Two 1984 FJ1100s at Mount Crawford, South Australia

[nchattaway]

Hello all. I posted some of this early info in the introductions board, but since I'm going to be running through quite a few improvements I thought I should move it over here and document this properly.

I bought an 84 FJ1100 from a friend last September. It had been sitting in his garage for 7 years, ridden there and parked on the centre stand with a full tank of fuel on the day he took delivery of his ZZR-1100. I have basic mechanical skills and some experience working on bikes from my youth, but am quite time poor (6 kids, 50 acre farm, working 5 days in the city) so luckily I have another friend who is gifted in all things mechanical and loves motorbikes. He was willing to let me trailer the FJ to his shed where it spent the next couple of months. Slowly coming back from her Rip Van Winkle session.

The carbs needed a complete strip down and thorough clean. There are some small cracks in a couple of the inlet manifold rubbers, but he's coated them with silicone for now. Brake master cylinder, clutch master and slave all needed a clean up and rebuild kits put through. The top front brake hose was clogged with junk, which has been flushed and cleared with wire, but down the track I'll be fitting a new set of braided stainless lines.

One fork seal was leaking, so the front end was dismantled and completely rebuilt. A few of the damping shims were missing (should be 3 on each leg, one had 1 and the other had 2) plus the bottom damping slides had been put back UPSIDE DOWN by the last guy. At least it has progressive springs. My friend has balanced the anti dive systems too, so the front should be OK for now. Headstem roller bearings packed with new marine grease. New front wheel bearings fitted. Front discs and calipers are OK.

The rear suspension has a fair bit of play. On the centrestand, you can lift the back wheel an inch before the spring starts to load! It seems all the bushes and bolts for the rear linkage are extremely expensive, so this is going to have to wait for a little while. The rear disc is down to 4mm thick and looks to have been getting extremely hot with my friend's regular two up riding. So that can't wait. I'll need to buy a good one from someone very soon. It probably makes sense to tackle the back end stuff like swingarm bushes, chain and sprockets, linkage bushes all together if my wallet can handle that.

Once the rebuilt carbs were fitted, new plugs, filter and oil changed, we fitted a battery and cranked her up. After a bit of fiddling around she started and ran OK. Blowing a fair bit of white smoke though. The guy I bought it from assures me it wasn't using oil or blowing smoke when he was running her regularly, so I'm hoping there's a bit of junk in there that just needs a good run up to temperature with some load to clean out. If not, I guess I'll live with using some oil for a while.

I registered her and have taken her for a few trips into Adelaide to work. I think a bit of expert carby balancing and valve clearance adjustment is going to improve things. It's quite rough under acceleration especially above 5000rpm and tricky or impossible to start from cold. I think the coils and HT leads are probably way past their used by date. Anyone running a more modern ignition system? I live near Tri-power, who make an electronic ignition system for 4 cylinder bikes now. Wondering if this will make starting and running smoother? It does seem to start first prod in hot weather, so perhaps the enrichment circuit is still gunked up with old fuel.

Also, the headlight and taillight don't work, the speedo screams sometimes even after I sprayed some chain lube into the cable socket, and the rear disc rotor is way under thickness. But it's a start.

[nchattaway]

A couple of pics from the day I took delivery and trailered it to my mate's workshop.

[nchattaway]

Day one

[nchattaway]

Fork and hydraulics rebuild

[nchattaway]

I've had her registered and at home on the farm for about a month now. The biggest issues are the carbs, the headlight not working at all, and the smokey motor. Here's a few pics of the old girl enjoying some Adelaide Hills sun after so many years neglected under a blanket in the corner of a shed. My daughters certainly appreciate having a new toy to climb on.

[nchattaway]

I decided to look for a good set of second hand carbs for the FJ1100, after reading horror stories about people spending heaps of money trying to resurrect carbs that have been marinating in old fuel for years. Apparently even ultrasonic cleaning can sometimes fail to do the job right.

I found someone selling a set of FJ1100 carbs in Perth, but then I noticed a running FJ1100 was for sale only an hour's drive away from the farm. Perhaps this might be a more cost effective way of getting at least one running bike. I went to inspect this second FJ1100 and wouldn't you know, it has a spare set of carbs that were running pretty smoothly on the bike less than a year ago. They were replaced with another good rebuilt set because one of the adjustment screw threads has been stripped by a heavy handed owner in the past and the current owner felt it wasn't running perfectly.

