hmmmnz

right front end done, surprisingly easy, im using an aprilia pegaso 650 complete front end, and using the bmw master for the breaks, and the aprilia head race bearings, funnily enough i had all the bearings to hand (i have a pegaso as well) which was part of the reason i went for this usd set up, all the mods i had to do was shorten the stem on the pegaso triples, make a new set of head lamp brackets, and widen the headrace bearing cover over to fit the pegaso bearings, and make a new mount for the clocks, by far and away the easiest usd conversion ive done, any way pics my headlight brackets are just 2 exhaust clamps per side and a steel plate clocks, almost the same outlook next is either seat and rear subframe or rear wheel

right long time no reply, well havn't done a huge amount, rear wheel has been machined then un-machined, then left, i'll get round to it at some stage, i did the exhaust, im not entirely happy with it so will probably change it at some point to bring it closer to the frame, and have a more level run, but i am happy with the noise, its quiet at idle but makes an awesome noise at full whack, any way pics: video yeah, thats all for now, front end next

who has a ldv in new zealand?? they are a dime a dozen over here in the uk, but i never saw one in nz, project is coming along nicely,

yeah i had a pair on my vf1000 they were awesooooome, best cheapest cans ive ever bought, emgo i think they were,

hmmm i had a similar carb on my kh125, and that would piss fuel out randomly, whats the state of the float needle and its seat?? some times you just suck a bit of shit into the bowl and it gets stuck on the seat, not letting the float needle to fully close off, bowl over fills, and out she comes, if your needle has a wee seat line it might cause the same problem

^^^^ like the britten motorbike, every part with atleast 2 uses awesome stuff

its been done before as well, but the problem being is the angle of the spokes from the hub, when you lace them to the center it ends up bending the spokes, because the amount of spoke that is set into the hub part, ill drop off my hub to be "un-machined" which will impress my machinist no end

ive tryed before just to re-lace one, and failed badly, they just dont lace the same, even got a couple of bike shops in taupo to try and they couldnt do it, ended sending it over to a guy in the uk to do, (bmw dont fix, they try and get you to buy a new complete wheel) ive tryed to get him to do this rim, but he won't do it with an off set, best option/cheapest, is just to get the hub back to standard, and then make a spacer for the brake shoes to fit the hub and then fill the 20mm gap that it will leave, shouldnt be too hard, and if i ever dent or fuck the rim, i wont have to pay again for it to be laced offset

bmw uses cross laced rims, basically the spokes go to the outside of the rim, not the center like a traditional rim, is so you can have a tubeless tire on, bmw x lace rims traditionaly laced rim the bmw rims are notoriously hard to even lace as standard, let alone with an off set, no one in the uk was willing to try it, and i only found 2 guys who would lace a bmw xlace rim

ok a bit of a pictureless update, well got the wheel machined, sweet i think,.... nope, just because its been done before doesnt mean its the best way basically the hub fits perfectly, but the side effect to that is that the rim hits the swingarm, what i didnt read is that the rim has to be laced with an off set, and there is basically only 1 place in the world that is willing to and has success of doing this with bmw cross laced rims, woodys wheel works in the states, which would mean sending the wheel over 50 quid, getting them to do the work 250 quid, new spokes 50 quid, postage back 50 quid, and if i wanted a 18" rim on instead of te 17" thats another 100 quid so 500 quid total!!!! hmmmm thats almost the price i paid for the bike, so just isnt going to happen, my new plan is space the shoes out and make a filler for the gap, im not sure why this hasnt been done before,?? i cant really see a problem with it, i guess people just follow some one elses example and go from there, im just pissed that i machined the hub, with out fully thinking things through, atleast i can machine a spacer to bring it back to standard so not all is lost

never hurts puling the head on a 2 stroke, that way you get to see the condition of the piston, rings and barrel, you'll be able to re-use all the gaskets

you do need a bike, every one needs one, for cheap commuter duties if nothing else, mono lever swing arms are probably the strongest of all the single sided swing arms that bmw have used, quite often guys with the newer paralever swing arms will change them out for the mono's , also the monos are filled with oil, where the paralevers are dry, so you tend to fuck shafts every 40k miles or so, essentially they are consumable parts on the paralever bikes,

