Kawasaki 650 Thinja notes; parts bin build

Here are some notes regarding the rebuild of the ubiquitous Ninja 650R bike. Sanjoh and Jdrocks and others have great builds going on and i'm trying to emulate those efforts. I have posted a lot in their threads, probably creating confusion for those following along. I guess its time for me to move my clutter into its own space. Maybe this will get me to be more organized.

My bike came through the insurance auctions, apparently somebody did a 3 o'clock wheelie on it. Mostly cosmetic damage. I had no need for a sportbike but thought a dirt ninja might be interesting.

Here it is after i picked it up from woodswizard:



I stripped all the damaged plastic off, weighed it at just under 400 #. Purrs like a cat but the 2 bros is too loud.



Cleaned away the fairing stay and mounted the headlight and clocks onto the forks.




I rode it around in this configuration a bit and found it to be a pleasant bike overall. I probably should have left it like this but I have a bunch of bike parts that might work to make the bike more dirt-road capable. Maybe I could take it on fire roads, etc.

Things that make the bike not dirt-roadable:

weighs 400 pounds
has a bulbous fuel tank
bars are low and the pegs are too far back
street suspension and tires
low ground clearance

I'll try to work on some of those issues before springtime.

Front end. Street forks and 17 inch tires need an upgrade. Sanjoh used a front end off a ktm 640 so I thought i'd just do the same. I have a 400sx bike donor.



I am trying to use a YZ triple clamp wth shims to hold the 43mm WP forks. The KTM clamps are too short and sanjoh found that the top clamp hits the fuel tank at full turn. The YZ clamp solves both of these issues and has steering offset of 22.5 mm compared to the 20mm KTM figure. I'm not sure if that's good or bad.

The steering stem is going to require a shim for the upper bearing to take it to 35mm from 28. The Ninja bearings are 35/55mm units, the YZ stem takes 30 and 28mm bearings. Honda streetbike bearings are 30/55 so I will run one of those along with the shimmed upper from Kawasaki streetbikes.





Today's issue, the rear wheel:

I'm fitting a KTM cush wheel onto said thinja. Centering the wheel necessitates shimming the sprocket 15mm to the left for sprocket alignment. Here is a rough draft sprocket spacer. Is it possible to buy sprocket spacers? (I have seen rotor spacers)



A couple FYI items learned in the other threads:
KTM and Thinja share 520 chains, 20mm rear axles and 220mm rear rotors
Yamaha rear sprockets fit KTM but not vice versa

a THINJA, sounds cool.

by the looks of the old tank, i hope it wasn't certain body parts that did that.

I'm in. I love these Ninja builds. I may give it a go in about a year from now.

Subscribed! I've been following these adventure ninja threads taking notes- maybe I'll get around to making one of these too

BA

Hey nice color scheme



Not sure where you are on the build, I would recommend tackling one area/project at a time just to keep your sanity

yes I have parts strewn all over the place.

Here is the triple clamp detail.

Kawasaki streetbike steering stems are 35mm diameter and the steering head is 55mm diameter. I had an extra triple from a 06 yz250 on hand. Bottom stem is 30mm and top is 28mm. I decided to keep the stock kawasaki bearings so i made sleeves for the yz stem; 30/35mm for the bottom and 28/35 for the top. First job for the old lathe i just bought.



KTM forks from 99-02 were 43 USD WP units. They were 2mm smaller in diameter than YZ forks on both the top and bottom triple clamps. I found some .025" aluminum sheet (Pretty close to 1mm) and cut and rolled some fork tube shims for the clamps to bite onto.

I could have easily just got a yamaha dirt front end but now I'll be able to share a KTM sumo setup I have if for some reason it makes sense to do so.

The ninja clamp sure looks like a turd:

Yep

FYI the stock 650r wheels share axle diameter with ktm front and rear. A few spacers and a caliper bracket for the front and sumo you go.

What size brake disk are you running on the front?

I only have the standard dirt rotors; 260mm. I think I have a 300mm caliper adapter. Do you think the 260 is too wimpy?

I need some longer sprocket bolts because of my home-made spacer. DO these look appropriate or does anybody have a source? I need about 45mm length with the countersunk type head.

http://www.boltdepot.com/product.aspx?cc=25&cs=83&cm=71&cd=1324

I'm going to run a yamaha sprocket, I guess i'll go 46 teeth so I can use the ninja chain.

Try it and see The 300 on mine works great unless I'm thrashing on the Cherhola so I just slow down.

High Tensile, should be fine.

I'd recommend a 48 with a 18" rear rim. Puts the speedo right on, 5800@80, econo cruise 5500@75 (51mpg) and still a low enough 1st gear for single track. I highly recommend the ironman sprockets, unconditional 1 yr warranty, hardened steel, lighter than aluminum.

Great score on the lathe! Boy I wish that was in my shop!

Do you have a picture of your sproket spacer? I need to build a spacer for the DR650 cush drive to work on the ninja.

parts bin build, right? I had a broken rear hub in the recycling pile. I trimmed up the rough edges on the lathe and sandwiched it to the cush hub with the remnants of a spent sprocket in the middle. If you look at it in the picture you will see the spoke holes and you will recognize what you are looking at. Shade tree engineering for sure and i'm open to any better solutions.

I could have used multiple sprockets piled up one eachother. a sprocket is 6 mm thick and i needed 15 mm offset. the old hub seems a bit more stable to me for some reason and it gave me the right thickness.

i got to use the DUalsaw (as sold on TV) to chop the teeth off the old sprocket. i am impressed at how the dualsaw slices through aluminum!

The caliper carrier was pulled away from the swingarm a bit so I copied sanjoh's solution of tapping a bolt into the tenon there as a safety measure.

