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Re: Another newbie, never owned a KR before now but not a stranger to them....

Posted: Sat Jun 01, 2019 10:25 am
by JanBros
swap over the stator to. it has seperate windings for the ignition which are known to fail often.

Re: Another newbie, never owned a KR before now but not a stranger to them....

Posted: Sat Jun 01, 2019 12:12 pm
by Coose
Yep, I measured the resistance of the two stator windings. Red-white is fine, red-black should be 100-200 Ohms. I'm getting 25 MOhms. Annoyingly I don't have an M27x1.0mm LH puller, pretty-much everything but!

Luckily a friend has a stator in his stash of spares so I can pick that up this week to get me going until I source either a new replacement or get mine rewound. Does anyone have any recommendations?

Re: Another newbie, never owned a KR before now but not a stranger to them....

Posted: Sat Jun 01, 2019 12:33 pm
by martin
Don’t waste your time getting the stator rewound( as it will cost the same as a new one)£

Go on to wemoto and buy a new electrexworld stator

Re: Another newbie, never owned a KR before now but not a stranger to them....

Posted: Sat Jun 01, 2019 3:01 pm
by Coose
Cheers, I did look on the Electrex World site earlier but couldn't see a KR1-S stator, but Google helped. I shall get one ordered.

As the loom was already butchered (with a few wires just chopped and not insulated!) I've taken advantage of this and removed anything that it doesn't need.

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Re: Another newbie, never owned a KR before now but not a stranger to them....

Posted: Sat Jun 01, 2019 5:45 pm
by JanBros
martin wrote: Sat Jun 01, 2019 12:33 pm Don’t waste your time getting the stator rewound( as it will cost the same as a new one)£
I've done it once myself and it is still running.
originaly it has 3 thin wires wounded in parallel. I did just 2 slightly thicker. I never managed to come close to the resistance needed, but it works anyway. and still does, after years.

Re: Another newbie, never owned a KR before now but not a stranger to them....

Posted: Sat Jun 01, 2019 8:18 pm
by Coose
The loom is now rationalised so that all superfluous wires are now removed. I've never seen so many joints in a standard loom, but at least unlike Yamaha Kawasaki decided to crimp rather than solder...

Electrex stator and flywheel puller is on order and I have the CDI ready to test on the pink kr1 hopefully this week at some point. Fingers crossed....

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Re: Another newbie, never owned a KR before now but not a stranger to them....

Posted: Sat Jun 01, 2019 8:33 pm
by Coose
The stator arrived yesterday, the puller today. The flywheel came off with no dramas, just to expose a stator that has had the generator windings removed. It makes me wonder if one of the exciter coils had been nicked when this occurred, but then the standard stators are weak and this one was quite scabby.

So on went the new stator with a battle to push the wires behind the clip that keeps them away from the flywheel, but within minutes we had sparks and not long afterwards we had life again.

Fingers crossed there might be an MOT tomorrow....

Re: Another newbie, never owned a KR before now but not a stranger to them....

Posted: Thu Jun 06, 2019 11:56 am
by Coose
MOT passed this morning! 8)

I need to fiddle with the suspension as it's still an unknown quantity, but other than some numpty forgetting to plug in the temperature sender it's going grand! It seems to carburate well but I'll get some miles on the new plugs so that I can do a decent plug chop or two so that I know what's going on.

I'm a happy man so far!

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Re: Another newbie, never owned a KR before now but not a stranger to them....

Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2019 5:57 pm
by Coose
Today I came to the conclusion that the design of the ZXR400L forks that are residing in my KR-1 is dreadful - Richard Maxton is absolutely right with his description of the rubbish rebound control.

I also came to the conclusion that the Maxton stickers on my forks are exactly that; stickers....

So, does anyone have for sale a set of ZXR400L forks that are already fettled? I would like to get them sorted before Cadwell at the end of the month, otherwise I'll just put up with them for now and decide who to send them to afterwards.

Re: Another newbie, never owned a KR before now but not a stranger to them....

Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2019 9:38 pm
by Coose
Having got a few miles on it now a couple of things came to light. The thermostat clearly works but the temperature did wander around a bit, so the postie kindly delivered a nice shiny YFZ450 quad radiator.

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Now, that was all well and good but before I fitted the radiator I did notice that it was pushing out a little water. I changed the white makeshift header tank (a contact lens solution bottle) for a clear one (a shower gel bottle) and you could see it pushing coolant with frequent bubbles...
I was hoping I'd get away with it, but on today's test run with the new radiator and a proper header tank it was blowing bubbles like a soda stream!
So, off with its head....

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Yep, that's a dry pattern head gasket...

As we all know you cannot find a genuine gasket now, so in went a new pattern gasket with a smear of Hodnabond (thanks for the tip, Martin!). Hopefully it'll hold for Cadwell this weekend, though I'm hoping I can dodge the showers tomorrow and have a spin around the block. I have ordered another gasket set to be on the safe side, which will hopefully be here before the weekend. It's not really what I wanted to have to deal with so close to this weekend, but hopefully it's good to go.
It did give me a chance to look at the pistons and bores, which look pretty good with a lovely clean squish band and a ginger nut centre. I probably could get away with dropping off the filter socks to lean it up a little but I'd rather keep it safe....

Re: Another newbie, never owned a KR before now but not a stranger to them....

Posted: Tue Jun 25, 2019 6:14 am
by Luders
Have you checked the head isn't slightly warped? Since when have they stopped selling genuine head gaskets by the way? Also, did you loosen the base nuts off?

Re: Another newbie, never owned a KR before now but not a stranger to them....

Posted: Tue Jun 25, 2019 7:10 am
by Coose
Luders wrote: Tue Jun 25, 2019 6:14 am Have you checked the head isn't slightly warped? Since when have they stopped selling genuine head gaskets by the way? Also, did you loosen the base nuts off?
I wouldn't like to say that the head's perfectly flat, but as it's Cadwell this weekend I'll suck it and see.
The barrels look to have been skimmed, where the fact it's running three base gaskets under each backs that up, and they seem to be level.
Also, the point where the gasket has gone doesn't make me think it's an issue with mismatched barrel heights, just the usual pattern gasket failure. Yesterday it was also weeping externally on the front corner of the outer edge of the right cylinder, but that was between head bolts at a point where the gasket is most narrow, and I'd just been giving it the beans....

I did consider slackening the barrels but due to a lack of time I didn't want to disturb another set of gaskets and cause another problem, but if it goes again on Sunday I might just have to....

Nobody has a genuine head gasket in stock it seems. There was quite a long discussion last month on the Facemuck where various people had found stock listed at Corby Kawasaki, only then to receive a refund.
Cradley Heath and Fowlers both list them as discontinued so it's not looking good.
Vesrah list a kit on their website but I'm yet to find one....

Any suggestions?

Re: Another newbie, never owned a KR before now but not a stranger to them....

Posted: Tue Jun 25, 2019 6:09 pm
by Luders
Yeah Jarno IM'd me and filled me in on the gasket situation. You always used to be able to get them no problem.
I run Jan's billet heads, so no need for a gasket with the O rings.
Have you thought about getting one? I think he's doing another run at the request of someone, but I could be mistaken.

Re: Another newbie, never owned a KR before now but not a stranger to them....

Posted: Tue Jun 25, 2019 6:30 pm
by Coose
Yes, it's a pain....

I'm going to see how Cadwell goes and if this one holds up as I've been chucking quite a bit of money at it of late. Hopefully it'll hold out until winter and I can take stock then, though I have been looking at the billet head which would certainly cure the problem...

Re: Another newbie, never owned a KR before now but not a stranger to them....

Posted: Tue Jun 25, 2019 11:04 pm
by JanBros
you can also put an O-ring in the original head arround the combustion chamber, and handle all the sealing off the water with just a smear of silicon gaskett. Have run like this for years with a head from Heiden tuning in Holland. Never had a water leak with it.
I think we need 2 more for a next batch of CNC heads.

Not once have I put a 2-stroke back together with an "oridinary" head gaskett. I put an O-ring in all of them !