[TRXStudent]

This a restore thread,

When I first got it, rear end was seized and wouldn’t roll. Ignition wires had been hacked away. Plastics were in very rough shape. Bike was given to me by a coworker, he had lost hope on it 10 years ago.

Positives-
Freebie so not apprehensive about putting some money into it
Was able to determine it had compression and would crank and turn over
Damaged but complete
Neutral light
Sound front diff and axles
Only surface rust on frame
Mud bug wheels

Negatives-
Rear end (diff and axle stripped)
Rear brakes locked
Reverse cable rigged permanently open
Choke broken
Broken starter button assembly
Plastics wired/tied/tie-wrapped together (no cracks, just lots of tiny holes)
Not showing gear position
Front left bearing gone
Every bolt and joint is rusty and seized.
Air filter is nasty
Carb was nasty
Front lights are smashed
No ignition
Seized rusty winch

 

[shadetree]

a lot of time, few 100 dollar bills, and it will live again, IF YOU DO IT RIGHT ?!..LOL.

 

[shadetree]

before and after : 2003 trx450fm. was pretty trashed when I picked it up, it now has been restored to new condition, and the owner is one very happy camper !.

 

[TRXStudent]

Shade, I've never done a rebuild, so doing something frame up was intimidating to me. I also live in an isolated place, so shipping costs are high. However, reading through some of the builds on here, I figured I could mimic the strategy of picking away at the machine bit by bit.

 

[TRXStudent]

before and after : 2003 trx450fm. was pretty trashed when I picked it up, it now has been restored to new condition, and the owner is one very happy camper !.

Awesome work.

 

[TRXStudent]

Worked on a bunch of stuff last night

Plastics are faded bad and whoever worked on it last lost all the plastic rivets.

I have plastic rivets on order. Not sure what I’m going to do about all the tiny holes.

I used wd40 to wipe down the plastics, then this rust oleum wipe new product. It worked really nice on the black trim. The red faded parts of the plastics are still faded to pink though.

 

[TRXStudent]

I also got the front a-arms off and painted them. Left bearing is finished. The upper and lower joints are seized to the knuckles. There’s some play in them, but I think I’ll wait on convincing them to come apart to change them until I have abit more flexibility ($) . Matt-black rustoleum.

 

[Jeepwm69]

Just take the castle nut off the upper ball joint stud, hold the upper a arm in one hand, and hit knuckle on the outside of where the ball joint goes through it. The shock should break the tapered part of the ball joint free from the knuckle and the knuckle and lower a arm will drop to the ground.

Then hold the lower a arm, hit the a-arm where the ball joint goes through it and same thing should happen, with knuckle falling to the ground.

Don't hit the ball joint studs if the ball joints are useable. You'll mushroom the stud and ruin the threaded part.

As for those little holes, I would get black zip ties and use them. That will blend it a little better and solidly hold the flares to the fenders. A heat gun might bring that pink back to red, but usually once they're faded that bad there's not much you can do.

Looks like a really nice, solid base for a project.

 

[TRXStudent]

Thanks Jeep, I’ll try hitting the knuckles again with more confidence. Once I realized they needed a lot of persuasion I kinda just reasoned away getting them apart and just painted them as an assembly. Thinking the knuckles will look nice aluminum.

Thanks for the idea of black tie wraps, old owner probably did the hack job to make them more solid. Why not right.

 

[TRXStudent]

Ps, when I fired her up odo read ~23,000km, about 14,000miles. Doesn’t smoke (yet, knock on wood)

 

[Macarena Man]

Are you in Canada ?
Good luck with your project !

 

[TRXStudent]

Are you in Canada ?
Good luck with your project !

Yes, more specifically Quebec

 

[fishfiles]

the 450 front a-arms are not symmetrical on the left and right side , aluminum colored arms with a different color frame brings attention to the fact and to me doesn't look good

 

[Macarena Man]

If those are aluminum front rims . . . they are difficult get here in Canada, and are worth $$

 

[TRXStudent]

A-arms are painted black, thought about painting the knuckles aluminum.