Ok, I see what you did. That darn lathe is coming in handy again.

This build has been a great learning exercise for me. I have new found respect for those who post their builds and actually come out the other end with a bike. There are so many tiny little things that crop up to slow progress. I basically just copied Sanjoh's build and I still had my share of issues.

This has consumed a lot of time but has still been fun. I am about 90% done with the Thinja.

Since the last post I picked up some parts to finish the build. Fork seals so I could get the tubes back together and installed. I used left over parts from a KTM top clamp and some clip-ons that came on the ninja to construct a mounting bar for the stock headlight and gauge cluster. I think the Buell duals or Dominator lights look great but I had neither in the Parts Bin. Besides the OEM light doesn't look bad and would be easily replaced.



I found a Honda F4i shock like sanjohs and modded it to fit the Thinja. Drilled one end from 10 to 12mm and pressed (pounded) out and swapped bushings at the other end to allow the ninja bolts to work. 5mm of boss width had to be consumed on the grinder as well. I wonder if these shocks are rebuildable or revalvable.



My KTM cush hub wheel wasn't quite ready so I used a regular dirt wheel for now. I used my lathe to modify my custom sprocket spacer so it would accept a regular wheel bearing and seal. My sprocket should be pretty stable now.





I had done Sanjoh's brake caliper tenon mod but it turned out i didn't need it because my sprocket spacer moved everything towards the brake side. I may still need it when I switch back to a cush hub. The dimensions might be a little different between cush vs. non-cush.



I went with a 47 sprocket on the rear and learned that Honda XR200 sprocket interchanges here along with yamaha and KTM. I see that you can get damped front sprockets for a versys, I haven't looked to see if the Ninja front sprocket is damped or not. Would a damped sprocket make running a non-cush hub more do-able?

http://www.kawasakiversys.com/forums/showthread.php?t=650&highlight=GOOD+16t+front+sprocket&page=3

I Went with Versys peg mounts only to find I still need a versys brake pedal, too. The peg position seems much better than the Ninja position. I am trying a 3 inch riser and the only fat bars that had enough real estate for the controls were these Flexx bars. I'm not sure I need these so i'll change them at some point. The cables and harnesses are at their maximum stretch with these risers.



I still can't ride anything yet but I was able to push it off the lift and swing a leg over it. Standing on the OEM ninja ergos was horrible and this set up is much better. The lock to lock turning radius is not good, the Ninja frame juts out and interferes with the fork tubes.

Here are the numbers so far.

Seat height 34"
Ground clearance 10.5"
Weight 394#:eek1

how much rear wheel travel did you end up with ?

rear shock info from Sanjoh's thread:

"Thought I'd share some measurements for those that are looking for a rear shock. This is with an 18" ktm rear wheel and a Shinko 700, shock is off a honda cbr. Measurements are from centerline of eye or mounting bolt.

<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="493"><col style="width: 152pt;" width="202"> <col style="width: 83pt;" width="110"> <col style="width: 136pt;" width="181"> <tbody><tr style="height: 12.75pt;" height="17"> <td class="xl24" style="height: 12.75pt; width: 152pt;" height="17" width="202">Condition</td> <td class="xl24" style="border-left: medium none; width: 83pt;" width="110">Shock length MM</td> <td class="xl24" style="border-left: medium none; width: 136pt;" width="181">Clearance to inner fender MM</td> </tr> <tr style="height: 12.75pt;" height="17"> <td class="xl25" style="height: 12.75pt; border-top: medium none;" height="17">both wheels in air shock in place</td> <td class="xl24" style="border-top: medium none; border-left: medium none;">306</td> <td class="xl24" style="border-top: medium none; border-left: medium none;">173</td> </tr> <tr style="height: 12.75pt;" height="17"> <td class="xl25" style="height: 12.75pt; border-top: medium none;" height="17">collpased no shock</td> <td class="xl24" style="border-top: medium none; border-left: medium none;">243</td> <td class="xl24" style="border-top: medium none; border-left: medium none;">0</td> </tr> <tr style="height: 12.75pt;" height="17"> <td class="xl25" style="height: 12.75pt; border-top: medium none;" height="17">max extension no shock</td> <td class="xl24" style="border-top: medium none; border-left: medium none;">350</td> <td class="xl24" style="border-top: medium none; border-left: medium none;">295</td></tr></tbody></table>"

I think the stock ninja shock was 285mm eye to eye with 56 mm stroke length. I can't find the spring rate spec for this shock. 4.9 inches of travel. http://homepages.slingshot.co.nz/~shanetp/Specifications.html

The 2002 honda cbr600f4i shock is 305mm long with a 60mm stroke. 14.2 kg/mm spring rate

anyways, i measured my tire to fender dimension at 150mm or 6 inches, my knobbies are kind of tall. I could probably go a bit longer on the shock, right now my muffler is clearing and the swingarm angle isn't too bad.

you really jumped ahead on the build.

the Versys and 650R both use the OEM damped sprocket. smoother running, but you still need the cush drive.

you're clever enough to modify the 650R lever if you don't want to buy a new one.

the harness can be loosed up under the tank to get a little more length on both sides. get the Versys clutch and throttle cables, they're longer, and have the same ends. swap right in.

did you modify the LSL clamps for the larger fork tubes? what kind of diameter can you get out of them?

looks real good. another rat for the pack.

so your looking at 5.26" of travel with the honda shock. One would need 92.5mm stroke to get 8" of travel, with a ruffly 365mm total shock length so if you could get a additional 10mm drop then it would fit. Hhmmm just thinking out loud. So you could in theory run a 9" up front and 8" in back while keeping a balanced bike. That is really good specs for the type of bike build most are doing. Interesting