Blizzo's scoot hoard and projects of win

[BLIZZO]

Another bike ticked off the to do list. The XR250R from a page back that i started restoring is finally finished. just need to make a bit of a rear rack / fuel can mount for our 800km feilding - picton - molesworth - hamner - rainbow rd - lake tennyson - nelson - picton - feilding trip coming up next month.

Im really happy with how this bike turned out, people bag 250s for being slow but this thing still pops wheelies pretty easily and with the 6 speed sits on 115km/h quite comfortably without revving high. She got a clean sheet wof this morning, although riding it this afternoon my horn stopped working ha, along with my USB charger. gunna try ride the shit out of it over the next couple of weeks to make sure its reliable for the south island adventure.

[BLIZZO]

have been acquiring some bits for a while to build something radical, time to crack on with this

[My name is Russell]

Can't wait for that Molesworh - rainbow station ride  #Facepalm 

[BLIZZO]

wellllll after my wagnats shakedown ride i got home and the engine sounded like a bucket of bolts. stretched cam chains are common on these so figured it was worth a look and yea the tensioner was near max adjustment, and the way the spring is oriented on these tensioners as it gets closer to max adjustment the spring closes, and the spring was pretty much closed, providing no pressure, so new cam chain it was.

in the mean time i had a sweet AF hubless spool, radially laced akront wheel turn up for the chopper, this thing has some cool bike history with it, has been laced like this since the 70s and has been on some pretty rad choppers, now its on mine. even has an old as fuck Avon Speedmaster on it, just needs the Burt Munroe treatment on the cracks in it.

XR all back together, started first kick when cold, which it never used to, as the people at whagnats would have seen me kicking the shit out of it before i left. happy man, head off down south on it this afternoon. Molesworth and Rainbow roads are closed but i have pieced together a route than uses about 60-70% gravel / forest / pylon tracks and other that missing out on the expansive views of Molesworth, it should be a far better and more interesting ride.

lets go..

[BLIZZO]

The XR laughed at the 1040km mission on the weekend. Bloody great time and did some amazing tracks down south. Porika Track, Braeburn Track and the Mariua Saddle were the cool sections, Maruia saddle is the coolest bit of road / track i have ever ridden.

[HighLUX]

Giz XR plz

[BLIZZO]

welllllll, ive brought another bike.

Long story slightly shorter is I really enjoyed the ride down south, with a somewhat stressful operations / planning / contractor management type job and busy family life pulling on the helmet and heading away for a few days is just such an amazing head clearer. The XR is lush for weekend trips but its a stay in back packers type bike, id never be able to load it right up with camping gear and head off on big trips.

My father in law has a real lush Honda RD06 Africa Twin, to non motorcycling people the Africa twin came after the success of BMWs R80 G/S (the other big bike i have) in Paris Dakar and honda cleaned up for a number of years. Capitalizing on the race success of the NX650 (africa twin race bike) honda had HRC make an available to public version called the XRV750 (its a 750cc watercooled V twin). these bikes werent made in massive numbers and became immensely popular for adventure motorcyclists as the can be loaded right up, are a pleasure to ride and are uuuber reliable. they have a massive following these days and are very sought after, if one does pop up for sale they only last a couple of days and are snapped up. Honda stopped making them in 2001 with the final RD07A. (tin 2016 honda put out a new africa twin which is a parallel twin for like 22k that you will see baby boomers riding to cafes on).

Sooooo, one popped up on trademe for $2500 starting bid and $3500 buy now (tidy looking ones go for 4.5-6k+) and it was missing all the cool bits of an africa twin, some rear plastics and the uber cool color scheme as it was painted yuck rattle can yellow, has vom inducing checkerplate in places and a grot non factory front guard. I can look past some of these things and certainly did when i found out how good mechanically this thing was, looks can be changed, as i did with the XR etc, and it works well for me cos the fact it looks gross put other buyers off and i got it cheap $2500. also the fact its in queestown might have put people off but that just sounds like  perfect adventure to me, im flying down on the 30th to ride it back up via molesworth. I sold my CB50 to @Mitch.W to cover a good chuck of the investment / garage space for the AT, was sad to sell it but choice that its staying local with someone whos gunna hoon it good.

