I hadn't seen his old bike in ages and was convinced it was an early 2000s 750 katana, but all i really remembered was a yellow suzuki. 

I didn't go any further with it than expressing some interest, until he saw my neighbour and passed on the message i need to go see him. So i did.

And i was met with this.

Well yeah ok lets talk. Turns out has had cluth issues which started with it slipping, then he replaced the clutch but it would never fully engage and would creep forward at idle with the clutch in. Tyres are old and borderline, but the funniest bit, is that we couldn't start it because last time he tried, the fuel tap started leaking everywhere. Reg on hold since 2022.

So we had a beer and a yarn, i offered a lowball price and he accepted. Then came 2 weeks of trying to sell random falcon parts to fund the idea. Long story short i ended up selling a full set of seats to one guy yesterday, and got over double of what the bike was gonna cost. So that makes the bike free.

Wife does not understand basic maths when i explained this fact this morning... as i walked down the road to pay for and bring bike home.

350 meters is a long way to push a 240kg bike apparently, at least for my lazy arse. But pushed it home and looked over the bike again.

Old mate had found the box and the broken part of the mount so that will be an easy fix.

Will drill some holes and put a rod inside it, plugweld and repaint. Nice and easy fix.

5 years ago when i got a 1990s Royal Enfield Bullet for shits and giggles, this got me back into bikes, which is where my original passion for vehicles began (I sold my last bike when we left Auckland in 2013, which also helped with the house deposit - how times have changed). As much as fun as it was, I decided that I liked riding into work (rather than the loser cruiser), so decided that I need a modern bike for that purpose (you know, actually starting when you need it to etc).

So off went the Royal Enfield and then I got a BMW G310GS, to ease back into the game as it were. That scratched an itch for a while, but around 2 years after that, I wanted to get back on a Triumph (last bike in Auckland was a Bonneville). So off went the BMW and in came my current daily, a 2008 Bonneville.

But still, 2 years later, I had the itch for something to spanner on (wife could see this too). So I decided that I needed a classic bike and a daily bike.

I had been pining for a Meriden Triumph, BSA etc, but then came across a 1987 GPZ900R. Now being a child of 1986 and a fan of Top Gun......well.....I just kinda had to go for it.

So anyways, this has landed at my place:

The current plan is to get her back onto the road (rego is on hold) and give her a Top Gun style. 

Also came with essentially a second bike, minus the engine and fuel tank. 

No doubt in the coming weeks, I'll realise the suffering I have brought upon myself, but fuck it, we'll have some fun......

...and he is planning to sell them.

Cool. One of them is a CX400E. Not sure on the other and I would have to wait for 10 more days because he's away. 

So I've been counting my sleeps and then on Monday another cx popped up for sale locally - for only $500! But it has a seized camshaft and is in bits. In other words a proper project.

Within a couple of hours four different mates had sent me the advert link. I contacted the seller asap. I said..

"I'll buy it! Can I collect it tomorrow?"

"yeah man, no probs"

Great. So on Tuesday this old thing followed us home..

Off the trailer and inside. It might only be 'late summer' here in sunny west Tasman but its fresh enough to get the workshop fire cranking.

Bike has been lightly cafe'd but came with all the original parts included along with a few new Honda bagged spares..

Original speedo matches the recorded mileage that shows up online..

I was blown away by the brand new fan..

Following morning I freed up the sticky front calipers which luckily had nice clean pistons. Nice to see bike already fitted with braided front hoses! I plonked the seat and tank in place and took some pics..

Hannah helped me remove the engine and lift it up onto the bench. I had to get this pic..

I started looking into this 'seized' camshaft. Previous owner said it started leaking oil out around cam seal and making awful sounds. After turning the bike off they couldn't turn it over. They took it to a mechanic who tried to remove the tacho output/camshaft front bearing block. He got it to spin round but it wouldnt come off and broke the casting. He decided the job was going to be far more involved than they wanted to spend. The bike sat a few years and now its mine.

Damage here...

Picture from FSM of parts..

I managed to spin it round but I could see the spiral cast into the camshaft that turns the tacho gear is damaged. 

You can see the spiral here..

My guess is that on of the teeth had broken in there and made a mess of things. The camshaft was forced sideways and made a mess of the bearing bore. I tried everything thing to remove it without having to resort to further disassembly of the engine but no luck. I'd got the tacho pinion out but the alloy housing was all burred on the engine side of the cam spiral. there's a good visible .5mm (.020") of movement on the cam so the clearance is far too much.

So I will pull the cam out. Hopefully the bearing journal is ok. I can clean it up in the lathe if just scuffed with alloy. I'll fabricate a new cam bearing block and bore it to get the exact factory nominal .0015 

I've popped the rear cover off and this is where I'm at as I'm now away visiting mum.