ok, not long ago i bought an 1989 r80rt monolever beemer, i was actually looking for an older r80/100 gs-pd or older g/s air cooled for a scrambler project the reason was they had the wire wheels, and i detest the cast wheels on these old beemers, but they were going for stupid money here in the uk, and then this old rt came up for about 1/3 my budget of what i was willing to pay for the gs model, so i thought fuck it, i can some how make it spoked, i was going to change the front end of the gs any way, so that would only leave the rear wheel that would need some thinking about, so anyway, collection, i had to drive down into england to pick up a bath room for the old merc camper, and this bike was kind of on the way, in so much as it was south of scotland met up with the guy, paid him the money and would return in the after noon to collect after getting the bath room, all was good did that and rode back to edinburgh with no issues, the rt models when they came out looked like this whoa, super ugly fairing massive screens etc, perfect tourers, but one of the ugliest beemers ever mine didnt come with the fairings (previously crashed) which suited me just fine also the guy changed the rocker covers from the flat newer style to the older skool ones no really fussed either way, i had already ditched the tail section and gave it to a mate, as ill be completly changing the back end any way the plan, 1 change the rear wheel to a r100gs wheel, i bought that already and as we speak its being machined down to fit the monolever hub (there is no straight replacement wheel, but the gs wheel is close enough, and just requires 21.25mm (in my case) to be machined down inside the wheel itself) so no biggie after that will be the front end or exhaust ill be using a usd front end of un-known manufacture as a replacement to the stock beemer forks wheels, triples, etc, probably a drz or crf may be some white powers, price will determine that, the exhaust will be a high level custom made running high from the start either 2-2 all the way through like a cl360 or 2-1 like this unsure yet i will also raise /drop the swing arm and probably move the mount onto the steel part of the swing arm and possibly lengthen the swingarm to gain a bit of extra travel im going to try and get it look a bit like this but obviously a monolever, with exhaust on 1 side only, and usd forks yeah, so, this will be a long-ish project, im a bit low on funds after bumming around europe in the campervan for the summer, and skiing all last winter, really should start looking for a job

in true red neck style we used to put in some kerosene or diesel if there was a pre det problem, used to work a treat

sweet, better nick than what i was expecting, whip that engine out and pull the head, and give us a look mister D: hopefully no water has managed to get into the bottom end and seize the conrod to the crank and all big end bearings seized(had this happen to a bridgestone i owned) hopefully its just a top end rebuild, gear box oil, and carb to sort, and obviously all the frame stuff keep us posted, did you get that work shop manual i put a link up for?

looks cool, i hope your arn't thinking of going hard tail?? we had an old one that was hard tailed, but being as light as they are you always end up taking them off road, and sure enough end up popping tyres and bending rims not to mention bending the frame mounts, any way, looking forward to progress pics

actually im thinking of a different scooter reguarding the expansion chamber, so dont cut that one up, but they do benefit from a good de-coking every few thousand km's

lol i had one of those when i was 15 was awesome, you could at the time get a bigbore kit which made them stupidly fast, but i didnt have the money, but if you gut the expansion chamber of its baffles you can get close to 70kmh

i know may be the speedo was massively out, it was the days before gps's it did have over drive which was cool, just had a look at the specs and looks like it did have a twin carb motor 1725cc producing 107hp so that surely could do 200 on the clocks??

yeah i had a hillman hunter gls, im sure that it was just a single carb (but can't remember now) and it used to fly, would do over 200kmh which was ridiculous considering how shit the brakes were, some times bigger carbs arn't always better, i down sized the carb in my velox, and got 5hp extra on the dyno and better mpg

so it is, you can buy them out of the uk for about 500 quid max, buy a couple and ship them back to nz

i had one on a little 125 i bought in the uk, they work, but not so you'd ever notice, but i doubt they'd do any harm so go for it

