My RE5M restoration (In all its gory detail)
Mar 11, 2020 11:03:37 GMT -5
SuzukiRE5, wayne, and 2 more like this
Post by toddyboy on Mar 11, 2020 11:03:37 GMT -5
It was October 2019. Winter was coming and I was looking for a classic bike to restore. I wanted something unusual, quirky and rare. I’ve restored some interesting machines in the past, a few Mach 111 Kawasaki’s, a couple of Triumphs, a Norton Commando, GT Suzi’s (125, 185, 250) etc. A mixed bag. I like variety. Unfortunately, as we are all so painfully aware, unusual, quirky and in particular rare projects are either few and far between or are just too damn expensive when you do actually find ‘em.
After trawling through several classic bike mag ads I was definitely of the opinion that I wasn’t going to find what I was looking for. Then I had a thought, why not look elsewhere, such as in classic car mags? Don’t know why I thought that but I went out and bought a few, and to my pleasant surprise there it was - a rusty old 1975 Suzuki RE5 that had been sitting in an unheated garage for 35 years. Now, I knew nothing about RE5’s other than the fact that they’ve been touted as the worst motorbike ever made, were horrendously thirsty, unreliable, and no one wanted them back in the mid seventies. Not only that, Suzuki nearly went to the wall because of them.
So that was it, I had to have it! (There was no logic in that decision whatsoever)
Now, this bike was advertised as a non runner which is usually never a good thing but it was a complete bike, which is always a good thing, especially when that bike is as rare as rocking horse poo! That meant no frantic searching for impossible to find NOS parts. Best of all, it was being sold by none other than the great Sammy Miller! He wanted three and a half grand for it. I didn’t know if that was a good deal or not but I figured I’d better move quickly or it might be gone. So I jumped on my trusty ol’ 850 TDM and shot off to the Sammy Miller Museum to ‘ave a ganders. I’d always wanted to meet this legend of a man and check out his museum but had never got round to it. This was going to be an interesting trip.
Sammy Miller is an enigma. He’s 86 apparently, though I personally wouldn’t have put him at more than 60. The old boy is bright eyed, bushy tailed and brimming with energy and vitality. We had a quick look over the Suzuki and I quickly realised I wasn’t going to be haggling the price down with this fella. He then offered to show me the other one he had, though he couldn’t remember where it was. “Somewhere round the back”’ he said. “Come on, I’ll show ya!” and with that he was off, out of the workshop and trotting off round the grounds like a jack rabbit with me in tow. Like I said, he’s 86 years old but I could hardly keep up with him! “Somewhere round the back” meant one of the garages where some of the restored bikes were, ready to be placed into the museum. There wasn’t enough room in the main show areas for them yet. Another large building was being erected for that purpose. There were so many interesting bikes in this place. It’s literally a cornucopia of classic and vintage two wheeled iron that is almost overwhelming in its context and variety. One of the best museums of its kind I’ve ever had the pleasure to visit. I could go on and on about it but maybe another time. Right now I want to tell you about this bike.
So anyway, the deal was duly done and I put down a deposit for the RE5. Sammy said he’d get it delivered to for me at no extra charge which I thought was really nice of him.
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A week or so later his assistant, Dave, turned up at my gaff in Kent with the Suzi in the back of his van. After handing over the balance due the bike was mine!
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I’d already decided I wasn’t going to mint it. I wanted to do it up nice but I wanted to spend as little as possible, get some riding done on it during the warmer months and show it off a bit. After all, these machines are few and far between, and me, I’m just a show off with a big mouth, well that’s what my wife says and she’s always right!
The burning question in my mind though was the state of the engine. I’d bought it as a “non runner” (always risky). It wasn’t seized, the engine turned but it hadn’t run since 1985, so Sammy told me. He’d cranked it over by hand but not started it. I did a bit of research and joined the RE5 owners club and that’s when I started to worry. Apparently the Apex seals were the issue. The rotor could turn but if the seals were stuck there’d be no compression and the “engine proper” as they called it (the central part that houses the actual rotor) would have to be split and rebuilt. I didn’t like the sound of that at all so I decided in my unbridled enthusiasm that the “engine proper” would be ok. As it turned out …. well, read on and you’ll find out how it turned out
The first thing I did was give the bike a copious dousing of Gunk and then a thorough pressure wash. It didn’t’ look much better after that so I did it again. It still didn’t look much. Oh well, onto the ramp and out with the spanners. A couple of days later it was in pieces with only the engine in the frame, some wires and tubes dangling about and looking very sorry for itself.
As I was dismantling it I started to get an idea of what might have happened with the ol' gal and why it had probably been laid up several decades ago and never seen a strip of tarmac since. The first noticeable anomaly was the plastic electrical connector piece that joins the wires coming from the generator to the rectifier which had melted. That’d be enough to grind it to a halt. This apparently is a common fault with old Suzuki’s. I checked the wiring back to the generator. It all looked good. I checked the rectifier wiring. That looked ok too. It was just that snarled up, melted connector piece under the seat that looked dodgy, so I bought a new connector of Ebay for £4, re-spliced the wiring and put it all back together. I also realised as I went along that this bike hadn’t been tooled with much. You can just tell when a bike hasn’t been overly molested. Other than that melted connector the electrics looked good. There was no discernible problem with the CDI unit, voltage regulator, generator, rectifier or any of the other little gizmo’s that were scattered around the frame.
Although this bike appeared to be complete, I knew there had to be something missing, and upon further inspection there were indeed a few things. It needed a L/H side panel screw, a thermistor for the low fuel sender unit inside the tank, a pair of brake calliper bleed nipples which were past their sell-by date and a couple of instrument bulbs and, well, that’s it!
The rear brake was knackered as I expected it would be. The shoes had oxidised so badly that they literally fell out of the drum when I pulled the wheel apart, so they were sent off to be re-shod, otherwise the wheel, bearings and spindle were fine.
In total, I spent about £75 on the above. Not bad really.
The swing arm spindle slid out ok with no wear on the bushes.
The front Tocico brakes were gummed up and the bolts were rusty but they came apart without too much drama. The master cylinder/brake lever was corroded and dry inside but fortunately the alloy cylinder wasn’t pitted. All the piston rubbers and seals were in good nick and the brake pipes still had their little rubber date rings on them dated at 1974 - Jeez, that’s 46 years old! A couple of the brake pipes were were blocked with crusty stuff that I cleaned out with a coat hanger wire and compressed air. The banjo connections were rusty, pitted and a bit of a mess to be honest but after some filing, sanding and wire brushing they came up nice and shiny. The front brake discs had no excess runout and weren’t at all worn. Even the brake pads had plenty of meat left on them.
The cassette air filter was a bit of a mess and crumbled to dust when I removed it.
