BLIZZO

So the africa twin got finished, XR250 finished, Z50 finished and its now just about 12 months since I last posted an update on this. It has been up hogging the bike stand for that time, which i'm getting sick of, so it's time for some action. Just dropped a couple of grand on parts on sibenrock in germany to get it to a restored rolling frame. some bigger ticket items like new fork stanchions and repro front brake rotor made a smallish purchase seem like a big one. Have already got some stainless spokes on hand and a big box of alloy bits ready to drop at the vapor blasters. Over the next month i should get the wheels restored and continue to strip, tag and box all the bits down to a bare frame. Currently having an internal fight in my head as to whether i powdercoat the frame or paint it. would prefer paint from an originality perspective and for touch ups, but nothing i've sprayed or had sprayed before seems to be as good as factory paint finishes. Any recommendations here?

Porika is fine, if old mate is crying about it in a CT he must be a pretty new rider. The first time I did it Blinky bill did it on a CB350four, hayhole on a gn250 with road tyres. Mitch did it on a BMW r80 road bike on our brass monkey trip in winter and it was a walk in the park on my 200kg africa twin with 40kg of luggage. My father in law rides it both ways with the cook on the back of his africa twin. Mangatapu is far more technical than porika

Sweeeet, ferry’s booked for Markku, Steve and myself. Ended up bringing the ute down to blen as it was a lot cheaper than riding on 3 individual bikes, and saves stashing the ute in Wellington. opted for fully refundable fares in case omicron decides to fuck with our shit

shit yes glenis!, there was a 400cc on this ride last year. get it and join in! will be plenty of trailer room coming up from chch

To keep in mind for breakages my father in law has a workshop in havelock which is pretty central for the whole ride. Marrku and I will be staying there before the start and at end of day 1

And yea in terms of difficulty the only spicy bit is the mangatapu. Braeburn is just a causal AF gravel ride, porika is easy going down hill, it’s just a pylon track that you could take a stock 4wd over so nothing technical. Coming up will be easier on small bikes than big bikes, assuming we turn around at the bottom and come back the same way. it’s a shame we don’t push to Murchison and do the maruia saddle afterwards, I’ve ridden that on my xr250 and xrv750 and it’s hands down the coolest track I have hooned in NZ

Think ima jump into this on the CT and markku will join too. That first day is a pretty hectic amount of riding for small bikes. I suggest leaving very, very early from blen. Even the port underwood road will take a while and it’s corrugated to fuck.

Dude that owned it has had it for 16 years. Road it all around the north island commuting for work. it was lightly dropped prior to his ownership hence the repaint of the fairings. it has been painted very well though and has stood up perfectly to 16 years of his ownership. 5 years ago it "developed a carb issue" so he took it to the stealership who cleaned the carb and gave it back and it was no better, being non mechanically minded and strapped for crash he parked it in a shed. 5 years later I know own it. It popped up on the tard for a super cheap asking price and i must have caught it right after listing as i just emailed saying ill take it and then the popped through a bank account, cash transferred i went to waipawa the next morning to collect. Luckily these things have a colt like following especially in europe where they sold in pretty big numbers, there is heaps of bits available and a plethora of information available. i soon found out that they are notorious for poor solder joins in the CDI which crack and give weird "carb like" intermittent spark issues. They don't typically die, just run like crap. I figured this was enough of a lead to bust out the craft knife and open up the CDI. after spending an hour peeling off all the silicone then using my sons kathmandu explorers kit magnifying glass i noticed 3 joins with cracked solder. I gave the CDI to Winny who is good with such electrical things and he reflowed it for me. i then slathered it in black RTV and gooed the cover back on. before trying to start it i thought id clean the carb as it was sitting for so long. Ive pulled apart a lot of carbs over the last few years, and this is hands down the dankest of dank. why the hell is it green! a good soak in degreaser cleaned everything up. I will run it through @Flauskis ultrasonic cleaner to make sure. I have ordered a new carb kit off wemoto and will do some common airbox / jetting mods for more hunu's while im at it. Fingers crossed the kit arrives soon and it will purr like a kitten. While apart i did some other boring jobs such as new battery, reset tappets and other general maintenance. keen as to get it re-vinned and hoon. Also, check out the old main jet after it was cleaned, were they running this thing on acid? Bliz