so this bike has a very passionate current owner and its got a bit of history, he purchased it in 2008 at 23,000kms and road across canada / usa and down south america -

when he got back (bike now at 60,000kms) it had a small score on one of the pistons and he asked the local bike ship to pull and inspect over winter when they werent better, long story short the shop changed hands and they completely rebuilt the engine with a cost of $6700 (he has reciepts) to which he then argued and they agreed to split the bill 50/50, so good for me the bikes now at 70,000 kms with a brand new engine, has also just had brakes and wheel bearings done.

here is bike in current grot state, the checker plate is grot as well as the paint but the gerry can plastic panniers are ugly but very clever, it keeps them as narrow as the handle bars for offroad riding so you dont get caught on stiff, the wont rip like textile ones and unlike alloy ones they have a bit of give so wont snap your rear subframe / mounts when you drop it.

so ill ride it the 1100 odd kilometers home over 2 days, then probs ride it some more, aquire some replacement plastic parts (front fender, tail section) and might have a crack at making my own fibreglass side covers that stick out less than factory ones to have the option to keep the bike slim when panniering up.

then plan is over the winter to give it a bit of maintenance, something i like doing to all new bikes mostly so i can figure out how they work so i know how to fix in middle of nowhere, slap a coat of white on it and then get some rothmans decals made up from the Dakar bike of the era as per this beautiful one

oh and for those wondering, this is what the bike would have looked like when new, such cool graphics.

 

 

[johnnyfive]

My man

[Chris.QCR]

So stoked for you bro ! This is absolutely perfect for what you want to do and its great that its got such epic history and that you got it for a song.

Fizzing to see you make it mint like all your other bikes

[Truenotch]

Congratulations on becoming middle aged!

[BLIZZO]

2 hours ago, Truenotch said:

Congratulations on becoming middle aged!

haha ive been waiting for this slack,

unfortunately there are far too many boomers around on "adventure bikes" that dont go off the tarmac. Im looking at this as another challenge to be able to go away for a week or so self sufficient and see places i couldnt otherwise get to without support crews etc, and the challenge of riding a 200kg bike in places that a 200kg bike shouldnt.

i look at my father in law and what he does on his Africa Twin, 2 up with his wife on the back, in terrain i would find difficult on my XR250.

im def keeping the XR for weekend trips or technical trips, but look at the AT as a "motorcycle caravan"

 

But your right @Truenotch, its essentially the motorcycling version of an MX5, so now we have something in common.

[kyteler]

Shit son.  That's an epic upgrade.  Well done you. 

[HighLUX]

You and Dakar Dave can hold hands side by side riding  into the sunset 

[kyteler]

I took this picture in the Honda Museum in Japan which I think might be appropriate here now. 

[Shakotom]

Daaaaaymmmmn

[Truenotch]

35 minutes ago, HighLUX said:

You and Dakar Dave can hold hands by highsiding  into the sunset 

 

[BLIZZO]

Mrs and kids went down south to her parents place for 10 days over easter, this gave me the much needed opportunity to get into the shed and tick a few jobs off, and also fly to Queenstown to pick up the boomer bike and ride it home.

spent a few days chipping away at some jobs on the rally car then got into the trombone. PPSC have a 500km ride coming up next weekend and i needed to get some auxiliary fuel and a little rack to carry a small bag with my wet weathers and beer. i like the idea of the center legsheild racks but im too jew to buy some so i said my goodbyes to the Wifes clothes horse, as i cut it up to get some steel to make this

bent up a bit of a profile on one side, then copied it for the other side and it started to take shape.

