Abi's heart and soul

I'm about to begin work on Abi's engine, but before I do there's a little bit of history to be told first. Although I've had lots and lots of bike's over the years, there was a change in my attitude toward them back in 2002. Back then I bought a little GN400 called Beryl and she was my first bike since my marriage and the arrival of my two boys. She took on more significance than the others as she was my escape from my responsibilities and soon enough, I was fettling away. This is what she became.

Fettling Beryl gave me a taste for building my own bike and from that first attempt was borne the idea that gave rise to Abi. Although Beryl was great fun, a house move meant I needed something more practical. Enter Dolly, the Honda NX650S.

Dolly and I had some great adventures. We travelled all over the Country together and even did a John 'O' Groats to Landsend solo charity ride together. I loved that bike, but after 5 years together, my travels were starting to tell on poor old Dolly and I took the plunge and bought Lucy to take over domestic duties. Yet I couldn't just abandon Dolly after all we had done together. I decided to put her engine (after some surgery) into Abi along with her switch gear and levers. That way her heart and soul would live on and when I touched the controls I would be talking to her again. (Yep, I am quite mad!).
That's the background, now here's the motor.

There is a lot to do. Problems I know about are; 1) top engine mount still stuck in the head (the mounting bracket was cut to get the engine out of the frame), 2) sump oil drain plug is rounded off, 3) three exhaust studs have sheared off. As well as that lot the original finish is badly flaked and there is aluminium corosion all over the head and barrel.

The plan is to clean and de-grease as a complete unit before a top end strip and re-paint. I don't plan to delve into the crackcases at this stage. I know that for the last 58,000 miles of her life she had a new oil filter and semi synthetic oil change every 2,000 miles. Also her future life will be light on miles. I know the motor was getting tired, but I'm hoping this will be limited to top end problems (rings, valves maybe a rebore).

Next stage is to fabricate some sort of support frame to make working on the motor easier then get cleaning. If I was wealthy I'd ship it off for vapour blasting, but I'm not, so it's me, the paraffin and a tooth brush. The next report maybe some time. heyho.