85' Tecate rebuild on a budget

[ryanclarke83]

i am currently restoring my 1985 tecate, but on a budget. i am doing all the work myself and am skipping having any professional work done in order to save money.... this rebuild is currently being done in my 12'x12' tool shed since i have no garage but it'll do. i bought this bike 3 years ago in ok shape but running rough. i quickly put a fresh top end in her and when i was reassembling the swing arm bearings were found to be shot and i ran out of interest until this fall. i got back into it and wanted to ride bad so i had the bearings put in and put the bike back together.(the pic of the completed bike was from this fall) after about 5 hours on a new top end and realizing how awesome this thing was i decided i needed to do a frame up to get it looking as good as it can. i have currently snipped back the front fender since this nasty thing bucked me off and flung into a tree, breaking the front portion of the fender. this encouraged me to do a thumb throttle conversion from a tecate 4 and im hoping its going to fit but im sure ill figure something out. the rest of it has been stripped down to a bare frame and i am now painting the frame, foot pegs, foot brake, swing arm, radiator guard, ect.... i checked inside and took a look at the piston, rings, and cylinder to make sure everything was ok which it was. i have many parts on the way and will keep updating when more becomes complete. thanks for looking!

[RoscoW]

Good looking machine to start from, should look killer when done, Lots of Tecates coming to the surface this year. I'm about to start on #2 this week.

[dcreel]

Looks like a great start. What color paint are you using. I'm thinking about using the grabber green from duplicolor that RoscoW above used on his build. Looks great, keep us posted. If you haven't joined the 84-85 Tecate group on the site I hope you do. We are always looking for more people to build ideas and share info. Let me know how that tecate 4 thumb throttle works for you, we are planning on doing the same for my wife's Tecate.

[portland250r]

nice tecate.
those machines are one of the best.

[MonroeMike]

Good luck with the rebuild.

[ryanclarke83]

I ended up finding a company that reproduces oem paint colors called Colorrite. They are the only place I could find that makes Kawasaki green #3050. You have the option of getting quarts, gallons or spray cans and since I don't have the spray tools, I went with the cans. It's very expensive paint at $33 a can! I also went with their primer and clearcoat at $16.95 a can! I wanted the frame to have good quality paint so It itll look good for a long time since tearing down to a bare frame and hand sanding everything is a pain. As for the swingarm and other parts that aren't going to be green I went with a silver and gloss black rustoleum and a high temp semi gloss rustoleum for the motor. I'm not sure how that all will hold up but I'm not cutting any corners with the prep so it has the best chance of coming out nice.

[dcreel]

A friend of the family just dropped off a can of PJ1 spraypaint. "Kawasaki Green" $8.00

[ryanclarke83]

that sucks for me i guess but i specifically looked for PJ1 paint and what i read online was that it was discontinued. as far as i know colorrite is the only place that still makes the color kawasaki green.. oh well the money is already spent and everything that is suppose to be freshy fresh green is all done.

[dcreel]

I don't know where the can came from or how old it is. It doesn't match either it says Kawasaki Green 88-03 :-)

The best I could do.. bottom of the page
http://www.sudco.com/pj1.html

88 is the earliest kawi green they have. They only have frame paint colors. in 88 KX frames were green.