I took this FJ1100 for a ride and it was much smoother than mine. It had started perfectly on full choke from cold, moving to a steady idle in a few minutes. No smoke, no jumping out of second gear, no graunchy or slipping clutch. The brakes are spongey, but with the original rubber brake hoses I'm not surprised. The forks are also soft, and the alloy finishes have some corrosion from the bike having spent a lot of time near the coast. But the plastics are not bad, the chin spoiler is still there, and it has a fairly new looking 4 into 1. We did a deal, and I'm collecting her tomorrow afternoon. So, having gone looking for good carbs for my FJ1100 I've got a whole second going concern, with the spare carbs included.

I'm really hoping these carbs will be easy to fix and change over onto my original FJ1100, to get that running nicely too. I think I'll put my rebuilt forks onto the new 1100 since that doesn't blow any smoke and seems generally to be in a bit better nick than my first one. I'm starting to really get into these classy old bikes. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by the power a 30 year old air cooled, heavy machine can muster up. I mean, it's nothing like the ZZR-1100 I used to own, but it would leave the Bandit 1250S for dead.

Here's a couple of pics of the second bike on the day I inspected her:

[Mark Olson]

Well now you have two. 
On the one that smokes , most FJ,s will clear up after some spirited riding where you get the load on the engine on acceleration past 8k then let the engine slow the bike back down to 4k then repeat process for a few miles and your smoky days may be gone. If it smokes under acceleration its the rings, on deceleration that is valve seals or guides.
Smoking on startup is guides/seals , and goes away when warmed up.

[nchattaway]

Thanks Mark.

It doesn't smoke at all when first fired up and idling. It only shows up with revs. It will smoke in neutral on the centrestand, when you back off after free revving it to 4 or 5000. Also out on the road, but I can't be sure if it's while under load of after throttling off, since I'm looking forwards...

Is that sounding more like valve guides/seals?

[Mark Olson]

Sounds like rings need some time to seal up. Just ride it for a good run with lots of throttle on and throttle off and get it up in the RPM above 8k . Do at least 50 to 100 miles at one time so the engine gets a good workout.
What color is the smoke?
Blue/grey is oil and black is fuel to rich.
White smoke is your exhaust is full of water and steam is being made from sitting so long ..just ride it as long as the smoke is not black.
The rich black smoke will wash the oil out of cylinders and cause it to start burning oil.
I hope that helps.

[nchattaway]

The smoke is definitely not black. I wouldn't think there'd be any water still in the exhaust after 3 rides totaling 250km, but the smoke is quite light grey. So I'll go with oil. I took some video footage of the smoke, but I'm not sure if I can upload video files.

[nchattaway]

Finally, some good news. I pulled the right sidecover off, and this second 84 has a fairly modern looking Ohlins remote reservoir adjustable shock on the back. On the centrestand, there's hardly any vertical play in the back wheel, maybe 7mm or so. My first 84 has around 20mm of play, so those linkage bushes and pins are all pretty worn.

[Pat Conlon]

When you get ready to replace the swingarm bushings, consider a retrofit using the needle bearings used in the '86-'87 FJs. The oem 84/85 bushings worked well when properly maintained ( greased) however, in wet weather climates or with forgetful owners, once those bushings get dry, they get damaged.

The 86/87 needle bearings are much more robust.

[nchattaway]

This second FJ1100 has a bit of an imprecise feeling gearshift action, and in short shifting medium throttle takeoffs from the traffic lights, has jumped out of second gear on me twice now. Because of the woolly feel through the shifter, I'm not sure I've clicked it into gear properly on both of those times. I've also changed into second near redline in first under full acceleration, using a firm pressure, fully opened the throttle and held the gear through to redline and it hasn't jumped out, so I'm hoping this is less a case of second gear wear and more about chain/sprocket adjustment. What do you guys think?

[FJmonkey]

Sounds like that one has the 2nd gear issue real bad. My '86 needed a hard pull up to about 7K to start jumping out of gear.

[Mark Olson]

If it holds under high 2nd gear RPM blasts it ain't dead yet. More likely your shift fork is starting to bend. You can install the shift detent kit from RPM and that will save you from having to split the cases for a while longer. It allows a more positive shift so you don't go false neutral.