 

[TRXStudent]

If those are aluminum front rims . . . they are difficult get here in Canada, and are worth $$

Funny thing, only one wheel is aluminum, so painting three matt black?

 

[TRXStudent]

the 450 front a-arms are not symmetrical on the left and right side , aluminum colored arms with a different color frame brings attention to the fact and to me doesn't look good

Hey fish, bumping my thread back up, it got lost because I've been cheating and doing work and not posting. I'm sure you can relate, just got carried away.

Painted the knuckles aluminum, and the a-arms matt black. I like how things turned out. Its not perfect as I wasn't taking my time and taping things off carefully. This is my very first resurrection build, so I'm learning as I go. I used a wire brush on a drill and on a grinder to get rid of the rust, but didn't work so hard to try and get to bare metal. Is it necessary, put 3 or 4 coats on, with the rustoleum spray cans.

I covered the racks in truck bed liner and it came out awesome. Should do this to my other rides. Used the same process of wire brushing everything first.

The plastic restore wipes I used have held up REALLY nice on the black portions of the plastics. They look almost new. The red plastics look ok, but the sections that had faded to pink still look pink .

So lights.
The two light pods came out easy. One had cracked glass and a broken bulb. The pod light holders are in good shape though. I ordered some cree led pods and received them last week and started tinkering. The LED pods have two wires, a red and a black. My issue is figuring how to wire them in, do the high and low wires connect directly to the red on the pod? I would like to have my switches working as they should, so these headlights coming on with lows and highs, as I'm going to install a third cree led pod on the spot light for high beam. I'm a wiring noob. I have a multimeter and can youtube stuff. Just want to be pointed in the right direction.

The rear shocks are super easy to push down, and come up reluctantly and I thought I could replace them with some shocks I had taken off of a china clone, its an odes wilderness 400- I have two of them. They come in handy for parts now and then (another dump save). These shocks are beefy and HUGE. I had to switch around the nylons and bushings so that they would fit in the 450s shock mounts. After all that work I realised that even the shorter front a-arm shocks from the odes would be too stiff and long for the 450s, compared to original, so mission failed. Wondering if you guys have any suggestions on what I should look for in terms of salvaging shocks from other machines, or if its even doable.

I'm also encountering a mysterious draw from my battery (oh lord). This happened before, and thought I had solved it by removing the fried winch. Thought maybe it could be the broken lights that were grounding out. Now that both those things are removed I still need to jump the battery. Its a brand new walmart battery, so not complete confidence. But I did make sure it held its charge before installing it. I realize now after reading this rant that I'm shooting in the dark untill I learn how to test for grounding with my multimeter.
Hmph.

Photos to come.

 

[Jeepwm69]

Tie the positive for your lower bulbs into your tail light power wire. That way whenever your headlights are on, the lower bulbs will be on.

Then tie your light bar into the high beam wires, so switch on, low beam just the headlights are on, switch on, high beams you have both headlights and lightbar.

HID's and LED's are either on or off, No dual filaments for lo/high beam.

 

[fishfiles]

Battery draw , one way to find a draw is , disconnect the positive wires off the battery , hook that meter in between the positive terminal on the battery with the negative lead of the meter and hook the wires coming off the battery with the positive lead , set the meter to dc voltage , if you have something drawing , it will show on the meter , start disconnecting plugs , when the meter drops then it is something on that circuit of the plug you disconnected

 

[Jeepwm69]

If you don't have a meter...well get one, they're only $5 or so.

But if you have a test light, you can unhook the negative batter terminal, hook the clip to the battery cable, and poke the neg battery terminal with the probe. Light should come on. Then you follow Fish's instructions, pulling fuses till the light goes out. That's the circuit with your drain.