At least its French-ish

Spent a few hours working on the 40 yesterday. I assembled my Ninja G3, and that is quite a pipe. It took me about an hour to mount it all up, because I had to file down some welds so that the stinger could bolt on. I was a little confused, because I was told I wouldn't have to lose the kickstand, but it was hitting, so I dropped it anyway. I can deal with no kickstand, and since I lost my pedal chain anyway, it's not like I'm doing anything but push starting. It also took me an hour to disassemble the Variator for the first time, put it together, wondering why Malossi sent useless screws with the Variplus, only to put it together and realize those little shims needed to go under the clutch plate. Ooops. So off it came, and I got more practice reassembling it. I might be good at it, by the time I get to tuning the weights, but for now, I have all 6 of the heavy ones inside. A trip to Walmart yielded a nice 4 pack of cables, with minimum filing, took the place of Throttle, Choke and Decompression. Not bad for $5 bucks. I'm going back there right now, and I want to get this thing riding around today. I'll take my camera today and snag some pictures.

UPDATE
Here is the bike, sans front wheel, ready for fork removal.


Taking the forks off was a bit of a challenge. An 1 1/4 socket got that bottom nut off, and then a little prying and it came out. What an odd fork design.


The head tube from my Peugeot forks is too long. I think I'm going to run to the hardware store and have it threaded down to the 2nd red line on there, and then it ought to fit nicely, and with the nut installed I'll cut the excess length off and spin the nut back off to preserve the threads. Anyone have a better idea?