The petrol tank was full of rust and crud so I blasted the innards with the pressure washer then filled it with hot water mixed with Sodium Carbonate, made up a cathode out of a plastic bottle top and an old allen key then hooked it up to an old 5v phone charger and left it “cooking” for 3 days. It did a perfect job. After another pressure wash it came out clean as a whistle!
The thermistor, which is part of the low fuel sender unit fitted to the underside of the fuel tank, was toast. I unsoldered it and bought a replacement off Ebay for £20 which I soldered in. It worked fine. The area where the wires poked through the body needed sealing too. I used JB weld for that which worked a treat.
The exhaust pipes needed to be dismantled (They are double skinned and they have removable air grilles at the front and baffles at the back.) They were then plugged and filled with caustic soda to clean them out prior to being sent to the chrome platers.
All the chrome bits were rusty, though on the whole it was mainly a coating of surface rust with some pitting here and there, definitely not to the point of being unrecoverable.
The magnesium wheel rims were badly oxidised and pitted in places as were the outer engine cases. The fork stanchions, wheel hubs and pretty much everything else made of aluminium was in the same sorry state. Some of the steel spokes were also pretty rusty in some sections. The casings of the “engine proper” however were in surprisingly good condition and there was plenty of clean oil that came out of the engine, gearbox and fuel/oil tank as well as fairly clean green liquid from the radiator drain plug which gave me confidence the freeze plugs wouldn’t be blown.
The spark plug, carburettor and air filter were all in place, which boded well for the inner workings of that mysterious rotor thingy and its Apex seals not being rusty. Nevertheless, I sprayed almost a whole aerosol can of Plus Gas into the spark plug hole over a three day period whilst slowly turning the engine by hand. My logic being that if those Apex seals were actually seized or stiff Plus Gas would eventually loosen them up. It was worth a go. I wasn’t pulling that engine apart!
It was now becoming apparent to me that although this project wasn’t going to require hardly any spare parts it was going to need one helluva lot of elbow grease (and a bit of luck - with them Apex seals I mean)
With all the chrome parts sent off to the platers I got to work on the wheels. These were a mission! I spent a lot of time simply wire brushing off the crud and oxidisation, sanding and then polishing them. It didn’t cost me anything, just a lot of elbow grease (which I had a large pot of already.) They’d been factory coated with a lacquer harder than Tyson Fury. In some places where the oxidisation was really bad it had peeled off, in others it was stuck like the proverbial s**t to a blanket. I did eventually get it all off and polish them up to a good shiny finish but man, did my arms ache!
Now on to the spokes. Should I replace or restore? I decided on the latter. Re-spoking is a pain in the arse and always ends up being expensive and time consuming. So I got down and dirty on them thar spokes and several hours later, after much wire brushing, sanding, cursing and polishing they came up looking all bright and shiny. (I’d clear lacquer them later.) With the wheels done I concentrated on the engine cases. Again, this was simply a matter of hard graft, wire brushing, sanding and polishing but the transformation was amazing.
The frame was in fairly good condition with only a bit of surface rust here and there so I figured I could easily prep and spray-paint it in situ by masking up the engine. Most of the nuts and bolts were tarnished or rusty and many of them had the Suzuki emblem on them so I made a mental note to refurbish those for sure. I’d already sent the chrome parts to the platers so I invested in a nickel plating kit from Gateros Plating after checking out DIY nickel plating on YouTube. It looked pretty easy to do and it only cost me £43 for a 5 litre chemical kit which consisted of a few plastic bags filled with coloured powder and a couple of plastic bottles with brightener and maintainer in them. I then bought an aquarium pump and heater from my local Range store along with a 6 litre square plastic container. The nickel anode strips were purchased on Ebay for £18 and I used the old 5v phone charger that I’d previously used to de-rust the petrol tank to provide the electrical source. It took a few hits and misses (you have to not overdo it on the quantity of metal you want to plate in one go) The rule of thumb is something along the lines of 100Ma per square inch of metal and around 2.4v. The phone charger I was using was pushing out about 5 amps & 2.5v so I reckoned it’d do the trick. Anyway, after a few hit and misses suffice to say I figured it out eventually and I was pretty pleased with the end results (if I do say so myself!) I even nickel plated the banjo’s and connectors on the original brake hoses. So, for approx £100 investment I can now nickel plate pretty much any tarnished or rusty parts myself. It probably wasn’t any cheaper doing it myself but I felt very proud of myself!
The rear shocks were both in working order. The damper units weren’t leaking and weren’t rusty at all, nor were the upper spring shrouds and they all polished up nicely but the inside of the springs had rusted quite a bit. I completely dismantled the shocks and cleaned the inner spring sections with a wire brush then hand painted the rusty parts with silver Hammerite. The outside parts I polished up and to be honest they didn’t look half bad. Again, no cost involved.
Having decided to leave the engine in the frame I removed and cleaned up one engine bolt at a time, nickel plating each one as I went. This system worked really well. It didn’t take long to plate the nuts and bolts and prep and paint the frame and considering I only used three tins of black enamel aerosol cans to do it I have to say it looked pretty darn good when it was done! Well I am a big mouth and a show off. (My wife said that, remember?)
As I mentioned earlier, I wasn’t after creating a museum piece. I simply wanted a tidy looking bike that I could ride and show off a bit (or a lot) - which got me thinking about the internals of that bloody “engine proper” again. At this point I’d done a lot of cosmetic restoring but had hardly touched the mechanical side of things. I hadn’t even fitted a battery and spun her over to check the compression. To be honest, I was a bit scared of doing that so I kept putting it off. What if the rotor seals really were knackered? I really didn’t want to confront the possibility of that being the case so I buried my head in the sand like any good Mechan-o-ostrich would and carried on with other stuff (all the while pondering the condition of those Apex seals) “Were they - weren’t they? What the bloody hell were they all about anyway?
The 45 year old paintwork on the tank, headlight nacelle and side panels had always looked pretty sound even when encrusted with more than three decades years worth of dust and crud. I was hoping it could be brought back to life rather than committing to the dreaded respray route. Even Sammy had said the paintwork looked ok when I first spoke to him on the phone, and I reckoned he should know considering the amount of bikes he’s cast an eye over. The colour is a deep metallic blue that could only ever have been hand spray painted in the mid seventies. It would be a crying shame to have to strip that away and try to replicate it. In fact, I don’t think it would even be possible with todays two pack paints. And anyway, I wanted to retain the bike’s originality as much as possible, not to mention the cost of doing it. Screw that! Nope, the original 45 year old classic Hamamatsu artwork was staying put!
After a good clean up and T-cut of all the painted stuff it was the fuel tank turned out to be the only fly in the ointment. It had one small bulge under the paint right on the ridge where the top meets the side and it was sods law that it was located in the left/middle section of the tank where its most noticeable. That said, it was pretty much the only blemish of the paintwork on the whole bike. It’d be a pig to fix so I left it alone. It was a very small imperfection after all. There were a few other minor scuffs and chips here and there but they all cleaned and polished up pretty well - overall, not a bad result for paintwork as old as it is!