Great news is the rest of the engine appears in good condition. Very clean inside suggesting regular oil changes. The cam chain looks in good condition with plenty of life from what I can tell. 

I'm hoping I can carefully remove the headbolts, pop the top rockers off and replace the bolts with some spacers i'll machine up. Then the heads are still clamped while I remove the pushrods and flip the engine upside down. The cam followers will swing away from the cam and I can extract it.

Ultimately if the engine is a good runner I'd be happy to give the heads and valves a birthday clean but I really dont want to pull it down further until I get a full gasket set. I'm also waiting to find out about the other potential cxs on offer.

it was advertised as an AC50 with the frame modified for a Lifan. Ideal I thought as thats what I was intending to do anyways and thought the young chap had done the hard work for me.

That was only partly true, The top mount for the engine was done not too bad but the bottom mounts not so much. And the way the frame had been cut will lead to cracking so I'll remedy that.

As soon as I got home I reassembled the parts and threw in a Chinese engine I'd picked up cheap at the swapmeet.

My plans for the bike are going to be to make a tidy wee bike cruising around the bays on the shingle roads

Everything thats green on the bike will be left as is, maybe a good polish. If its black its getting stripped to bare metal and either paint or powdercoat.

The same goes for most of the chrome parts. All the aluminium foil and coke in the world isnt going to bring the chrome back

The rims on the wheels are pretty rusty but solid, so I'm thinking of blasting them and get them powdercoated. Replace the bearings and brake shoes with new items and put shinko 241s on them

I want the bike to be tidy but not spend a huge amount of money on it

Was gonna fix her up for a mate, but he decided it was gonna cost too much. 

Made him an offer and now its mine. 

Sold my suzuki F50 and brought this pile. 

Comment away

Story starts off with my old man getting this off a workmate circa 2005? (along with a couple of other much less interesting scooters) As a kid, I thought it was an ugly piece of crap, and I was right, but I had no idea of the potential of these bikes until almost 2 decades later; until I heard about Syd's Run. 

When i finally got into this in Oct 2022, I fully realised how hilarious the "'""modifications""" are that the previous owners have done to the bike. 

Medication pill bottle for the intake, with red RTV.

Paint can for the side cover

Rubbish bag lookin' seat

whatever that rear guard is?? 

insane.

Has a bunch new stuff

Sprockets

Chain

Comes with new oils

New plugs

New battery 

Just been sitting and needs a going over to see why not starting but cranks over fine and has back fired so confident ill get running as a project race ish bike

its rough cosmetically and has done 130k's but it seems alright mechanically (apart from standard bmw oil leak things) and was the right price most importantly.

I've been hoarding parts slowly for this thing since I got it waiting for winter to roll around to start ripping into it, but this forced holiday thing kinda made me just rip into it now since I'm bored, 

I started off today by tearing the bike apart and pretty happy I found no horrible surprises, plans are to make a new subframe for it, some different tires, simplify everything as much as possible and make it loud and uncomfortable to ride. 

I didn't actually have any before photos, but picture a r80rt with a naked front end and massive 150mm banana handle bar risers that bring the bars to the middle of the tank and bars with a 5" rise on them too, and cracked plastics all round with a spray can paint job.

what it looks like as of today, will pull the motor tomorrow and give it a coat of black, I slapped on the airbox delete on it to see what its like, last part I need at the moment is a 22mm 180degree bend but cannot seem to get one in this lockdown we have going on!

need some peanut rocker covers, repaint the tank and detab and powder coat the frame, depending on how rich I'm feeling I kind of want a motogadget electrics setup, they are super nice units but are rather spendy.

Have been frothing over small engine tracker style dirtbikes since a trip to Indo a while ago. I pretty much just wanted something 2 stroke with rego. This popped up on trademe and was just down the road so I went and got it!

I then turned the backyard into a flat track figure 8 and gave it the hiding of its life.

Then I started stripping it down to change it up a bit.

Have stripped all the crap of it, rebuilt the forks and lowered them 3 inches, put an 18" front wheel on (was 21"), and sandblasted and painted a bunch of stuff.

I chucked it together yesterday to go for a wee skiddie and it was super fun! Handles so much better being slammed with road tyres. It still feels like a moto bike though and is wicked for banging off curbs and grass skiddies!

Have got a new headlight and indicators etc coming so hopefully will have it all together and warranted by the end of the year.

Rad.

Also if anyone is super into their 2 strokes and knows how to work them up properly please let me know! Am super keen to hot up an engine for it!

Im hoping its in the system as I think it would be a fun wee round town bike.

As the title states

Tas Bufallo(?) With a A50 motor.

Runs well 

Goes hard

Rear shocks are bottomed out

Bug #1 the one that started it all.

