KR-1S.co.uk Forum

Rather than adding to a previous thread I thought I'd start a new one detailing the build of my KR1.

I bought the bike (a KR1S) back in 2014 at a good price but the bike was in pretty poor condition and looked like it had been stored in a swamp - hence the title. I had originally wanted to restore the bike back to original condition but it soon became apparent that I had a 'bitsa' consisting of part KR1S and part KR1 namely the engine was off a KR1 and the frame a KR1S. I didn't discover this until I was part way through the engine restoration so I figured I may as well carry on building the KR1 engine and then decide where to go from there. Around this time a friend offered me a KR1 frame in pretty poor condition but for a great price (free =D> ) and so this project was born.

I've now bought a KR1S engine to match the original frame and will restore that to original condition at a later date but for now I want to build a KR1 based track bike that I can use and develop over time. Here's the progress so far, starting with a shot of the engine as I got it..

Engine cases after vapour blasting and with rebuilt crank in (SEP)

Crank assembled and balancer shaft going in:-

Making sure the marks on the gears align:-

Looking good so far but bad news ahead:-

Swamp Thing's gearbox hasn't had a happy life under water and a 'new' gearbox is needed to be on the safe side:-

New gearbox thanks to Bertie_Mollie and we're back in business:-

The old water pump was knackered and shattered when trying to remove the rusted nut holding it in place so a new one was fitted into the freshly blasted case:-

Now time to sort the clutch which has also suffered from water exposure and is looking pretty rusty. A quick go in the vapour blaster and things are looking better. Not perfect I know but it'll be fine for the track bike and easy to sort later if needed (before and after):-

A better shot of the plates:-

A quick blast of some of the parts:-

A coat of primer and satin black and we're looking good! Unfortunately at this stage I realised that you can't fit the metal coolant pipe (or case mounting spacers) after the right hand clutch casing has been fitted so out came the clutch etc. and once the coolant pipe and spacers were fitted the whole lot was reassembled.. Doh! Lesson learned:-

A few more shots showing the state of the engine before I started. sorry if all these shots are boring it's just easier to post the pictures than explain each step of the process:-

The crank -



Oil pump -


Inside clutch engine casing -

eBay purchased oil pump fitted and it's at this point I realised that I hadn't fitted the metal coolant pipe under the engine and would have to disassemble the right hand side of the engine to fit it (pipe on the bench). Aaagh!

Taking a leaf out of Bernie's book by polishing the oil pipes (I still don't know how you managed to do an entire bike Bernie!) :-