The radiator was filthy and the inside was full of white powder and other muck. I power washed out the inside which flushed out quite a lot of flaky residue, then I did it again and then once more for luck. It didn’t appear to have any leaks in the core which was promising. After a thorough (and gentle) clean up of the exterior, neatening up some squashed fins and very light wire brushing I then spray painted it with satin black VHT paint. It came up looking almost like new! The oil cooler rad which sits beneath it was in much better condition and cleaned up well. This was also spray painted same as the rad.
The final transmission was in surprisingly good shape. The sprockets and chain were dirty but cleaned up well and there was no discernible wear on the teeth. The chain was a sealed O-ring unit and though it looked quite rusty it oiled up fine with no kinks or stiff sections.
The steering yoke bearings were rattling about in dry grease when I got to them but cleaned up well and went back together with no play in them. The forks were in good condition other than a few minor pits and blemishes on one of the slider tubes; not enough to cause the seals to leak but enough to affect the overall finish of the chrome. I could have sent them off to be hard chromed but that would have cost circa £200 and the blemishes really weren’t bad enough for that so I decided to fit gator’s over them. The chrome tubes are 40mm dia and the top of the stanchions are 60mm dia. The length is approx 160mm. I found a pair of British bike gators on Ebay that fitted those dimensions and once I’d fitted them I knew it was a good decision. They made the bike look more chunky and classic. They can always be cut off but for now I’m happy with the way they’ve transformed the look of the front end.
The instrument box - now that’s an interesting piece of kit. It was only fitted to the first batch of “M” models and caused quite a stir at the time. Obviously it wasn’t very popular because Suzuki came out with the “A” model a year later and it wasn’t there any more. Instead, the A model now sported a conventional speedo and tacho, purloined from the very popular GT750 apparently. Nowadays it’s a collectors item and everyone who wants an RE5 wants the one that has the toilet roll holder on the top of the forks. A bit like the Austin Allegro that sported a “square” steering wheel in the 70’s. No one liked it then. In fact, no one liked the Allegro - period! Now it’s a sought after item. Bizarre! but I guess that’s what makes the world of classic machines the interesting cornucopia that they are.
The one on this bike was tardy but complete. The green plastic roll up cover (that flips up when you turn the ignition key - very cool) was opaque, as was the inner clear plastic instrument cover. They were both so cloudy it looked like they'd been left outside in a sandstorm! The inner one came up pretty good by sanding it down with gradually reducing grades of wet and dry, then several goes at T cutting it. The outer movable green one also cleaned up ok but getting the “hazing” caused by years of exposure to UV rays was impossible to polish out. I spent hours trying but eventually gave up. It was as clear as I could get it without sanding and polishing it to oblivion. Finding a NOS one was also a futile task. They just didn’t exist. It would have to do as it was. (I do have a dastardly solution to this problem but as yet I haven't attempted it) Stay tuned to see what it might be and whether it'll do the trick or not.
The aluminium casings were factory coated with what appeared to be the same rock hard lacquer that were sprayed on the magnesium wheel rims. It was an utter pig to get off. Nitromors paint stripper didn’t even faze it and I didn’t have a media blaster to hand. Eventually, I cleaned it up by peeling it off with a Stanley knife but the alloy underneath was so badly corroded I decided to prep and paint it. Silver Hammerite worked well. The cylindrical rear light unit got the same treatment.
And so, now to the engine! But where to start? - the carburettor - that’s where I started. At least I could see, touch and feel it, not like those pesky Apex seals that were lurking unseen deep down inside the “engine proper” just waiting to piss me off at some not to distant point in the future. At first glance the carb looked pretty complex, more like it should be on a car engine than a bike. There were a multitude of filters, diaphragms, springs, screws, and hoses going this way and that. There was a vacuum switch connected to the inlet manifold, another one activating the accelerator pump, another one inside it which I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it was for. Bloody hell, this carb had FOUR diaphragms and more hidden air and fuel passageways than an oil refinery! and the diagrams in the workshop manual weren’t very helpful either, full of big unknown words like “bias pipe” along with dozens of abbreviations such as P.P.S. & P.P.A.S. etc. For someone who had very little technical know-how about how or why a carb works this was daunting stuff. Anyway, I had to start somewhere, so removing what the manual said was the float chamber was my first foray into the innards of this pot metal minefield.
Fortunately, I knew what a float and needle looked like and upon removing the top of the float bowl there they were. Phew! There were also a multitude of jets. Aha! Things were lookin’ up. I was in familiar territory here. I managed to get three of the diaphragms apart and found they were all sound with no leaks. The fourth one couldn’t be dismantled. As expected, the float chamber was encrusted with dry white dust. I sprayed some WD40 & Plus Gas in there and cleaned it out as best I could then got started on removing and cleaning the jets. I got three of them out but the other three wouldn’t budge. There was also one missing by the looks of it. It was also evident that the three stubborn ones had already been got at. Someone in the dim and distant past had been messing around inside here and hadn’t done a very good job of it either. As I mentioned earlier, most of the bike was untouched, but this carb definitely appeared to have been molested, and then subsequently raped and then pillaged by the looks of it. Could this, along with that melted electrical connector be the smoking gun that had laid this bike to rest in the mid eighties (or was it those mysterious Apex seals - dun dun dun!) Tune in next week folks for the damning conclusion!
I did my best to get those last three jets out but would they budge? Would they f**k! I should have left it at that and taken the carb to a specialist but I was determined to do it myself. If they wouldn’t screw out I’d drill them out. Big mistake - Huge! I mean, I really made a mess of it. You know that point where you realise you’ve gone beyond the point of no return? Well I got there, and some. My conclusion after this initial foray into the innards of the carb was that it was now F.U.B.A.R. and if you don’t know what that stands for you’re not really a Classic Bike enthusiast.
I was beginning to panic now. These carbs weren’t your over the counter item. They were rarer than a filet mignon from a vegan shop. I found a couple of ropey looking ones on Ebay going for hundreds of quids and they looked in worse condition than mine. Oh dear! It had all been going so well up to this point but now I’d really done it and I hadn’t yet tackled the condition of those three hidden horsemen of the Apocalypse (The Apex seals). Visions of dismantling this amazing piece of exotic machinery and selling bits of it on Ebay flashed through my dimly lit consciousness.
Then I had a bit of luck. A chap up North, Stuart Knox, also an RE5 owner who was on the RE5 Facebook forum contacted me after seeing the pictures of my self inflicted carb carnage that I’d posted on there along with my pleas for help and he offered to have a go at fixing my carb. He didn’t promise anything but he reckoned he stood a good chance of repairing it. I didn’t know him from Adam but I also didn’t exactly have many other options so I packaged the carb up and sent it off to him in Doncaster.