while i was mucking around with it i also make a nice real solid mount for my CT aux fuel can to snug in nice and tight on the back, this should give me some half decent range now with about 6 litres on board in total

then i flew down to queenstown on a thursday night, collected the africa twin  then heading north on the friday taking a pretty cool route to chch via hawkesburn road to clyde, over the danseys pass to Kurow then over the Hakataramea pass and up to chch where the GC @Chris.QCR housed, fed and beer'd me for the night, and also leant me some waterproof gloves which becuase crucial on the next day where it pissed down the entire time as i went up to Domett, met up with my father in law on his africa twin and then went over kaiwai rd to Culverden and up the rainbow road to st bathans, to his place in havelock for a quick cuppa and then to the ferry terminal. ferry was delayed and i got into welly about 11:30 saturday night and then made the last dash home to feilding. was just over 1600kms in 48 hours in the end, a great ride to get used to the bike, just should have cleaned out the airfilter in queenstown and i might have saved myself like $50 worth of gas, thing sucks it back! cant wait to rip into it and start making it look pretty.

Also, i got myself a Blizzshop embroided patch made up for my vest after the GC PPSC aritst callum smacked this logo together for me, i got a bunch of extra ones made up if anyone wants one send me a PM and ill get one out to ya for $10.

 

 

[BLIZZO]

well i was planning on taking the trombone to this years east cape ride (te uruwera) but this wee gem of a GP125 popping up on trademe for a bloody good price, with reg on hold, and after hearing @TimShadboltfan27 harp on like a barry at a sandal convention about how hard the go for that they iz i thought id grab it.

first trap for young players was this hilariously added throttle governing screw that has been added and was wound right in. dude never told me about it and i couldn't figure out why it was slow, turns out it was a riding school bike and they had to limit them to stop dweebs hurting themselfs, not a problem that they have with GN125s anymore id think.

so this was the slide height at full throttle with the governing screw in

also note that dimple on the slide, as it turns out when that circle touches the top of the carb opening as it is in this position, is where you set the CCI oil pump to meter is max amount of oil using the lines on the pump arm and pump body.

so once i had that sorted it still didnt run to good, so i whipped the air filter out which fell to bits and had all solidified so that wasnt helping, i order a sheet to make a new one. i also whipped the baffle out of the exhaust which was like 90% blocked, and with the baffle out you can see here that the muffler is almost half full with scum and oil from 30 odd years of putt putting between cones

so hopefully this weekend it will be back together and close to its original claimed HP of 15 wild wild smokey horses.

should be nice and comfortable for east cape, the tank itself being 10l should be enough for any fuel distance we will require so wont need to carry extra, and will run this tank back and just a small 20l dry bag strapped to the back. looks like i might be taking a bivvy to sleep in too as the cabins at waikaremoana are all booked.

then its just sorting tyres, stock tyre size is a bit better than most small bikes with 300-18 on the rear and 275-18 on the from. i grabbed one 300-18 shinko 244 and will see if it clears the guard on the front, if it does ill order another and run 300-18 all round and if it doesn't ill just smack it on the rear and whack a 275-18 shinko 241 (PPSC control tyre) on the front, but would be nice to have matching styles i think.

bit bloody excited to have a 2 stroke in the shed, hopefully it doesn't cause me headaches which is the predominant reason i don't usually have 2 stokes in the shed.

[BLIZZO]

sooo we moved into our new pad. i sorta half unpacked my shed and then got the itch to do something motorcycle related. Im taking the GP125 on the Te Uruwera ride, and decided to use it on DGR also, so what better idea is there to completley strip it down 2 weeks before DGR and then have it sandblasted and powdercoated right?

bai felicia 

Got it back from the blasters yesterday and took it straight to powdercoaters after i put sacrificial bolts into all the threads. Hes gunna have it ready next monday maybe so might have to take a day off work next week to smash it together before DGR. Gave the cylinder and head a lick of paint and scraped back the ends of the fins while I was at it.

I had all the bits for the '82 Z50R sandblasted at the same time so i can start restoring that for the young fulla now too, excite.

[BLIZZO]

oh oh oh i forgot the coolest part. Had our resident PPSC pinstriper do some subtle tank art for it.

PENNY PINCHERS SCOOTER CLUB BUY FOR CHEAPS SELL FOR HEAPS