1980 TF100.

missing parts, it's dirty it's rusty. the seat bracketry has very porous welds and cheap thin pipe material was used . I didn't need a grinder for the added buggery of previous owners literally walloped the added brackets off with a soft mallet. so much is missing or just wrong with this little bike .

Picking it up after lockdown is over.

Not 100% what the plan is, but Google searching has given me a few ideas. I actually like the original version, and a real bonus is the paint colour matches my hair.

So yeah - stay tuned I guess, new project coming to a channel near you soon.

Project bike number 1: Aprilia RST1000 Futura. Thread here 

This is a pretty rare bike and parts are as good as non-existent so I'm having to make and/or repair the damaged and missing parts.

It has small covers on the side of the fairing for the oil and coolant fillers. The right-hand one looks like this:

The left hand one was missing so I bent, welded and generally messed with some 2mm aluminium and made this:

It still needs finishing and painting, but it fits nicely and once it's painted no-one will know the difference.

Everything works runs prety good 

Fairly tydy  shes a jem soooo plains are..

1.Some fresh fuel

2.give a good clean polish crome

3. Have taken for a quick ride went well. But give a good run and see whats the go

4. I have a tail light lense so will chuck that on too

* - what I actually mean is I've been looking for something a little bit more motorbike and a little less scooter. I was originally looking for something 100-150cc, but alas, here we are.

A bunch of my fellow small bike enthusiasts have been dabbling in modern technology, and getting about on the likes of new CT125's, monkeys, and groms. After relentless abuse and peer pressure, I almost caved into following suit. But on a rainy morning, lazing on the couch perusing the latest trademe listings - hello, whats this. Jump in the ute and off to Morrinsville (which actually turned out to be Te Aroha). I must have go the timing just right as by the time I got there, he already had 2 others waiting to come view. After some tyre kicking, stories of benchtop rebuilds and back country hoons, a firm handshake was had and it was a done deal.

So I bought with the plan to repower it and give it to my dad so he can come out on the small bike rides with me and the rest of the small bike community.

My initial plan was to blast everything and repaint the frame and powdercoat everything else that isnt chromed.  I'm going to leave the frame as it is and just give the bike a general tidy up. Replacing cables, bearings, bushes and brake shoes.

The front guard was pretty hammered so I fettled it a little with my planishing hammer, it came out surprisingly good.

Its a bit rough, but it runs. The Z50r never had lights etc so to get this on the road for Syds will be a mish. 

Plans include:

Clean (or replace) Carb and air filter

Get the missing bits (side covers, engine side cover)

Change the stator to one has enough wires to power lights/ indicators/ horn (12v conversion)

Mount above electrics

Paint

Ride

In reality it will probably just be a bike that is left as is and jammed in the back of my truck for a camp ground hack, but I will have much loathing if thats the case

I do have a smokey 90cc Lifan I could jam in this but I think that @Hunterkiwi01 wants that for one of his C100 projects.. 

Pic off marketplace as I get it tomorrow

Hard to believe it's been 10 years since building the original bike, but I'm not going to let being older and assumed "wiser" get in the way of some childish stupidity.

Fingers crossed I'll have this one ready for the 2025 OS Drags.

Long story short it's together riding witha 200cc honda clone motor 

On harley vrod airbags

150psi compressor 

Heres some photos it's been a long since I've posted I'm back into it sorry guys 

Ive got some build videos on my u tube if interested in the build

Its a clone but still real cool.

3speed 50cc

Started ok when i brought it took for a ride was real boggy cleaned the carb now shes happy days.

They've had it in storage for 8 or 9 years with the intention to restore it but life etc did its thing to that plan. So now its ours (Hannah's already smitten with it)

Last rego in 2009.  Pretty low mileage for its age?

This is the first motorbike Ive ever had in NZ.  When I was doing the UK living thing we both got our CBT licences and I bought a classic 1976 Honda SL125 while Hannah bought a 1978 XL125. Then I bought a CL125 and used that for commuting. 

Once back in NZ we'd both had ideas about getting bikes but just never happened. Then this turned up and it'll do for a bit of fun.

I have looked on the nets and not found much info on these. Not sure what the difference is between this F50 and a FR50?  I'd love to know more about the history of them. Wiki has nothing really.

We both thought it best to crack into it and see if it runs. First off Hannah gave it a bit of a clean and removed the cracked fairing. Then I modified the lock barrel to accept a Bedford truck key which happened to be sooooo close to working already.  Neighbours will no doubt find the original key now.

Then put some two stroke mix in. Just some chainsaw mix and I think 50:1 so probably a bit lean? I'm not sure but its probably like the 'which oil weight to use' question. It has a oil tank on the side but for testing purposes I left that empty. I don't even know what oil goes in there- just 2 stroke stuff yeah?

2 stoke m/bikes are a whole new thing to me! Lots to learn.

