Bandit 1200 Repair Description

October - November 2003

I have bits and pieces lying around all over the place. I have fitted the reground cams and rockers to the engine, set the timing marks up and set all the valve clearances. Checked and double checked. Everything seems okay and my only hope that it runs alright once the engine is in the frame. I have had the frame, wheels, centre and side stands bead blasted and etched primed; they look good. I clean all the welds up on the swing arm as well.

They are supposed to paint the frame at work, but after weeks off nothing happening I got pissed off and end up painting the frame, wheels, and swing arm at home in the shed. They came up not too bad, considering I haven’t used 2-pak paint before. Forks…..it took a lot of badgering to get the forks painted but they did it. Get Chris Oldfield to put the forks back together so I can put the bike back together. I put in new steering head bearings, swing arm bearings and a bush on the left side. Assembled frame, swing arm, front forks, (big job) only to find a metal tube in a box that should have gone into the swing arm between the bushes, had to butcher the bearing to get it out to replace the tube and another new bearing (more money). Bled the front and rear brakes.

The next evening I put the engine in with help of my son Daniel; not a single person job by any means. I wrapped up the down tubes with special foam so the paint wouldn’t get scratched. The motor went in first time with out any problems. I proceeded to bolt the rest of it together and connect everything up, bleed the clutch, adjust the chain, bolt the coils on, connect all the wiring and fit the carbs. That wasn’t too bad but connecting the throttle cables onto the carbs was a pig of a job.

At Anzac weekend I was having trouble with the carbs not backing off when you let the throttle go. They had a frayed return cable; replaced that and it is back to normal. I was having a bit of self doubt and wondering if I was ever going to get it back on the road.

The paint work has been done by Paul Tallents in between my many trips between his place and mine. I eventually painted the body work at my work one Saturday morning, leaving it there over the weekend. I took it out of the oven on Monday morning. We didn’t bake it because it was already 33 degrees. On the Monday morning when I took it out of the oven it looked really good for straight off the gun, even if we were running a tight schedule. I got the transfers put on a couple of weeks later.

One Saturday night in November I got it fired up and it was music to my ears. On Sunday I got a couple of fans and ran the motor for 10 minutes at 4000 thousand revs to run the cams in, and then took it for a spin around the block. I got a bit of a rush out of it, was it good or was it good! It was great to be back on the bike after being off the road for 6 months, all my hard work had payed off.

Took it in for a roadworthy and had to change the back tyre so it would be acceptable for the inspection at Vic Roads. December 2^nd and 3^rd I took the bike into Vic Roads for inspection because I had changed the engine and they wanted to sight it. That part of it was easy. I went back inside to do the paper work and their computer system had crashed Vic wide. I decided to wait for a while in the hope that it might come good, but it didn’t. I said to the man behind the computer how about you make a note of it on paper and enter it in later and I can get the rego and go, but he said he couldn’t do that and that I would have to come back.

I got back to work about lunch time and they rang me back around 2pm and told me it was ready, but I had to wait till the next day to go back and pay for it. On third of Dec. I rode it to the Social Sip. I was just like a big kid with a new toy, excited to have it going and be able to ride it. There was one little problem with it, and that was it wouldn’t quite start and it sounded very sick. I hadn’t put any Locktite on the bolt that held the starter clutch on the end of the crank and it had come undone. It has to be done up to 108.5 foot lbs.

On Friday after work I took the side cover off and saw the bolt was undone, so I took it off, cleaned it up, put Locktite on it, and tightened it back up. I haven’t had any trouble since. See what happens when you don’t read the instructions properly? I have had a couple of oil leaks which I have since fixed and every thing seems to be going okay.

Ron Johnston (Suzuki 1200 Bandit)

(Seventeen days after the Social Sip the bike was crashed heavily. Our sympathy for Ron. … Ed.)