Thursday, October 20, 2011

How I bent the foot peg mount back

The right foot peg on my 1977 Kawasaki KH400 has been a little crooked. Ideally this would have been bent back while the bike was disassembled (during restoration) but the restorer didn't notice it at that time.
The threaded lug that receives the foot peg is mounted to a gusset on the frame and I could see that gusset was slightly tweaked. So it wasn't a matter of bending the frame, just tweaking the sheet gusset back straight.
I tried bending it by removing the foot peg and inserting a long bolt, but the bolt just bent. So I ended up buying an extra foot peg on ebay, and then cutting it so I could fit a long steel pipe over the end.

I wrapped the end of the pipe in tape to protect surrounding components if something slipped or broke during the procedure. I also heated the the gusset with a heat gun. Not too much as I didn't want to harm the paint. Just slightly warm to the touch. Then I had my wife support the bike so I didn't pull it over and carefully tugged on the pipe. It's delicate procedure, as I didn't want to break anything and there are big, potentially dangerous forces involved. Obviously we both wore gloves and safety goggles. If you try something like this, be very careful and really, get professional help.

No comments:

Post a Comment