Over the next couple of weeks Stuart sent me a blow by blow account of what he was doing (with detailed pics) and by the looks of it he was getting somewhere. To summarise, he successfully drilled out the three jets that I’d completely mullered with my DeWalt drill, made new jets on his lathe and even sourced and installed a few other missing bits that I didn’t even know were missing. Then he sent it back to me, and to top it all off he only charged me £106 quid for the whole shebang! What a geezer! Cheers Stu.
With the repaired carb back on the manifold I was back in the game, full of vigor and enthusiasm once again, knowing I now had new friends in the strange, exotic RE5 world who, unlike me, actually knew what they were doing and were there to give me help and advice when I needed it.
With the carb sorted my intention was to leave the main internals of the engine alone, working on the premise that “if its working, leave it alone.” Bit of a strange premise to go on seeings as I didn’t even know if it did actually work, but I had a gut feeling it would, and my gut is pretty big! Therefore, I was going to fill it with good clean oil and water and see if it ran first before I started messing with it. As it turned out, well ……. you’ll find out how it turned out shortly.
The chrome wasn’t back from the platers yet but I managed to reassemble most of the bike, bar the exhausts and mudguards & a few other bits. I fitted half a metal broom handle to act as temporary handlebars and refitted the forks, wheels and front brakes. (Now here’s a little piece of info that someone who’s having trouble bleeding their brakes might find useful. Inside the master cylinder, about halfway down, there’s a tiny hole that connects to the reservoir. If that hole is blocked you can’t bleed the brakes. Naturally, this one was blocked and its so tiny you need something as thin as the bristle from a wire brush to clear it through.) Just a little ditty, but worth knowing. It took me a couple of hours of cursing and a worn out right hand from constantly operating the brake lever to figure that one out.
I was now ready to confront the Apex of this project (excuse the pun). I fitted a new battery that I had hanging around as a spare for my TDM, cleaned and adjusted the points and that weird looking spark plug, got a spark, filled up the engine, gearbox and tank with new oil. Filled the rad with tap water, put half a gallon of 50-1 petrol/oil mix in the fuel tank (can’t be too careful with this) Better safe than sorry. Those elusive Apex seals need oil mixed in with the petrol to keep em nice and lubed as they whizz around that weird shaped chamber wall they snuggle up to. This lube is fed to them via a check valve that connects to the carb. Only thing is, that check valve itself needs to be “checked” to ensure its working properly, so premixing the fuel is a wise move till you definitely know that oil is pumping through to the carb.
With all that done I made myself a cuppa, stood back and smoked a couple of roll ups. I was nervous. This was the moment of truth. We’ve all been through this, probably many times before. It’s a nerve racking moment. I hadn’t even bothered to check the compression, but there was a reason for that. I couldn’t confront seeing low or no p.s.i. on that gauge. If the Apex seals were ok it would start. If they were knackered it wouldn’t. Simple as that.
So - now to the magic moment. Fuel tap to on. Bit of a leak there but not enough to catch the bike on fire (if it actually starts that is) Ignition on. Some of the lights in the instrument console (that thing that looks like a toilet roll on top of the headlight) lit up. Some of em didn’t. A few bulbs needed there by the looks of it. A high pitched wine emanated from under the battery box which meant the CDI unit was working.
So far so good.
One last double check - press the starter button, and ……… VROOM! It started first time! Not only that, with no exhaust pipes fitted it sounded like a Spitfire’s Merlin engine starting up. Holy crap - the Apex seals were fine! Yippeee kai-o Mutha-f****r!
It was running. I couldn’t believe my luck. The oil warning lights (which were the only ones working) went off and the temperature gauge started rising! Everything was going to plan. Ok, so the fuel petcock was leaking a bit. There were a few drips of water coming from somewhere, the engine-to-oil radiator banjo’s were weeping oil as were a couple of the brake hose banjo’s but that Spitfire engine sounded sweet, even if the noise was setting off car alarms halfway down the street. I was so excited I wanted to jump on it and go shoot down a few ME 109’s. After a minute or so I turned the choke off and set it to tick-over. First start in 35 years and there it was ticking over like a Swiss watch. Er, well, maybe not a Swiss watch. Anyway, unbelievable. I was so chuffed!
The next time I started her up I let the temperature go all the way up to see if the radiator fan would kick in. It did! That meant the thermostat and sender unit were working ok. Then I noticed those water drips were getting bigger. There was no water coming out of the tell-tale hole below the water pump outer casing which meant the oil/water seal for the pump was ok. Closer inspection revealed they were coming from the rad. Once the engine cooled down I flushed out the coolant, which was pretty dirty and removed the rad for a more detailed inspection. There were a couple of small holes in the core columns.
What to do now? I got a few quotes from specialist rad repairers which weren’t much shy of £300 for a new core and decided I’d fix it myself. After an hour or so of YouTube watching, I decided the best fix would be with JB Weld, and as it turned out it was a good call! I happened to have some tubes of the gooey two part mixture and it worked a treat. Once it was painted you’d never notice the repaired area and the rad hasn’t leaked since. Another good, cheap result!
While I was working on the rad I removed the fuel petcock, cleaned it up thoroughly inside and out, paying particular attention to the conical diaphragm spigot hole which looked a bit corroded. That’d cause the diaphragm to fail any day. I polished that up using Solvol Autosol till it shone then refitted the diaphragm with its tiny O-ring on the spigot. Then I did the same with the gasket mating surfaces where the petcock body attached to the fuel tank. I softened up the existing rubber-ring gasket with petrol and refitted the unit. There were no more leaks and the diaphragm worked perfectly too!
The main oil feed banjo’s were removed and the aluminium washers were smoothed off using 400 grit wet and dry on a flat surface then polished with Solvol Autosol. Once refitted they didn’t leak oil anymore. Same deal with the brake hose banjo washers.
I now had a bike that looked, well, pretty snazzy to be honest.
It didn’t leak petrol, oil or water and it started at the first touch of the button. Everything seemed to be working as it should, such as the brakes (always a good idea to have them working!) and the radiator fan, generator/rectifier, lights, horn and indicators, etc. all functioned correctly. I replaced the existing rusty old 12v cigarette lighter plug that sits next to the ignition switch with a modern waterproof power plug so I could use a sat nav and I found a guy in France on Ebay who made really nice RE5 key fobs, and in matching blue to boot! Those two items cost me £15 and they gave it that classy finishing touch.
It was now time for it’s first test ride. Ok, I still had the old tyres on it, and the original radiator hoses and brake pipes but hey! I was only going to take it round the block. What could go wrong?
The first pull away was a bit jerky. Don’t forget, apart from cleaning the points and spark plug I hadn’t even looked at, let alone touched any of the engine internals. Apart from messing with the carb all I’d done is change the fluids and filters. The clutch obviously hadn’t properly woken up yet but it eventually connected and off we went! Out of first and into second gear; even the digital gear readout on the instrument panel was working! A hundred yards down the road the engine started backfiring. I pulled over, revved it a bit and then water started pissing out of the lower rad hose which had split. On the plus side the engine kept running and at least I got it back to my garage without having to push it.
