not nearly as shonky as it sounds. I do remember I went around this guys place. He was a fireman, but for the life of me I simply cannot remember how I met this guy and found out about his motorbikes. Anyway, at his place I was looking at the little XR, and he was selling it "cheap" he said, but I didn't really know how much "cheap" was going to be. While he is showing me the bike, his good wife came out and gave him a ton of grief about "those bloody bikes" and how it was good he was getting rid of them. "Them????" I asked?? he took me to another corner and there was a little Honda MR50 and a Yamaha YZ60. To make his life easier, he said I could have all three for $100. SOLD!!! None of them were running, but I was after the XR to restore and hey, for $100, who could refuse the other two, I would have happily paid up to $300 just for the XR. So I was happy, wife was happy, and of course when wife is happy, fireman is happy. We all win..... :)

So now that I've finally got it home I need to restore it.

About my only guidance on this project is a book by Mark Zimmerman and Jeff Hackett, "How to Restore Your Motorcycle". I ISBN: 0-7603-0681-8. From first few readings it seems to be pretty good but I guess the proof is in the pudding so to speak, so this project progresses, I'll let you know my comments on the book.

You can see from the photo that it is fairly rough. I know for a fact it wont start, and in fact the kick starter won't even kick through its whole range of arc, so things insid ethe cylinder sound a bit dodgy, ie seized.

Tuesday 4 April, 2006:

The disassembly started in earnest today. Over the past year or so I have been gathering many of the things I thought I would need to do the little XR justice. Things like a complete Parts Catalogue on Microfische, an official Honda XR75 Workshop Manual, photos of the original model I have (1975 K2). I got them all arranged, started reading up on a few things and just generally prepared.

The time had to eventually come.....the disassembly began. Slowly at first. Today I organised a workspace and set up the bike ready to go.

Where to start? I wanted to do this right, so I figured a great place to start would be with a thousand phtographs of the bike the was it was, just in case I happened to forget what goes where. So out with the camera and photograph everything that may be of value later, once I was trying to put it all back where it belongs, and of course a good many just for posterity.

But then it was time to stop pfaffing around and get out the tools. A very slow start:

• Removed front brake cable
• Removed clutch cable
• Removed left side hand grip

I don't have a glorious history of mechanical success, so I have resigned myself to do this one very carefully, very precisely and without any time pressures at all. If I can't get that part off today, well that's OK, no need to get the hammer out and bash it off. I know from experience that only ends up with a broken component. No, there would be none of that, this whole process would be done clinically and with precision.

Saturday 8 April, 2006:

Once the front brake and clutch were dis connected and the lever assemblies removed, the next logical step was to remove the handlebars.

In hindsight, I probably wouldn't remove them at this stage again, because there is esstentially still a complete motorbike there, and moving it around without the handlebars is not as trivial as it sounds. But then again, hopefully next restoration I will have a proper workshop set up with the bike clamped into a bike life or similar.

Suffice to say I don't have that now, and I removed the handlebars at this stage without too much fuss.

I know it sounds childish, but I guess like most blokes, Im still a kid at heart. But by now, blissfuly working away on my XR75, my very first restoration project, I had removed the brakes, clutch and handlebars and had not broken anything, so I was feeling pretty good about life!

Monday 10 April, 2006:

So what next??

The exhaust I guess.

You hear so many horror stories of exhausts welding themselves and/or their collars to the head I was sure mine was going to be a nightmare. In the end, I shouldn't have worried.

I unwound a few bits of old wire that were being used to secure the exhaust to the frame and foot-peg mounts and then the only other thing left was the exhaust collar at the head. It is held on by two 12mm nuts and these were the ones I was dreading. Bearing in mind my new found patience and "do things properly" attitude, I was determined not to simply attack these nuts with my biggest shifting spanner. I got out my socket set and had a little bit of a feel. The nuts were fairly corroded, so even my good quality sockets were not sitting terribly well on the nets.

As an aside, I learned quite a few years ago to always buy the best tools I can afford. When I was a kid, I always used to buy the cheap and nasty 1/2 inch and 2/3 inch combination socket sets you can buy in the local junk shop for $10. I used to use them to death, lend thme to people, lose them break them and when I needed a new set, another $10 and I was off again.....I just couldn't figure out why all those other "idiots" would spend hundreds of dollars on a socket set. Well the inevitable happened, one day I needed a socket and my old $10 set was missing that socket. No worries, I'd just go buy another $10 set. but of course I couldn't find any of the $10 sets anywhere, and I needed them that day, then and there. I did find a $125 Kinchrome set though. It was the same set, that is, the same sizes, same extension shafts 1/2 3/8 inch drives etc. I begrudingly paid the $125 and went home and got stuck into my CR125. What a different world opened up to me. I had never used a good tool before (behave!!!) in my life and now that I had one in my hands, things happened so much easier, things I could never undo came undone easily, no more stripped nuts, no more smashed knuckles from sockets slipping off nuts. There was a world of difference. That afternoon, I swore to myself I would never again buy crap tools, and with only a few exceptions, I never have. And another side effect, since paying $125 for that socket set, I have never ever lost another socket. I take care of them and clean them after every use. I am sure I would have spent way more than $125 if I had continued buying those crappy $10 sets.

