Aside from doing the engine, one of the essentials of this was to swap the frame for a genuine 600 one. A word of warning beforehand: if you plan to do a frame-swap, make sure you get a good and unmolested frame or as you will see in this instance, you will end up doing a lot of extra work. That being said, my frame was for free and Michi, the previous owner told me about the "problem-areas".
But first, take the old bike apart and in order to do that, drain the old oil as a first step.
Take the engine out (thanks to my dad)...
... and put the swingarm spindle back in.
Turns out, if you unplug the ignition and a couple of other wires, you can take the upper triple clamp off with the entire loom attached.
Swingarm came out with no drama, but one of the bearing bushes could have done with a bit more lubrication in the last 80.000km.
And at this point the re-assembly started. Fresh bearing on the steering stem with lots of grease - hence the name.
Put the frame on a beer-crate and ...
... fit the rear subframe. I took the linkage and the swingarm bearings apart, cleaned it and greased all of them and I have to say, it's in a lot better state than the original condition of the bike would have suggested.
Among one of the more unpleasant bodges of the frame was the fact that the lower mounting point for the exhaust has gone missing over the years. (Same goes for the nut that held the muffler on the upper mount, but I can't fix that until I have the engine back in.)
A bit of an old shelf was cut to size and welded in. I expect the hole to be filed out to suit or just drilled bigger, if I am lucky, but at least it's a start for now.
But the part that put on the biggest fight was the sidestand. The mount on the frame looked the same (mostly) and I was absolutely convinced that my sidestand would fit. I mean... they are both from essentially the same model, right?
I might at some point even have surprised myself with the number of swear words I know. After approx. 3-4hrs of modifying both frame and sidestand they now fit acceptably. Not really wonderfully, but acceptably.
The next thing to tackle was the fact that the stock engine guard mount is only rivetted to the engine guard and in my case, those rivets failed a while ago, resulting in an astonishing amount of rather worrying sounds coming from the engine.
As the holes were just about the right size for some M5-hardware, from here onwards this is bolted on properly with some stainless M5 allen bolts (didn't have any standard hex-head hardware at hand), proper washers and locknuts. I know singles vibrate, but I do hope these last a while.
And then, slightly prematurely I didn't only just put the airbox, oiltank etc on, but also all of the plastics for a bit of a morale-boost.
And if I may say so, the old girl looks great with the black frame. I also had a look on how to fit a proper pannier rack to it and (by accident) found out, how much stiffer I would like my rear shock to be: Exactly like it feels without the engine. Maybe I should really earmark some funds for that next year. With all of this out of the way, the engine is the next bit that will deserve some attention.
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