One notch on the belt for the RE5's first outing in 35 years.
To be continued ………………………….
After trawling through several classic bike mag ads I was definitely of the opinion that I wasn’t going to find what I was looking for. Then I had a thought, why not look elsewhere, such as in classic car mags? Don’t know why I thought that but I went out and bought a few, and to my pleasant surprise there it was - a rusty old 1975 Suzuki RE5 that had been sitting in an unheated garage for 35 years. Now, I knew nothing about RE5’s other than the fact that they’ve been touted as the worst motorbike ever made, were horrendously thirsty, unreliable, and no one wanted them back in the mid seventies. Not only that, Suzuki nearly went to the wall because of them.
So that was it, I had to have it! (There was no logic in that decision whatsoever)
Now, this bike was advertised as a non runner which is usually never a good thing but it was a complete bike, which is always a good thing, especially when that bike is as rare as rocking horse poo! That meant no frantic searching for impossible to find NOS parts. Best of all, it was being sold by none other than the great Sammy Miller! He wanted three and a half grand for it. I didn’t know if that was a good deal or not but I figured I’d better move quickly or it might be gone. So I jumped on my trusty ol’ 850 TDM and shot off to the Sammy Miller Museum to ‘ave a ganders. I’d always wanted to meet this legend of a man and check out his museum but had never got round to it. This was going to be an interesting trip.
Sammy Miller is an enigma. He’s 86 apparently, though I personally wouldn’t have put him at more than 60. The old boy is bright eyed, bushy tailed and brimming with energy and vitality. We had a quick look over the Suzuki and I quickly realised I wasn’t going to be haggling the price down with this fella. He then offered to show me the other one he had, though he couldn’t remember where it was. “Somewhere round the back”’ he said. “Come on, I’ll show ya!” and with that he was off, out of the workshop and trotting off round the grounds like a jack rabbit with me in tow. Like I said, he’s 86 years old but I could hardly keep up with him! “Somewhere round the back” meant one of the garages where some of the restored bikes were, ready to be placed into the museum. There wasn’t enough room in the main show areas for them yet. Another large building was being erected for that purpose. There were so many interesting bikes in this place. It’s literally a cornucopia of classic and vintage two wheeled iron that is almost overwhelming in its context and variety. One of the best museums of its kind I’ve ever had the pleasure to visit. I could go on and on about it but maybe another time. Right now I want to tell you about this bike.
So anyway, the deal was duly done and I put down a deposit for the RE5. Sammy said he’d get it delivered to for me at no extra charge which I thought was really nice of him.
A week or so later his assistant, Dave, turned up at my gaff in Kent with the Suzi in the back of his van. After handing over the balance due the bike was mine!
I’d already decided I wasn’t going to mint it. I wanted to do it up nice but I wanted to spend as little as possible, get some riding done on it during the warmer months and show it off a bit. After all, these machines are few and far between, and me, I’m just a show off with a big mouth, well that’s what my wife says and she’s always right!
The burning question in my mind though was the state of the engine. I’d bought it as a “non runner” (always risky). It wasn’t seized, the engine turned but it hadn’t run since 1985, so Sammy told me. He’d cranked it over by hand but not started it. I did a bit of research and joined the RE5 owners club and that’s when I started to worry. Apparently the Apex seals were the issue. The rotor could turn but if the seals were stuck there’d be no compression and the “engine proper” as they called it (the central part that houses the actual rotor) would have to be split and rebuilt. I didn’t like the sound of that at all so I decided in my unbridled enthusiasm that the “engine proper” would be ok. As it turned out …. well, read on and you’ll find out how it turned out
The first thing I did was give the bike a copious dousing of Gunk and then a thorough pressure wash. It didn’t’ look much better after that so I did it again. It still didn’t look much. Oh well, onto the ramp and out with the spanners. A couple of days later it was in pieces with only the engine in the frame, some wires and tubes dangling about and looking very sorry for itself.
As I was dismantling it I started to get an idea of what might have happened with the ol' gal and why it had probably been laid up several decades ago and never seen a strip of tarmac since. The first noticeable anomaly was the plastic electrical connector piece that joins the wires coming from the generator to the rectifier which had melted. That’d be enough to grind it to a halt. This apparently is a common fault with old Suzuki’s. I checked the wiring back to the generator. It all looked good. I checked the rectifier wiring. That looked ok too. It was just that snarled up, melted connector piece under the seat that looked dodgy, so I bought a new connector of Ebay for £4, re-spliced the wiring and put it all back together. I also realised as I went along that this bike hadn’t been tooled with much. You can just tell when a bike hasn’t been overly molested. Other than that melted connector the electrics looked good. There was no discernible problem with the CDI unit, voltage regulator, generator, rectifier or any of the other little gizmo’s that were scattered around the frame.
Although this bike appeared to be complete, I knew there had to be something missing, and upon further inspection there were indeed a few things. It needed a L/H side panel screw, a thermistor for the low fuel sender unit inside the tank, a pair of brake calliper bleed nipples which were past their sell-by date and a couple of instrument bulbs and, well, that’s it!
The rear brake was knackered as I expected it would be. The shoes had oxidised so badly that they literally fell out of the drum when I pulled the wheel apart, so they were sent off to be re-shod, otherwise the wheel, bearings and spindle were fine.
In total, I spent about £75 on the above. Not bad really.
The swing arm spindle slid out ok with no wear on the bushes.
The front Tocico brakes were gummed up and the bolts were rusty but they came apart without too much drama. The master cylinder/brake lever was corroded and dry inside but fortunately the alloy cylinder wasn’t pitted. All the piston rubbers and seals were in good nick and the brake pipes still had their little rubber date rings on them dated at 1974 - Jeez, that’s 46 years old! A couple of the brake pipes were were blocked with crusty stuff that I cleaned out with a coat hanger wire and compressed air. The banjo connections were rusty, pitted and a bit of a mess to be honest but after some filing, sanding and wire brushing they came up nice and shiny. The front brake discs had no excess runout and weren’t at all worn. Even the brake pads had plenty of meat left on them.
The cassette air filter was a bit of a mess and crumbled to dust when I removed it.
The petrol tank was full of rust and crud so I blasted the innards with the pressure washer then filled it with hot water mixed with Sodium Carbonate, made up a cathode out of a plastic bottle top and an old allen key then hooked it up to an old 5v phone charger and left it “cooking” for 3 days. It did a perfect job. After another pressure wash it came out clean as a whistle!
The thermistor, which is part of the low fuel sender unit fitted to the underside of the fuel tank, was toast. I unsoldered it and bought a replacement off Ebay for £20 which I soldered in. It worked fine. The area where the wires poked through the body needed sealing too. I used JB weld for that which worked a treat.