So back to the exhaust flange nuts.

Even though I had good quality sockets, they weren't seating well on the nuts because they were so corroded. I gave them a bit of a tweak, with a moderate amount of pressure, but they didn't budge. Remembering my "Don't break it you idiot" instruction to self. I decided to leave it alone for a while and give it a damn good drenching in WD40.

I bathed them in it and returned in about an hour and gave it another try, again with no success. More WD40/ I dreneched them every 15 minutes for a couple of hours and then left them sit for about 2 or 3 more hours.

When I returned, lo and behold things started to move! I put a bit of pressure and I was greeted with that nice satisfying "crack" one hears when a locked nut breaks free. Of course I first paniced and thought it was the crack of the exhaust studs snapping in half, but no that was not the case.

The first one was a bit tight, but not insanely so. It came undone without too much fuss. As I wound the nut off it felt a bit tight the whole way out, but I just put that down to a dirty/rusty thread on the stud. When it actually came off though, I reaslised why. I wasn't screwing the nut off, the nut was stuck fairly tight, I was screwing the stud out of the head. Oh well, that's not too bad I thought, they'd have to come out eventually. But I am left with the nut suck, effectively rusted I guess, onto the stud, and now with it out of the bike it will be a bugger to remove. Oh well - thats a problem for reassembly :)

So then onto the second one. To my surprise this one came off even easier than the first!!! But of course this time the nut came off and left the stud in the head. Really easy :)

So I took the exhaustoff and had a look into the exhaust port. YUK!!! There was a heap of crud and carbon and oil and who knows what else. You may remember that when I first started restoring the bike, it was "mildly" seized and I poured a fair amount of WD40 and engine oil down the spark plug hole. I'm guessing that a lot of this muck is from the stuff I poured down the hole. All the oil and WD mixing with years of carbon build up. Anyway, obviously I'll give it a good cleaning before getting it all back together.

So then I had the exhaust off, but one stud still stuck in the head at the exhaust port, and another two at the inlet manifold. Hmmmmmm....what too do?? How do you get studes out of heads??

I've read lots of things saying that it is REALLY easy to ruin your day by destroying the soft alloy threads in the head with the hard threads of the studs. This sounds like the type of thing I would normally do, so I really wanted to proceed with caution here. I read somewhere that to remove studs, all you have to do is put two nuts on the stud, and then wind out the inner of the two nuts. The theory being that once that nut locks up against the outer of the two, as you wind it, it winds out the stud. So I tried that. It didn't work though. Both nuts simply spun off the end of the stud. Hmmmm. I was stuck. How to get these things off.

Of course, being the idiot that I am, I couldn't help myself, out came the vice grips!!! I locked them onto the middle section of the stud that is not threaded and spun. Not even close! It just spun around the stud. Even an idiot like me could see that if I kept this up I definately WAS going to stuff up the whole thing. So like the true coward that I am, I put the bike away for the night and decided to do a bit of research.

Tuesday 11 April, 2006:

As you may recall, in the last episode of this gripping adventure, I was stuck trying to remove the 6mm studs from both the exhaust outlet and the manifold inlet.

In the meantime I dropped an e-mail to Steve from Classic Cycle Works, Knoxville, Tennessee, asking his advice. He gave me acouple of ideas, firstly, I could try heating up the head and backing out the studs, or I could buy a Stud Extractor!!!  (Edit: 2009. As it turns out Steve from Classic Cycle Works ripped me off and took my money (long story) suffice to say I would never trust him again)

I didn't even know there was such a thing as a stud extractor! I learned long ago that I break many more things than I fix if I try to hack things around without using the right tool. So I headed off down to the Tool shop looking for a Stud Extractor.

I found myself a little 4 piece Stud Puller Set. They look just like a regular Spark Plug socket with a half inch drive, but they have a little cam arrangement on the inside. You simply slip them over the stud, turn, and the cam grabs the stud. Its arranged in such a way that the more torque you apply to the socket, the harder the cam grips the stud.

I was a bit concerned that I would snap the studs off in the head, or at least destroy the threads, but nope....not at all. These things worked a treat! All four of the studs came out with no fuss at all. I reckon these stud pullers were a great investment! I'm sure I would have stuffed it all up if I continued using my Vice Grips and a heap of swearing.

For those interested, the Stud Pullers I got were $60 (Australian Dollars) and made by a company called NARVIK

So now the studs are all out. I gave all the stud holes a bath in WD40, and gave the studs themselves a bit of a clean up and screwed them in and out of the holes about half a dozen times each. Each time they went in and out I could feel them getting easier and easier. I guess that was because the threads were cleaning up.

Wednesday 12 April, 2006: