Project Zeal, A Quick Update

Gee, it’s been months since I even looked at the Zeal let alone touched it. I decided it was finally time to get my garage space back.

The Zeal has been sitting taking up space in the garage, in bits, and I’ve been trying to work around it. I havent even been able to fit the Rover in the garage to do the work I need to do on that, so I put the Zeal back together and parked it outside.

The biggest thing that’s been stopping it going outside is that the headlight was removed and all the wiring was just chilling out. The old headlight bucket was badly rusted, so ages ago I purchased a good condition replacement from Japan at a huge cost (about as much as the bike originally cost, after shipping).

Old vs New. Interestingly the replacement is painted and not chrome like the old one. Must be from a different model year

And this is why I replaced it

The replacement had some light surface rust inside, so I used some rust converter to treat it before assembly

Before I could fit the bucket I had to replace the dead horn. I picked a replacement up on Aliexpress, which was a direct replacement, despite the mounting tab being in a different place. It makes good toot toots now.

Putting the headlight bucket on is a pain. Feeding the wiring in and making it all align nicely sucks. And then there was working out how to plug it all back in. Most of the plugs are keyed and will only go together in a certain way, but the bullet terminals are all a random guess. Thankfully I took lots of photos as a reference when I took it apart (Pro tip, most of the bullet terminal wiring colours match. Green-Green etc).

Not only was the bucket stuffed though, the actual headlight was ruined too. The old one was dented and rusty, to the point one of the mounting tabs was rusted off.

The replacement was perfect

And back on

After that I reassembled the fuel tank, tap and hoses and reinstalled it and all the plastics. I checked the bike still ran (and found out that even if it’s cranking over fine, a car battery might be just too flat for it to actually start; oops), which is does, and then moved it outside and gave it the first wash since I got it.

It turned out really well. It’s such a great looking bike, it’s a shame I have no interest in actually completing the project anymore. Its listed for sale, and hopefully it’ll go to someone who will finish the work and put it back on the road. This will probably be the final update for this project 😥

Yamaha Zeal