The exhaust pipes needed to be dismantled (They are double skinned and they have removable air grilles at the front and baffles at the back.) They were then plugged and filled with caustic soda to clean them out prior to being sent to the chrome platers.
All the chrome bits were rusty, though on the whole it was mainly a coating of surface rust with some pitting here and there, definitely not to the point of being unrecoverable.
The magnesium wheel rims were badly oxidised and pitted in places as were the outer engine cases. The fork stanchions, wheel hubs and pretty much everything else made of aluminium was in the same sorry state. Some of the steel spokes were also pretty rusty in some sections. The casings of the “engine proper” however were in surprisingly good condition and there was plenty of clean oil that came out of the engine, gearbox and fuel/oil tank as well as fairly clean green liquid from the radiator drain plug which gave me confidence the freeze plugs wouldn’t be blown.
The spark plug, carburettor and air filter were all in place, which boded well for the inner workings of that mysterious rotor thingy and its Apex seals not being rusty. Nevertheless, I sprayed almost a whole aerosol can of Plus Gas into the spark plug hole over a three day period whilst slowly turning the engine by hand. My logic being that if those Apex seals were actually seized or stiff Plus Gas would eventually loosen them up. It was worth a go. I wasn’t pulling that engine apart!
It was now becoming apparent to me that although this project wasn’t going to require hardly any spare parts it was going to need one helluva lot of elbow grease (and a bit of luck - with them Apex seals I mean)
With all the chrome parts sent off to the platers I got to work on the wheels. These were a mission! I spent a lot of time simply wire brushing off the crud and oxidisation, sanding and then polishing them. It didn’t cost me anything, just a lot of elbow grease (which I had a large pot of already.) They’d been factory coated with a lacquer harder than Tyson Fury. In some places where the oxidisation was really bad it had peeled off, in others it was stuck like the proverbial s**t to a blanket. I did eventually get it all off and polish them up to a good shiny finish but man, did my arms ache!
Now on to the spokes. Should I replace or restore? I decided on the latter. Re-spoking is a pain in the arse and always ends up being expensive and time consuming. So I got down and dirty on them thar spokes and several hours later, after much wire brushing, sanding, cursing and polishing they came up looking all bright and shiny. (I’d clear lacquer them later.) With the wheels done I concentrated on the engine cases. Again, this was simply a matter of hard graft, wire brushing, sanding and polishing but the transformation was amazing.
The frame was in fairly good condition with only a bit of surface rust here and there so I figured I could easily prep and spray-paint it in situ by masking up the engine. Most of the nuts and bolts were tarnished or rusty and many of them had the Suzuki emblem on them so I made a mental note to refurbish those for sure. I’d already sent the chrome parts to the platers so I invested in a nickel plating kit from Gateros Plating after checking out DIY nickel plating on YouTube. It looked pretty easy to do and it only cost me £43 for a 5 litre chemical kit which consisted of a few plastic bags filled with coloured powder and a couple of plastic bottles with brightener and maintainer in them. I then bought an aquarium pump and heater from my local Range store along with a 6 litre square plastic container. The nickel anode strips were purchased on Ebay for £18 and I used the old 5v phone charger that I’d previously used to de-rust the petrol tank to provide the electrical source. It took a few hits and misses (you have to not overdo it on the quantity of metal you want to plate in one go) The rule of thumb is something along the lines of 100Ma per square inch of metal and around 2.4v. The phone charger I was using was pushing out about 5 amps & 2.5v so I reckoned it’d do the trick. Anyway, after a few hit and misses suffice to say I figured it out eventually and I was pretty pleased with the end results (if I do say so myself!) I even nickel plated the banjo’s and connectors on the original brake hoses. So, for approx £100 investment I can now nickel plate pretty much any tarnished or rusty parts myself. It probably wasn’t any cheaper doing it myself but I felt very proud of myself!
The rear shocks were both in working order. The damper units weren’t leaking and weren’t rusty at all, nor were the upper spring shrouds and they all polished up nicely but the inside of the springs had rusted quite a bit. I completely dismantled the shocks and cleaned the inner spring sections with a wire brush then hand painted the rusty parts with silver Hammerite. The outside parts I polished up and to be honest they didn’t look half bad. Again, no cost involved.
Having decided to leave the engine in the frame I removed and cleaned up one engine bolt at a time, nickel plating each one as I went. This system worked really well. It didn’t take long to plate the nuts and bolts and prep and paint the frame and considering I only used three tins of black enamel aerosol cans to do it I have to say it looked pretty darn good when it was done! Well I am a big mouth and a show off. (My wife said that, remember?)
As I mentioned earlier, I wasn’t after creating a museum piece. I simply wanted a tidy looking bike that I could ride and show off a bit (or a lot) - which got me thinking about the internals of that bloody “engine proper” again. At this point I’d done a lot of cosmetic restoring but had hardly touched the mechanical side of things. I hadn’t even fitted a battery and spun her over to check the compression. To be honest, I was a bit scared of doing that so I kept putting it off. What if the rotor seals really were knackered? I really didn’t want to confront the possibility of that being the case so I buried my head in the sand like any good Mechan-o-ostrich would and carried on with other stuff (all the while pondering the condition of those Apex seals) “Were they - weren’t they? What the bloody hell were they all about anyway?
The 45 year old paintwork on the tank, headlight nacelle and side panels had always looked pretty sound even when encrusted with more than three decades years worth of dust and crud. I was hoping it could be brought back to life rather than committing to the dreaded respray route. Even Sammy had said the paintwork looked ok when I first spoke to him on the phone, and I reckoned he should know considering the amount of bikes he’s cast an eye over. The colour is a deep metallic blue that could only ever have been hand spray painted in the mid seventies. It would be a crying shame to have to strip that away and try to replicate it. In fact, I don’t think it would even be possible with todays two pack paints. And anyway, I wanted to retain the bike’s originality as much as possible, not to mention the cost of doing it. Screw that! Nope, the original 45 year old classic Hamamatsu artwork was staying put!
After a good clean up and T-cut of all the painted stuff it was the fuel tank turned out to be the only fly in the ointment. It had one small bulge under the paint right on the ridge where the top meets the side and it was sods law that it was located in the left/middle section of the tank where its most noticeable. That said, it was pretty much the only blemish of the paintwork on the whole bike. It’d be a pig to fix so I left it alone. It was a very small imperfection after all. There were a few other minor scuffs and chips here and there but they all cleaned and polished up pretty well - overall, not a bad result for paintwork as old as it is!
