Aprilia RS 125/ KTM 640 LC4 Supermono

It has been running but its not circulating water. Discovered I got two hoses on wrong pump connections. Going to re do the cooling system as I got rid of the thermostat I can now ditch one of the smaller pipes. That one circulates the water through engine before stat opens. Ideally i'll turn the outlet housing 180 deg to get a better hose run and make it easier to get air out. Bigger disaster was while running it the starter kicked in, hit the kill switch which stopped it firing but it was still cranking, turned ign off but still cranking. Cranked itself flat before I could get to a battery lead. Starter solenoid must have welded itself on. Suspect cheap aftermarket solenoid, may be under specified. Ordered KTM replacement. Fortunately new Li Ion battery recovered with a charge.

Made some good progress during last week. I couldn't get the back brake to bleed. A master cylinder kit was £30+, so i bought an after market cylinder for £36. Finally got it bled. Chain arrived and thats on now, so i took it to a garden away from home to give it a bit of a run round, just on grass. It went ok, but was leaking oil like a fountain. Mostly from the breather pipe on the front rocker cover. i had about 6 inch of pipe on it but it was spraying out the top of that. There was another leak from the cover gasket and one bolt that was missing its copper washer. Another oil union was weeping too, so a bit more fettling needed. I also decided to remove the thermostat to get a better idea of the running temp as i don't want to have a fan. Gave the scabby matt black bodywork a quick tidy up. Proper bodywork is coming once i have got it all running and properly tested. Got some new grips and a used screen in the post today. I ordered the correct mesh screen that go...

Had a week off but got back to it at the weekend. New Lithium battery now fitted, saving 3kg over standard and much smaller. Tidied up the wiring. Took the heat gun to the base of the tanhk and pushed in the bits that were fouling the head and carb, so that fits now. Put some fuel in and that is ok now. Gear lever linkage back on. Started fitting rear brake but couldn't get it to bleed through. Fluid leaking past master cylinder seal so thought I would get a seal kit, but for around the same price you can get a complete after market unit, so that's on order.

Next up was to be to start it up for a quick run check, but I accidentally pulled the four wires off the spade connections on the starter solenoid. After several days of fiddling and head scratching I eventually worked it out, put everything back together and Bingo, a dashboard light, then the starter kicked in. Put some fuel and in a temp dripe feed thingy, choke on hit the button and hey presto she runs. Quite well too. Here it is at present.   May need to fit a bigger fuel tank at some stage. But its a huge relief to have it running at last.

The Vcoil went in ok followed by new sump plug, oil changed and oil cooler zip tied on. Need to refill the cooler as there is a small leak at the lower union as I didn't have any new copper washers, I have some now. The cooler is best filled while on its side with the banjos uppermost.

Oh dear Another bodge uncovered. Thought I would just drain the oil last night. Main plug came out after a good whack with mallet on bar, way overtightened but intact. Smaller plug on right of pic is under gearbox, started to turn and then continued to turn. Stripped thread, tried pulling and turning but no good. Going to have to drill and tap plug and make a puller to get decent pressure on to unscrew it. Ordered vcoil kit and new plug.

I've been sorting out the oil system this week, however the oil cooler I got from Triumph tiger has 14 mm  banjo connectors and I didn't realize how difficult this made things. I ended up having to machine some adaptors to convert from M10 fine to M14 fine. Both odd size threads. Here's what I ended up with. Have yet to assemble and fit it as I need to change oil and filters as well, maybe this week.