gazguy

I bought a different rear wheel over the weekend from a mate. It ticked all the boxes for me. 16 inch chrome rim, conical hub and half decent tyre. The only thing i need to source is an axle. Once Ive finished the a50 Im going to give most of my time to getting this thing at least close to finished this or next year. Things I'm going to change/ redo Remake the hardtail. I want to shorten it up, different mounts to the front loop. Its going to be easier to make a new one than mess about and modify this one. Remake the exhaust, as my skills and tools have progressed I'm going to make the exhaust out of stainless. It'll look cooler and save me having to chrome it, maybe do a different design? Different front wheel, I robbed the front wheel to put on my CG125. Turns out its a CL175 hub laced to a 21inch rim and I got some CL175 forks from my best mate Lee. Its temporarely going to be replaced with an SL125 front wheel until I find a 21 front that I really like, I have a couple of twin leading edge honda hubs lying about so might get one laced to a 21inch rim with good chrome

I was so sure that I had a 420 front sprocket kicking about somewhere. Probably swapped out from when I'd bought a new lifan and it came stock with a 420. Sure enough I did. Ages ago I'd started organising my workshop, get parts in order, label the shit out of everything so I can find them easlly...... Good job I didnt get another sprocket. So I bolted it on, used my new 1/4'' torque wrench and installed the DID chain I got from MCDU I think I'll make a chain guard like I did for dads ST90 then its just the wiring and bulbs to sort

My mate Steve Van Klink came through again and messaged me if I wanted a seat, he sent me a pic and we agreed on a price. The next day I knocked off work early and went to his work it pick it up. He had it previously fitted so the brackets fitted up nicely. Ive picked up a 420 chain for it from MCDU and I'll order a 420 front sprocket from mBike for it. Then its just the wiring to sort out

I'd been thinking of how to make the exhaust hanger, I was going to use some 19mm stainless solid bar and turn up some bungs and weld it all together but I thought just keep it simple. I dug out my manual tube bender, bought some 16mm aluminium tube from Bunnings, bent it, squashed it and drilled some holes. I'm pretty happy with it. The seat is pretty cooched, I pulled it apart to see the condition of the base, it looked good from but far from good. i've cleaned it up as best I could and will treat it with some Por15. @felixx has offered to help me make a seat cover for it, what GC! For the time being I'll use this generic brat/cafe racer style seat I got from a swapmeet at the beginning of the year. I'll paint it black with some vinyl dye

Some small progress today but jobs I've been either putting off or just not having the time. I got a brake and clutch lever from trademe as both of them were missing from the bike when I bought it. Bought from different suppliers, one was polished silver the other satin black. So I threw the satin black one in the blast cabinet and gave it a quick polish to match the other one. The clutch perch doesnt have provisions for an adjuster and the cable for the lifan would have heaps of slack so I made a spacer out of some stainless, Luckily theres adjustment on the cable at the engine side. I want to try and keep the switch gear as original as possible and the throttle cable uses a 6mm cable adjuster going into the housing. Most common universal/aftermarket cable use a M10x1,25mm adjuster. so I turned up an adapter on my lathe using some aluminium I had spare and some 6mm threaded rod then modified a throttle cable I had kicking about. So thats the cables all done. When I looked at the chain alignment I thought the lifan motor was mikes out and thought about using an offset sprocket, easier said than done. Nowhere had any in stock, so I thought about using c50 rear wheel so pieced one together from parts I have as spares. Before I swap wheels over I thought about putting a mock up chain on it and checking alignment. I t was actually spot on. I'll get a new chain for it either this week or at the weekend inbetween kids sports on Saturday. The last major things to top off the list are the seat and the electrics to finish wire up.

I havent really touched this in a while, mostly just look at it while I walk past it. so I thought I'd make a battery box for it. Originally I was going to make it from some mild steel I have kicking about but thought I'd give it a try from some aluminium I had at work. I cut it out and folded it with a combination of my 600mm folder and one of those 100mm folders you put in the vise. Fizzed it up with the tig

With the rear guard painted and mounted I turned my attention the rear tail light bracket. One of the mounts had snapped and I'd forgotten where the snapped part went so I made my own and tig'd it up. Painted it black and fitted new hardware, when I was cleaning the rubber grommets I came across the other part of the mount..... oh well. I ordered a new wiring loom from aliexpress instead of modifying the original. Its a pretty good fit the only thing I need to modify is where the wires for the ignition switch go. The headlight bucket had some pretty decent cracks in it so I reinforced them with some 2 part epoxy, polished up the indicators and mounted them

A small update nothing too major. originally i had painted both mudguards, painted them both with with 'gloss' aluminium paint but overall i wasnt very happy with outcome. They were very shiny but showed greasy fingerprints like a m'fer. My mate Steve messaged me last night asking if I was still looking for guards and he said he had a front one in ok condition and a chainguard which are apparently hard to come by. He called in this morning to drop them off from his place in oxford, GC! The front looks much nicer now and with the rear guard clearcoated it looks less gawdy. I also picked up an SL70 yesterday. Ive been looking for a while with no luck only getting xr75 parts instead. So if anyone has any sl70 parts and want xr75 parts instead hit me up and we can do a trade

I was going to get the wheels blasted and powder coated but came to the conclusion that I'll either wait and find some rims in good condition and get them rebuilt with the original hubs or find a pair that are in better condition. same with the guards. I hit the guards with the sander to remove the heavy flakes of rust and sandblasted the hard to reach areas, then primed them. The front guard isnt too bad but the rear has heavy pitting so I'll fill them with body filler and spray the guards with gloss aluminium paint. Cos the missus works Sundays I try and get as much done in the garage as possible then, today I got the tyres mounted. The front I had from a while back, 17x2.50 and the rear a 17x2.75 which I bought from Adam at MCDU in Christchurch. The engine is mounted, its the old one from my chaly, 125cc manual

Because it was such a nice day today I thought it would be a good time to spray some parts. before I painted them I degreased them and threw them in the blast cabinet. I did the centre stand, brake pedal, bottom triple tree and the swingarm.

I stripped the bike down to the bare frame, I made new engine plates to replace the ones that came with the "conversion". The ones I made bolt to the existing suzuki mounts to stop them from pivoting. The guy who done the conversion cut the frame to allow clearance for the Lifan, when he cut the frame he cut it to pretty much a 90 degree, which to me could lead to the frame cracking. So I welded in a fillet piece with a radius.

So I picked this up last week from a young fella in Lincoln, money was exchanged and because my Nissan Homy currently doesnt have a WOF I stripped it down squeezed it into my Nissan Cube. 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

Hey mate, the loom I got made was literally plug and play. The guy who made it wanted to know what switches I was using, what plugs they used etc and he made it to suit. Hes 428 Garage on instagram

A quick update on my dads ST90, I always thought the shocks were a little tall so I replaced them with some shorter chrome ones from mBike. I think theyre about 30mm shorter. The stance is so much better now. I replaced the innertube on the rear wheel as it had a pinch, cleaned the chain and lubed it. Took it for a test ride and got sprayed with oil from it. I thought I'd dried it enough, obviously not... so I made a chainguard out of some 50x100 aluminium RHS i got from work. I never had the end cap that covers the flasher unit side of the tool box so I flogged the lid from the pickle jar and painted it black. My dad passed away in February from a short battle with a very aggressive cancer. So this year I'm riding his bike to syds run and made a laminated photo to mount to the front guard. I'll get some double sided tape tomorrow and mount it. I'll be wearing his favourite Burt Munro hoodie that he got when we went to Invercargill in 2016 and wear his helmet too.