KH500 Refurbishment - Controls, Instrumentation, Cosmetics

The KH500 has some dings from falling over, and some other road rash.  The aluminum I think can be smoothed with a file and then polished with a wheel.

Below is the oil pump cover.  I will replace the screws with allen-head stainless bolts.  They got all chewed up before I understood that you need an impact screwdriver to loosen them.

Below is the "as found" alternator/distributor cover.  Heh, the bike has been down a few times.  I learned on it.

I worked on sanding down the road-rashed and oxidized aluminum covers.  I first sanded them with 100 grit to remove the deep gouges.  Below, they have been fine-sanded with 400 grit.

Looks good from this side.

Uh Oh.  One really bad gouge was too much to attempt to grind down.  Looks like that will be on the bottom, unless I buy another one on Ebay...

EDIT: I picked up some Turtle Wax Rubbing Compound and some Mothers Mag and Aluminum Polish.  The Mothers is really great stuff - The Turtle Wax, not so much.  I spent about 20 minutes with 800 grit, and then moved to the buffing wheel on these two covers.  I'm not finished with them yet (the haze is unbuffed sanding marks), but they look pretty good already.  I am very pleased.

UPDATE:  Finally done polishing engine covers!

I would like to thank this guy for showing me how to get it done:

The Chrome-plated headlight ring won't buff out!  Fortunately they still have replacements.

This road rash will buff out (it's aluminum after all), but it won't look right afterwards :)  I should be able to get a replacement cap easily.  The kill switch/turn signal control at the left might need a new coat of semi-gloss black.

The instrument cluster (below) is in pretty good shape, although the tachometer redline has faded.  There's a guy who restores these things pretty cheap.  I may send them in for refurbishing.

Refurbished tachometer.

The cables (clutch, throttle, choke) all appear to work fine, as do the tachometer and speedometer cables.  The gear shifter and linkage seem fine, as do the rear brake linkage.

The front brake has an issue with the master cylinder.  It's leaking.  Fortunately they make rebuild kits for this.  The brake is common to a far more popular Kawasaki model, the KZ.

This will be my first attempt at rebuilding a master cylinder.  From what I've read, getting the old parts out of the narrow cylinder involves grinding snap ring pliers to down into little more than tweezers.  It's also very difficult and involves a lot of swearing.

The panels and most of the chrome pieces on the bike are in pretty good shape.  A few scuffs and dings.  They buffed out using the aluminum polish.

Before and after...