Gave it a kick over and on the 5th kick it started! Wow. Neat. Sounded great. But learnt that the carb was leaking...

Took the cover off- weird place for a carb  

Looks clean in there but a sticking float needle needed sorting. I first removed and cleaned the fuel tap. It has a vacuum operated diaphram valve on the side that is meant to close off the tap unless the engine is running. Is this common?

Tap was ok but could do with a new rubber sealing washer between it and the tank outlet stub.

Then the carb. A little bit tricky to get out as I didn't want any split hoses but all seemed fine. removed the bowl and cleaned out the valve. Works good now. Bowl had a bit of gunk in it but not much considering the time the bike has sat...

Put it all back together and started it up then took it for a hoon up the drive and back along the road. Fuck its cool. Much more of a giggle than I was expecting. Its like a tiny engine with a big turbo. Nothing nothing nothing and then powerband.  Gear lever is bent and fucked if I can downshift with my heal.

Checked the plug and its not a bad colour..

Took the cover off above the carb and adjusted out the slack in the cable. Odd size - needs a 7mm spanner.

Lubed the twist throttle end and its much nicer to use. Brakes seem fine and tyres are holding air plus have good tread and not perished.

Then went out for more hoons up and down the road. Goes well. Quite fun.

I best check/change the fuel mix before I fuck it though. 40:1?

So I'll sort the gear lever out, fix the fairing cracks, sort out the broken indicator lenses (any ideas on where I might find them ? They look like trailer lights but are the originals) and get a new spark plug.

Then it needs new rego and plate so I'll pop in and do that bit of paperwork.

Keen on a workshop manual but cant find anywhere to download one that suits this model ?

had it since 1983

Trailered it home cos the guy said it wasn't running right, seemed like it was most likely just a blocked jet as it had been sitting for a while.

When I got it home I cleaned out the carbs which made it run better but it kept cutting out if you tried to go higher into the revs. I talked to the mechanics at the local honda shop and they thought it would most likely be a carb balance issue so in it went for a tune which was just meant to be a couple of hundy bucks.

They rang me a day or so later and said that the ignition modules were knackered so we replaced them ~$450...

Then they found it still wasn't running properly so they started messing with the carbs and found a few bad o-rings etc.

In the end I picked up my bike in bits on the trailer with an $1100 bill!

Since then I have rebuilt the carbs myself with all new needles, jets etc, between that and the new ignition modules it has solved the plug fouling issue that it had but it still won't rev.

It rides really nice and I'm really happy with the overall condition of it otherwise though, its pretty tidy, just a few things to tidy up.

Here is a few pics of the beast

Out on a ride with my brother and dad

My steeds

I have big plans for it, the picture below is of the rough shape that I want, in paint I have dropped the bars, lowered the headlight and cluster and changed the rear end.

I have already bought some rear-sets from an old GSXR which I will adapt to the CB.

I want to paint it black with a white stripe or maybe a chequered white stripe down the middle of the tank and tail section.

I want to come up with a really cool retro cafe-racer style logo for "Dixon Performance" to go on the spine of the tank.

I'm also toying with the idea of getting a front disc set-up from a late model single disc bike and adapting it to this bike, that would allow me to have a drilled disc, modern levers and a nicer master cylinder than the monstrous thing on there at the moment.

Bars will be either the flat/drag style bars or clubmans depending on how the riding position looks, gonna get some bar end mirrors and get rid of those huge indicators quick as I can

If I am still enjoying it in a couple of years when I'm actually earning money and haven't sold if for a Ducati then I will invest in some wire spoked wheels for it too

Then I moved back to NZ and didn't really think about bikes again.

But since starting the Imp GW conversion I've fancied a Goldwing to ride. I love the engineering and the absurdness of it all.  Plus if the Imp feels quick at 800kg what would it be like to ride something half the weight with the same torque.  But they are always way more than I want to pay (says the bloke who spends lots of money on bikes with no motors)

This one popped up on my saved search again.  The listing stated the owner as having been diagnosed with Alzheimers and lost his licences. He'd had it listed previously for loads more, way more than I could afford to pay for an unknown bike in the wrong island.

But now the price had dropped to a $1000.  It had developed a clutch issue and was out of wof and he just wanted it gone so he could build the model railway he'd always dreamed of. True story. Was stated in the listing.

I phoned him. His name was Rob and he was super cool on the phone. He told me that no one had bothered to call him. Just texts or emails which he wasn't fond of. I was the first to actually chat to him. I told him about the Imp, that I'd been looking for a gl1500 to ride and we just got on well.

  I paid him straight away, sight unseen. It was only just out of wof in October and even as a spare engine if the bike was in a state it was worth it. But it looked good.  It had a bloody cup holder and air horns!!! 

Just look at it! Its beautiful. Such presence. I was very excited.