Then, resided to being down to only one project in the shed, a great deal on a bike ive always wanted to scratch the itch of owning popping up. A 1989 Honda NX650 dominator. The dominator was a faired, more street / city traily type bike made in the late 80's and 90's. the engine was an XR600 donk bored and stroked out to 650cc. Kinda a poverty back single cylinder, lighter version of the africa twin. Did I need it? no, did i buy it? hell yes. What its supposed to look like:

no wrapping paper sorry @HighLUXbut it did get a pretty bow. Cheers to doozi for sorting the decals last minute. Wee man was super cheesed and has done lots of putting around on it with me on the back getting used to the throttle. Seems to find it a lot harder to balance than a push bike, most likely cos it just weighs more than him. More practice and he will get there.

And now, bar the stickers which hopefully arrive in time for Christmas from doozi its all finished. runs mint. Santa can piss off if he thinks he's taking credit for this, this is a chrissy present from Mum and Dad.

When my boy pete, not @V8Pete, my actual son Pete was 1ish @UTERUS had a z50R for sale. i actually tried to buy it but he pipped me at the post, then sold it to me once he got bored. I Grabbed it and stashed it away thinking it would be awesome to do up when Pete was older. not long after getting it i stripped it right down and stashed it in boxes so pete wouldn't accidentally see it. i kind of forgot about it for a while and decided i would wait until he got quite good on a push bike before giving it to him. Bike when i first got it - The bike didnt run too good, was lacking in compression and just all round love. it had been rattle canned an incorrect shade of red and was pretty tatty. its an 1982 Z50R. There must have been a big shipment of Z50s into the country in 82, as it seems most of the ones floating around these days are '82s. The first bits i had done was have the rims and hubs blasted and powdercoated as i was going another bike at the time, might have been the XR in the background of that pic. Then it sat stagnant for like 3 years + During the first lockdown I stripped the engine completely so i could have the cases and ally bits vapour blasted. Discovered the gear shift shaft was bent so got a NOS one from Malcolm at Anaconda along with a new set of Valves as the ones in it were pretty worn and sharp. i love vapour blasting it just comes up so good. I gave the head to Mike at B&H engine services and he cut the seats for the new valves and did a bit of port work for the lols, refaced the gasket surfaces. I grabbed a new cylinder and rings and reused the stock piston as it was fine. Biffed the engine back together a few weeks ago The OG side cover had chunks missing out of it and was tatty. i CBF restoring it so grabbed a genuine one off ebay for $100 The seat base needed some rust repairs and had a local upholstery do a patch up job on the buggered foam, will get a new foam for it at some stage as its still not quite right but i knew that was going to be the case. I sent off all the hardware and had it re zinc coated which makes a huge difference and is super cheap. $40 for the entire bike worth, then sent off all the parts for sandblasting included a new aliexpress fuel tank. Once these came back from blasting I dropped everything off at elite powdercoating here in palmy. The factory honda color is "Blaze red" which is an orangey red. The guys at Elite are awesome and matched it to a red that the use a lot on Go karts as it was apparently the color Ayrton Senna had on his Karts or something, anyway it was a perfect match. Then came the hard bit a couple of weeks ago of assembling it without the wee fella noticing. i had it on a bench in the shed and would work on it in the evenings. stored with a blanked over it for the rest of the time. The mrs would deadbolt me in the garage while I was working on it so Pete wouldnt come wandering in.

replace the gear Joe, $200 isnt worth the time having to crack the cases again.

ive got some bronze coloured cerakote on hand if you wanted to be fancy

surely they will do sit down menus instead, thats what we have hbad years previous to last year

At least there might be some water in the motu Ford this time!

Unsure if goat sarcasm re the kickstart or if you are talking about something else haha. Honda did make the indentification of the kick starter rather clear to avoid any confusion

XR's all finished now, thanks to @64valiantfor repairing the seat foam and recovering my seat. Took it for a blat last weekend and it was way rich so have since down jetted closer to stock, will take for another hoon this week and see how i go, hopefully it flys through a wof as we are off on 5 days of riding next week. Pic dump from last weekends trip in one of the larger forests I manage, Lismore Forest.

