In the “swing” of things…

Still no parts for paying work! Not making any money, so I may as well get something done on the ATK…

Cleaned the swingarm with Purple Power and then gave it a quick polishing with Autosol. Looks pretty nice except for the chips in the plating. Installed the new pivot bearings and spiral retaining rings. I carefully measured the position of the old bearings before removal and made sure the new ones were in exactly the same depth from the edge of the swingarm.

Time for some fun: putting on some parts to see how it looks and more importantly, how it feels. Swingarm, rear shock and rear wheel go on easily.

Right view

Left side

Stand back for a look.

Swingarm, shock and wheel in place.

Putting some rear fenders and side panels on.

“Enduro” fender

“DOT” rear fender

“DOT” rear fender with sidepanels

The only difference between the two fenders is the taillight. The DOT taillight is larger, mounted lower and illuminates the license plate. The Enduro unit is smaller, higher with no means of lighting the plate. One big consideration for me is that the DOT lens (made by CEV) is very difficult to find, even in Europe. The Enduro lens is an Acerbis part and easy to find. So, for a bike that may suffer a cracked lens, the choice is obvious. The black plastic fender extension will be installed on the new fender whichever taillight I use.

While all of the bits were on the bike, I climbed aboard to see how it feels. Without having the footpegs installed, there’s only so much I can tell for sure, but the handlebar position and height fits me well and the seat-to-bar distance is right. I was able to manipulate the lift controls with my right foot while on the bike, so lowered it down onto the wheels. With the spare (stock 406) suspension on the bike, I can just get the tips of my toes down. Still too tall. I’ll be assembling the original suspension with the lowering bushings installed and see where that puts me. I’d like to at least be able to get the ball of feet firmly on the ground.

After all of that fun, it was back to work. Took some careful measurements swingarm-to-frame and swingarm-to-engine and calculated the thickness of the spacers needed. I have eight original spacers and none of them were correct. After skimming a little over .020″ off of one, the right-side swingarm-to-engine spacer was done.

Working on the spacers for the swingarm spindle.

I used a laser attached to the rear sprocket to check alignment with the front sprocket and it’s dead on. Good deal. Now to make the other three.