The radiator was filthy and the inside was full of white powder and other muck. I power washed out the inside which flushed out quite a lot of flaky residue, then I did it again and then once more for luck. It didn’t appear to have any leaks in the core which was promising. After a thorough (and gentle) clean up of the exterior, neatening up some squashed fins and very light wire brushing I then spray painted it with satin black VHT paint. It came up looking almost like new! The oil cooler rad which sits beneath it was in much better condition and cleaned up well. This was also spray painted same as the rad.
The final transmission was in surprisingly good shape. The sprockets and chain were dirty but cleaned up well and there was no discernible wear on the teeth. The chain was a sealed O-ring unit and though it looked quite rusty it oiled up fine with no kinks or stiff sections.
The steering yoke bearings were rattling about in dry grease when I got to them but cleaned up well and went back together with no play in them. The forks were in good condition other than a few minor pits and blemishes on one of the slider tubes; not enough to cause the seals to leak but enough to affect the overall finish of the chrome. I could have sent them off to be hard chromed but that would have cost circa £200 and the blemishes really weren’t bad enough for that so I decided to fit gator’s over them. The chrome tubes are 40mm dia and the top of the stanchions are 60mm dia. The length is approx 160mm. I found a pair of British bike gators on Ebay that fitted those dimensions and once I’d fitted them I knew it was a good decision. They made the bike look more chunky and classic. They can always be cut off but for now I’m happy with the way they’ve transformed the look of the front end.
The instrument box - now that’s an interesting piece of kit. It was only fitted to the first batch of “M” models and caused quite a stir at the time. Obviously it wasn’t very popular because Suzuki came out with the “A” model a year later and it wasn’t there any more. Instead, the A model now sported a conventional speedo and tacho, purloined from the very popular GT750 apparently. Nowadays it’s a collectors item and everyone who wants an RE5 wants the one that has the toilet roll holder on the top of the forks. A bit like the Austin Allegro that sported a “square” steering wheel in the 70’s. No one liked it then. In fact, no one liked the Allegro - period! Now it’s a sought after item. Bizarre! but I guess that’s what makes the world of classic machines the interesting cornucopia that they are.
The one on this bike was tardy but complete. The green plastic roll up cover (that flips up when you turn the ignition key - very cool) was opaque, as was the inner clear plastic instrument cover. They were both so cloudy it looked like they'd been left outside in a sandstorm! The inner one came up pretty good by sanding it down with gradually reducing grades of wet and dry, then several goes at T cutting it. The outer movable green one also cleaned up ok but getting the “hazing” caused by years of exposure to UV rays was impossible to polish out. I spent hours trying but eventually gave up. It was as clear as I could get it without sanding and polishing it to oblivion. Finding a NOS one was also a futile task. They just didn’t exist. It would have to do as it was. (I do have a dastardly solution to this problem but as yet I haven't attempted it) Stay tuned to see what it might be and whether it'll do the trick or not.
The aluminium casings were factory coated with what appeared to be the same rock hard lacquer that were sprayed on the magnesium wheel rims. It was an utter pig to get off. Nitromors paint stripper didn’t even faze it and I didn’t have a media blaster to hand. Eventually, I cleaned it up by peeling it off with a Stanley knife but the alloy underneath was so badly corroded I decided to prep and paint it. Silver Hammerite worked well. The cylindrical rear light unit got the same treatment.
And so, now to the engine! But where to start? - the carburettor - that’s where I started. At least I could see, touch and feel it, not like those pesky Apex seals that were lurking unseen deep down inside the “engine proper” just waiting to piss me off at some not to distant point in the future. At first glance the carb looked pretty complex, more like it should be on a car engine than a bike. There were a multitude of filters, diaphragms, springs, screws, and hoses going this way and that. There was a vacuum switch connected to the inlet manifold, another one activating the accelerator pump, another one inside it which I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it was for. Bloody hell, this carb had FOUR diaphragms and more hidden air and fuel passageways than an oil refinery! and the diagrams in the workshop manual weren’t very helpful either, full of big unknown words like “bias pipe” along with dozens of abbreviations such as P.P.S. & P.P.A.S. etc. For someone who had very little technical know-how about how or why a carb works this was daunting stuff. Anyway, I had to start somewhere, so removing what the manual said was the float chamber was my first foray into the innards of this pot metal minefield.
Fortunately, I knew what a float and needle looked like and upon removing the top of the float bowl there they were. Phew! There were also a multitude of jets. Aha! Things were lookin’ up. I was in familiar territory here. I managed to get three of the diaphragms apart and found they were all sound with no leaks. The fourth one couldn’t be dismantled. As expected, the float chamber was encrusted with dry white dust. I sprayed some WD40 & Plus Gas in there and cleaned it out as best I could then got started on removing and cleaning the jets. I got three of them out but the other three wouldn’t budge. There was also one missing by the looks of it. It was also evident that the three stubborn ones had already been got at. Someone in the dim and distant past had been messing around inside here and hadn’t done a very good job of it either. As I mentioned earlier, most of the bike was untouched, but this carb definitely appeared to have been molested, and then subsequently raped and then pillaged by the looks of it. Could this, along with that melted electrical connector be the smoking gun that had laid this bike to rest in the mid eighties (or was it those mysterious Apex seals - dun dun dun!) Tune in next week folks for the damning conclusion!
I did my best to get those last three jets out but would they budge? Would they f**k! I should have left it at that and taken the carb to a specialist but I was determined to do it myself. If they wouldn’t screw out I’d drill them out. Big mistake - Huge! I mean, I really made a mess of it. You know that point where you realise you’ve gone beyond the point of no return? Well I got there, and some. My conclusion after this initial foray into the innards of the carb was that it was now F.U.B.A.R. and if you don’t know what that stands for you’re not really a Classic Bike enthusiast.
I was beginning to panic now. These carbs weren’t your over the counter item. They were rarer than a filet mignon from a vegan shop. I found a couple of ropey looking ones on Ebay going for hundreds of quids and they looked in worse condition than mine. Oh dear! It had all been going so well up to this point but now I’d really done it and I hadn’t yet tackled the condition of those three hidden horsemen of the Apocalypse (The Apex seals). Visions of dismantling this amazing piece of exotic machinery and selling bits of it on Ebay flashed through my dimly lit consciousness.
Then I had a bit of luck. A chap up North, Stuart Knox, also an RE5 owner who was on the RE5 Facebook forum contacted me after seeing the pictures of my self inflicted carb carnage that I’d posted on there along with my pleas for help and he offered to have a go at fixing my carb. He didn’t promise anything but he reckoned he stood a good chance of repairing it. I didn’t know him from Adam but I also didn’t exactly have many other options so I packaged the carb up and sent it off to him in Doncaster.
Over the next couple of weeks Stuart sent me a blow by blow account of what he was doing (with detailed pics) and by the looks of it he was getting somewhere. To summarise, he successfully drilled out the three jets that I’d completely mullered with my DeWalt drill, made new jets on his lathe and even sourced and installed a few other missing bits that I didn’t even know were missing. Then he sent it back to me, and to top it all off he only charged me £106 quid for the whole shebang! What a geezer! Cheers Stu.
