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After having to replace a few cables over the winter months in preparation for the coming riding season, I decided that I wanted a hydraulic clutch on the old 98 Kat 600. So after some searching around I found a complete clutch setup from a 03 Bandit 1200 on ebay with just a busted lever. Sent off my 50 bucks and just got it in the mail today. Overall the conversion was not hard at all, but did require some heavy machine tools such as the lathe at my work.
Here are the two sprocket covers for comparison. Notice that the Bandit cover does not have the pivot pin for the shift lever. I had to machine a new one to get the dimensions correct with the Bandit cover.
So on to the lathe we go. Here we see the bolt that I started out with, minus its head which was cut off.
So after the new pin is machined I needed to drill and tap the mounting hole for the pin in the new cover. The cover material is rather thin so I used a trick that suzuki used in the original cover and added a nut behind the cover to tighten against the threads that I cut into the cover material. That and some JB weld thrown in the mix just to make me feel better about the whole situation.
Finally with all the machine work done and put together mounting on the bike was a snap. I just removed all the old system parts such as the cable and handle and the old sprocket cover of course.
Finally I threaded the new hydraulic line down through the frame to the slave cylinder and bolted it all together.
Sorry for the dark pictures, but my basement is not well lit and the camera batteries were weak so the flash didn't want to work. Oh well, you can still mostly see whats going on. Road test to follow once I get a new rear tire and I'm able to dig the 4 feet of snow away from my basement door.
Here are the two sprocket covers for comparison. Notice that the Bandit cover does not have the pivot pin for the shift lever. I had to machine a new one to get the dimensions correct with the Bandit cover.
So on to the lathe we go. Here we see the bolt that I started out with, minus its head which was cut off.
So after the new pin is machined I needed to drill and tap the mounting hole for the pin in the new cover. The cover material is rather thin so I used a trick that suzuki used in the original cover and added a nut behind the cover to tighten against the threads that I cut into the cover material. That and some JB weld thrown in the mix just to make me feel better about the whole situation.
Finally with all the machine work done and put together mounting on the bike was a snap. I just removed all the old system parts such as the cable and handle and the old sprocket cover of course.
Finally I threaded the new hydraulic line down through the frame to the slave cylinder and bolted it all together.
Sorry for the dark pictures, but my basement is not well lit and the camera batteries were weak so the flash didn't want to work. Oh well, you can still mostly see whats going on. Road test to follow once I get a new rear tire and I'm able to dig the 4 feet of snow away from my basement door.
Good judgement comes from experience, and often experience comes from Bad Judgement :smt084
nicely done.
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