Bandit 1200K1 inspection—cam, carburettor maintenance, Watanabe, Okada boost circuit, harness replacement, and more. Let’s start by swapping out the cam.
Molybdenum shot, perhaps? It’s smooth and feels great.
We pop the cam right out.
We machine the elongated holes for valve timing adjustment. Since we have a dedicated fixture, it’s quick.
In the old days, we didn’t do this on every bike—we’d check the valve timing and only adjust those that drifted from Yoshimura’s spec.
There’s no particular reason, but we adjust by seven degrees front and rear. We mark a reference line and do a final check, but often we find the elongated holes weren’t even necessary.
We clean it, fill the oil passages with oil, and then assemble. We also do a visual inspection while we’re at it.
As always, the welding rod just doesn’t blend in—I really need to make something more solid and cooler-looking one of these days.
It’s a bit tight, so we’re checking it with number 3. The replacement head cover is from a GSX-R1100, and we’d need to machine the top side, so we’re putting that on hold for now. The customer-supplied cam, rocker arm, shaft, and so on are all replaced and done.
It’s been a while since we’ve seen a carburettor in pretty rough shape like this.
We just did one the other day, so this is no problem. We’re polishing and running it through ultrasonic cleaning now—bubble, bubble.
