
You guys may remember that amazing deal I found on a beautiful FJ with great cosmetics in good running order for an amazing price last fall.

<--sarcastic face
(if you want the short version, scroll to the bottom.)
Well, instead of selling it to pay back the loan I took from a friend, I just worked hard and made some extra cash and paid him back on time and figured I'd get to the back later. (Lots of life stuff. You all know how it is.)
So the weather has finally been clearing up enough, and my life schedule has been clearing up enough, so I decided to get to working on this thing. Should just be a bad gasket, a clutch slave, and maybe a leaky petcock, and blam! should be a fine bike. (Lots of other details, but it should be good enough to ride around at that point.)
So I did the clutch slave with a generous gift from Fred of his old clutch slave, formerly removed while working for prevantative maintenance. Pressure bled it, and while I haven't turned the bike on on account of there being no oil, the clutch does engage and allow me to move the bike when in gear, so for now, good enough.
So there was a leak when I got the bike. It seemed like a mix of gas and oil. Given the putty oozing out of the clutch cover, I assumed he tried to skip buying a clutch cover gasket and that was the cause of the leak. As I am undoing the screws on the clutch cover to replace the gasket, razor blades ready to clean it, I realize something... There's a crack.




Right side lay down, put the brake lever through it. He told me when he sold it to me that he had had it replaced once, so this is the second time it went through. So sad what happened to this bike... It was obviously beautiful when he got it for his stepson, and him and his son fucking trashed it. I hated him enough when I met him for being a lying douchebag, but I kind of hate him more for being so abusive to the bike... especially all at his age. Jesus.
Whatever. Stick that aside for now. Question is: This is cast aluminum, which isn't a great weld candidate... But since it's non-weight bearing, would a weld hold here ok? The gasket looks brand new, though, so I guess he just put a bunch of extra putty because he thought he needed it... And the leak was really coming from that crack.

Anyways. The bike sounded awesome when he revved it up and had it sitting in his garage. That was on account of the Kerker exhaust. I took a closer look the other day and realized it was really just Kerker baffles--the collector box and headers were stock Yamaha. Decided I would take the cans off. The left side had seen a more serious lay down drunk than the right side, though, and so aside from the scrapes, it also had its mount snap and was being hung by a metal strap thrown on there. After cutting the strap off and removing the baffle and pipe from the collector, I notice something else... the lay down punctured the baffle on the inside.



Can I weld the aluminum can, since it doesn't bear weight? Guy at the mexican muffler shop next door within walking distance said he could do both of those welds (maybe I could throw in the clutch cover too) for $75....
Oh, also, the clutch M/C lid had some really funky screw sitting in there when I got it on one side. I pulled that out and got rid of it. I went and bought the correct screw today... And found out that doesn't fit.

Jesus.
What do I do about that? Spare clutch slave lying around, anyone? Will this be my first dabble at tapping?
One more thing, while I was messing around in my parts bin, I went and got the front brake M/C that came with the blue spots I got on craigslist a couple months back and looked at it. Noticed it said radial on it. Does this mean it's incompatible with my bike, or did I seriously score?


One last question:
The gauges are still awesome, so I'd like to swap those into mine. But I want to show the correct mileage. Can anyone here share the secret of manually adjusting the odometer? (Rare case of wanting to increase the mileage rather than lower it, haha. Though I guess I will want to do the reverse to the other one that I swap in, if I do swap it in instead of just replacing it with some fancy new digital thing and go with a naked look...).
SHORT VERSION:
1. Can I have a clutch cover plate welded, even though it's cast aluminum, since it doesn't bear weight?
2. Can I have a cast aluminum exhaust likewise welded, or otherwise salvaged?
3. Does a radial M/C off of a modern R6 work with our bikes?
4. Clutch M/C had one of the holes botched, proper screw no longer fits in it, what should I do about that?
5. I want to swap the gauges between the two FJ's. How do I tamper with the odometer and adjust the reading?