With the repaired carb back on the manifold I was back in the game, full of vigor and enthusiasm once again, knowing I now had new friends in the strange, exotic RE5 world who, unlike me, actually knew what they were doing and were there to give me help and advice when I needed it.
With the carb sorted my intention was to leave the main internals of the engine alone, working on the premise that “if its working, leave it alone.” Bit of a strange premise to go on seeings as I didn’t even know if it did actually work, but I had a gut feeling it would, and my gut is pretty big! Therefore, I was going to fill it with good clean oil and water and see if it ran first before I started messing with it. As it turned out, well ……. you’ll find out how it turned out shortly.
The chrome wasn’t back from the platers yet but I managed to reassemble most of the bike, bar the exhausts and mudguards & a few other bits. I fitted half a metal broom handle to act as temporary handlebars and refitted the forks, wheels and front brakes. (Now here’s a little piece of info that someone who’s having trouble bleeding their brakes might find useful. Inside the master cylinder, about halfway down, there’s a tiny hole that connects to the reservoir. If that hole is blocked you can’t bleed the brakes. Naturally, this one was blocked and its so tiny you need something as thin as the bristle from a wire brush to clear it through.) Just a little ditty, but worth knowing. It took me a couple of hours of cursing and a worn out right hand from constantly operating the brake lever to figure that one out.
I was now ready to confront the Apex of this project (excuse the pun). I fitted a new battery that I had hanging around as a spare for my TDM, cleaned and adjusted the points and that weird looking spark plug, got a spark, filled up the engine, gearbox and tank with new oil. Filled the rad with tap water, put half a gallon of 50-1 petrol/oil mix in the fuel tank (can’t be too careful with this) Better safe than sorry. Those elusive Apex seals need oil mixed in with the petrol to keep em nice and lubed as they whizz around that weird shaped chamber wall they snuggle up to. This lube is fed to them via a check valve that connects to the carb. Only thing is, that check valve itself needs to be “checked” to ensure its working properly, so premixing the fuel is a wise move till you definitely know that oil is pumping through to the carb.
With all that done I made myself a cuppa, stood back and smoked a couple of roll ups. I was nervous. This was the moment of truth. We’ve all been through this, probably many times before. It’s a nerve racking moment. I hadn’t even bothered to check the compression, but there was a reason for that. I couldn’t confront seeing low or no p.s.i. on that gauge. If the Apex seals were ok it would start. If they were knackered it wouldn’t. Simple as that.
So - now to the magic moment. Fuel tap to on. Bit of a leak there but not enough to catch the bike on fire (if it actually starts that is) Ignition on. Some of the lights in the instrument console (that thing that looks like a toilet roll on top of the headlight) lit up. Some of em didn’t. A few bulbs needed there by the looks of it. A high pitched wine emanated from under the battery box which meant the CDI unit was working.
So far so good.
One last double check - press the starter button, and ……… VROOM! It started first time! Not only that, with no exhaust pipes fitted it sounded like a Spitfire’s Merlin engine starting up. Holy crap - the Apex seals were fine! Yippeee kai-o Mutha-f****r!
It was running. I couldn’t believe my luck. The oil warning lights (which were the only ones working) went off and the temperature gauge started rising! Everything was going to plan. Ok, so the fuel petcock was leaking a bit. There were a few drips of water coming from somewhere, the engine-to-oil radiator banjo’s were weeping oil as were a couple of the brake hose banjo’s but that Spitfire engine sounded sweet, even if the noise was setting off car alarms halfway down the street. I was so excited I wanted to jump on it and go shoot down a few ME 109’s. After a minute or so I turned the choke off and set it to tick-over. First start in 35 years and there it was ticking over like a Swiss watch. Er, well, maybe not a Swiss watch. Anyway, unbelievable. I was so chuffed!
The next time I started her up I let the temperature go all the way up to see if the radiator fan would kick in. It did! That meant the thermostat and sender unit were working ok. Then I noticed those water drips were getting bigger. There was no water coming out of the tell-tale hole below the water pump outer casing which meant the oil/water seal for the pump was ok. Closer inspection revealed they were coming from the rad. Once the engine cooled down I flushed out the coolant, which was pretty dirty and removed the rad for a more detailed inspection. There were a couple of small holes in the core columns.
What to do now? I got a few quotes from specialist rad repairers which weren’t much shy of £300 for a new core and decided I’d fix it myself. After an hour or so of YouTube watching, I decided the best fix would be with JB Weld, and as it turned out it was a good call! I happened to have some tubes of the gooey two part mixture and it worked a treat. Once it was painted you’d never notice the repaired area and the rad hasn’t leaked since. Another good, cheap result!
While I was working on the rad I removed the fuel petcock, cleaned it up thoroughly inside and out, paying particular attention to the conical diaphragm spigot hole which looked a bit corroded. That’d cause the diaphragm to fail any day. I polished that up using Solvol Autosol till it shone then refitted the diaphragm with its tiny O-ring on the spigot. Then I did the same with the gasket mating surfaces where the petcock body attached to the fuel tank. I softened up the existing rubber-ring gasket with petrol and refitted the unit. There were no more leaks and the diaphragm worked perfectly too!
The main oil feed banjo’s were removed and the aluminium washers were smoothed off using 400 grit wet and dry on a flat surface then polished with Solvol Autosol. Once refitted they didn’t leak oil anymore. Same deal with the brake hose banjo washers.
I now had a bike that looked, well, pretty snazzy to be honest.
It didn’t leak petrol, oil or water and it started at the first touch of the button. Everything seemed to be working as it should, such as the brakes (always a good idea to have them working!) and the radiator fan, generator/rectifier, lights, horn and indicators, etc. all functioned correctly. I replaced the existing rusty old 12v cigarette lighter plug that sits next to the ignition switch with a modern waterproof power plug so I could use a sat nav and I found a guy in France on Ebay who made really nice RE5 key fobs, and in matching blue to boot! Those two items cost me £15 and they gave it that classy finishing touch.
It was now time for it’s first test ride. Ok, I still had the old tyres on it, and the original radiator hoses and brake pipes but hey! I was only going to take it round the block. What could go wrong?
The first pull away was a bit jerky. Don’t forget, apart from cleaning the points and spark plug I hadn’t even looked at, let alone touched any of the engine internals. Apart from messing with the carb all I’d done is change the fluids and filters. The clutch obviously hadn’t properly woken up yet but it eventually connected and off we went! Out of first and into second gear; even the digital gear readout on the instrument panel was working! A hundred yards down the road the engine started backfiring. I pulled over, revved it a bit and then water started pissing out of the lower rad hose which had split. On the plus side the engine kept running and at least I got it back to my garage without having to push it.
One notch on the belt for the RE5's first outing in 35 years.
To be continued ………………………….
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