well long time no pics, when i last left ya i think we were in montenrgro, from there we went into albania, which by far and away is the most 3rd world country ive been to, except every one has merc's, im talking flash v12 amg mercs, through to the humble 200 series, even saw a amg sls, but the roads are so bad, soo soo bad, you can barely get to 60kmh on there version of the motorway with out hitting massive potholes, or cars coming down the wrong side of the fucken road!!! at one point in one of the cities, there was a car double parked so i passed it on the other side of the road, and while doing that was passed in turn, they are the most retarded drivers!!! no patience whats so ever, basically every stolen merc in europe ends in in albania, no infristructure to speak of and rubbish every where, any way, albania - land of stolen mercs and mental drivers, next was macedonia, which i really liked, roads changed soon as we were over the border, not great, but no pot holes and the drivers were better, the country still has that ex communist feel, and there are abandoned towns and massive holiday resorts (we stayed in a couple, was awesome if a bit creapy)) one we stayed in had a huge man made lake but it was like they gave up maintaining it and the whole resort when they gave up communism, but free is free so a good night, a couple of days ago we came into bulgeria, which is the first western feeling place we've been in a while, it still has a bit of the commy stuff, old statues and random Yugoslavian cars, but western prices, if not worse, but beer is still cheep, 1.30Bulgarian lev for 2 litres so about $1.10nzd which isnt to be sneezed at ok some pics, ill try and stick to cars and shit intsead of boring you lot with "holiday pics" we all hate that shit the camper in albania wicked lada ambo in montenegro the merc at some random hydro lake we camped at a pinzgaur, possibly next camper base??? some booze i found that was 99.5% alcohol !!! the top of a mountian road in macedonia 1600meters up another lake in macedonia , my whole trip seems to be going from one lake to another, none of them beat taupo though possibly one of the coolest citreons ive ever seen some polsie fiat 126 awesomeness that creepy macedonian abandoned holiday resort with the man made lake some cool old rear engined yugoslavian van one of the thousands of statues in skopje (the capital of macedonia, and possibly the coolest capital cities ever) a yugoslavian car fuck knows what it is, in bulgeria yeah so thats it, another 4 or 5 days here in bugeria then off to romania

wow been a long time since any sort of update, well done 8000km so far, been through 12 countries, drunk far too many beers... (is such a thing possible, no your right, not possible) the basic route so far, scotland- england- france- belgium- luxemburg- germany- netherlands- germany- austria- litchensteign- switzerland- italy- slovenia- croatia- montenegro which is where we are now, of all the countries, germany and slovenia have been the best, we just arrived in montenegro so ill hold fire on judgement on that, but seems cool, they all speak a variation of serbian, which to my ears sounds like russian, and there are some cool old cars, some random old yugos and crotia was a country full of renault 4's we must have spotted atleast 10 -20 per day, it became the eyespy of choice, even though im driving, i won today 8-4 apart from the cool old cars in croatia, i wasnt impressed with the country, rubbish every where, including the packed beaches, and the national parks are run like theme parks, with comparable prices, and there is no freedom camping allowed, which sucked balls, because we found a super quiet lake, in the middle of no where, but because there was no beach or national park nearby, there was no camp ground, fucken homos, and to top it off i got clamped in duprovnic, apparently you arnt allowed to park with in 1km of the old city in a campervan, i call bull shit!! but 50 euro lighter, i drove away, montenegro seems to be a european version of malaysia, except i dont stand out like dogs balls because im tall and white its just as run down though, despite being a pretty new country, but the beer is cheap, 2l bottle cost about 1.40euro so $2.80 approx nzd ok some random pics first up a renault 4, pretty cool cars, id have one and a Zastava basically a serbian fiat saw this wicked unimog 404 tonight, i was very tempted to find the owner and get it shipped back for my next camper proect, but the mrs wouldnt have a bar of it even fitted with the original om617 motor (big brother to the om616 4 cylinder thats in my camper) seen loads of these t a m trucks, which are also awesome, top speed about 70kmh but ace in that eastern utilitarian way, made in the formr yukoslavia you guys dont really want to see scenery so a couple of beers yeah, missed loads of shit but you know how it is, the mrs has been doing a blog thing, so if you want to see where we and the mighty merc have been, then click the link http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog/kirstyandlogan/1/tpod.html

will def stop off in london on the way back, in netherlands at the moment while the mrs is back in scotland at a funeral, saw my first windmill, still havn't seen any one wearing clogs yet though, went for a bit of a tour around some local towns with the parents of a dutch mate of mine who now lives in new zealand, wa pretty cool, nothing like a it of local knowledge, arh well getting my first home cooked dinner fr a whie, so better go,