Wife was away for the week so I took the opportunity to do some Cerakote on the engine side covers. first time having a crack at this, its pretty cool stuff. Kinda like a liquid powdercoat, just as strong but thinner. Process was sandblast the cases, ultrasonic cleaned them in simplegreen, then soaked in an acetone bath. Cook them in the oven to gas them off then spray with the Cerakote. I got a small HVLP detail gun to do the spraying which made it super easy. After spraying its straight into the oven at 125c for 2 hours to bake. Pretty simple and really looks the part. The burnt bronze is a very close match to the honda bronze / gold.

Have been a bit absent with updates here. Havnt done a lot in the shed since a pretty major back malfunction which looks like its going to require surgery to fix, i got a wee but done before it got quite bad so will fire a few updates through. For those of you interested in the XT250 soz but i had to PPSC it, ended up selling for a moonbeamish $5,000 pretty easily so was quite happy with that. I stripped it back to the frame and painted it, zinc plated just about every bolt and slapped all the NOS bits on that it came with, looked a million bucks in the end, probs why it sold for a million bucks. As far as the XR250 goes a had a bunch of parts turn up. this extra ginormous box turned up from the U S of A, it was 3/4 full of packaging and 1/4 full of this Clarke 16L tank. Pretty stocked with the quality. Also had a full decal kit turn up for once shes all back together. Blue '86 design seat cover also turned up from the states. Its since been shipped off to @64valiantfor some foam repairs and fitting to the seat. Shmancy Wiseco big bore forged piston turned up, this is a 77mm bore piston which gives a displacement of 277cc with every so slightly higher CR. it also came with a full top end gasket and seal set which was handy. Since im want to make it look all pretty tidy I decided to get the top end vapour blasted. im going to cerakote the engine side covers and couldnt be arsed spliting the bottom end so the cases can just get the scotchbrite treatment. Top end stripped and ready for blasting: Vapour blasting does such a lush job, its crazy how much it peens and seals up the alloy. After blasting I ran everything through @Flauskis ultrasonic cleaner. Its crazy how many beads still come out of thread holes and stuff when you think you already have it clean as, def a must do for any engine blasting I think. with the blasting all done I sent the head and cylinder off to my machinist and he did a bunch of stuff, started with boring the cylinder to the wiseco specs and doing ring gaps for me etc. then he surfaced the head, did a 3 way valve job on the valves and lapped them all in, the decided to tickle up the ports with the die grinder. Didnt get many photos soz but im tickle pink with the work. I've now put the engine back together, healthy doses of assembly lube, blue loctite and correct torque settings. man i love fresh zinc plated fasteners. Next up is restoring the plastics. this is a painstaking task and there is no easy way to cheat it, especially with white plastics. I tried cheating with the DA sander but it just doesnt do the job like straight line hand wet and dry sanding. Process to fix fucked plastics was razorblade - 320g - 600g- 800g - 1200g - 1600g- 2000g wet and dry. Then hit it with some cut on a medium speed drill wit polishing pad, wipe off cut then hit with a high speed fine polishing pad. just be careful to not hold for too long in one spot and burn though, I had to start from scratch in a few spots. Rear fender came up good enough, not amazing but will do. Sitting on the bike with new tool bag and rear indicators Next job is to do a DIY cerakote of the side covers and get the engine completely back together, then onto the rest of the plastics.

yea thats weird, views seem to have re started? pretty sure it had a good few hundy like 2 years ago

these are super sweet bikes, my father in law has one that he's had since 1985, did his first brass monkey on it in 1986 and then his last one on it earlier this year. also talked about wanting to get rid of it so ive put my name on it. shit they sound good.

I usually just nibble, preferably earlobes. I’ll get the sack trimmed especially for you xox

Let’s be honest the group splits into multiple packs anyway. We are only riding 250s, there has been 250s before. The main reason we are doing it is because we wanted to make a big trip of it clocking up 1000km+ on the way there and back. I’ve done cape every year on a different small (sub 140) bike every time. The only bikes in my stable suitable for it now are the trombone, which isn’t suitable as it falls to bits on gravel (Mitch can attest to this on our last gravel Hawke’s bay ride) and the next smallest is the xr250. We are all going self sufficient and camping so will be lugging a shit load more gear than everyone else, so it won’t be a dramatic difference. My XR is only happy at 90kmh on the open road anyway. tl;dr, quit ya girly whinging

Bring ya tent ya pussies. Guess it’s easier to have the soup kitchen in a motel than a one man tent.