Anglia4’s small bikes

[anglia4]

Then this ST90 popped up for a good price, so I snapped it up and stuck it in the shed, unsure quite what my plans for it would be.

About a week after spending all my bike budget on the ST90, old mate with the ZX Dax came back to me to say he was ready to sell it 

So my dad brought that instead, put a hot cams YX 140 in it, rides it regularly and absolutely loves it...

For me, still a dream...

 

[anglia4]

The Red ST90 has no rego history, and then another came available with rego on hold, so I did some wheeling and dealing and got ST90A sold and ST90B purchased.

It didn't take much to get it a WOF, and then I've been riding it around quite a bit since. It is a real sweetie, original and tidy little bike. Its much less painfully slow than my V50, so I have been using it much more.

Now I'm stuck in my head, still wanting my dream restomod, but not wanting to ruin this nice original bike, and still with no cohesive plan on what I really want, or how I am going to achieve it.

[anglia4]

I had been doing heaps of thinking about what I wanted to build, and what would let me get the most enjoyment out of how I like to ride. Ultimately, I was starting to think that what I want to do is:

• Learn how to wheelie
• Be able to do proper power roosts out of gravel turns

Then this abortion came up on the buy and sell:

It was a metalwork project at the local boys high, so has obviously been welded by someone who has never held a welder before, and it was dirt cheap. But it has a really cool set of upside down forks, and some nice wheels with disc brakes.

I stashed this in the shed for a while, as I've been focusing heavily on finishing my Galaxie. Lately though, the Gal has been off site, so there have been times when I would have worked on it, but can't, so I sniffed an opportunity to finally make a start on building something.

I collected my spare frame, and started sifting through parts boxes and looking around for what I could use to mock something up.

I commissioned dad to make up some spacers, and got a tapered roller headset bearing set from M-bike, and suddenly that front end is attached to my bike.

I was absolutely certain that I had brought an ST90 swingarm with the green frame, but buggered if I can find it. So I started looking around the shed for alternatives.

I found the "Zesty Bandito" which is a relic of my childhood, that I can't find a photo of right now. I'll tell the sharn though.

When I was about 9 or 10, I wanted to get into trail riding with dad, but at the time I was on a YZ80, and dad was well aware that it would be an absolute nightmare on a king country trail ride. But torquey 4-strokes for kids were limited to heavy old hondas, and dad wanted me to have disc brakes. So he brought a KX80, and proceeded to shoe-horn an XR200 motor into it. The result, the Zesty Bandito.

It never quite worked properly, as there was a loooong intake manifold to fit the carb in the frame, but we got a few trail rides out of it before I was tall enough to move to a WR200. The Zesty got absolutely thrashed around home for years though, and then abandoned in the shed for a couple of decades which took a toll on most of it.

What it did still have though, is a swing-arm and a 14" rear wheel (the high school bike has a 12" rear) with disc brakes. But surely there's no way it will fit easily onto an ST90.

Turns out it fits extremely well and would be a bolt on with a couple of small spacers.

But, I want to keep the original proportions, so the long swingarm look is no good. I also want to keep the twin shocks.

So last night I cut it up.

Dad has made up some nice profile cut designs to fit a Lifan into one of his ST90's, its a really well thought out and easily repeated design, so he cut a set out for this one, and then proceeded to completely remodel it as the engine that's initially going in here has different mounts  I still just need to weld the pieces together.

Dad also spent a bit of time on this last week and built a wiring loom for it

So the whole thing is coming together surprisingly easily so far. I would like to try and get it ready for the King Country Crusade, but I won't be upset if I don't make that deadline, as I have set myself a rule that I will only work on this at times when I can't be working on the Galaxie.

 

[anglia4]

I've just done a test fit of the chopped up swingarm before I commit to having it welded.

I'm pretty excited by the results, so had to share.

I think I'm going to need to shorten the forks a little bit to level this out. I think adding more height to the rear to do it will make it look a bit funny. The rear geometry looks pretty good (non scientific, just looks pleasing to the eye) in the photos below, but with the frame level, its ~100mm shorter in ride height than the front!

I presume I can just cut the springs down in the forks?

[anglia4]

I decided to make an auxiliary fuel tank out of an original air filter. This bike will run a uni filter, so this will help maintain some of the original look.

Im trying to achieve a resto-mod kind of style that pulls in lots of ties to the original bike.

 

[anglia4]

3D printed a dash insert for an old Honda chaly(?) headlight bucket.

Eventually this will hold a 2” gps speedo but for now I’ve made an inset for the insert to plug the hole.

[anglia4]

The modified swing arm is coming together. It’s taken some mega stuffing about to get it square but I think it’s there now.

 

still a huge amount left to do and only a week before the king country crusade!

[anglia4]

 

[anglia4]

So this bike that I thought I might be able to cobble together in the space of 2 months, has been slowly being cobbled together over the last 10 months...

I also sold the really nice red one, so now I am sans ST90 completely, which is a problem. Its not really a problem, I have many bikes, but it feels like a problem.

This really has been one of those cases where it looks 90% finished, but there is actually 90% left to do.

But I have been busy.

Since the last update the little jobs I have done are:

• Brought and installed the GPS speedo
• Changed the tyres to the greatest and best tyres in the world (tribute)
• Installed a front mud guard
• Played around with handlebar controls to fit mirrors etc.
• Rustled through my box of lights and fitted some stuff that will work.

And have also spend lots and lots of time on some really big and difficult jobs.

I happened across a couple of old petrol tanks, one being from an LT50 quad. When I got home I sat it up on the top of the bike, and thought it looked brilliant, so I welded up some mounts and there it shall stay. The other was more of a CG125 copy style tank, so I shopped that up into somewhere between a cafe racer and tracker style of seat pan.

I finished off the auxiliary petrol tank setup, fabbed up some hose barbs and welded them in all over the show. The carb draws direct from the aux tank, which is linked top and bottom to the main in-frame tank. Hopefully this works... Then I will at some point connect the LT50 tank up to the reserve port on the tap. This should give me close to 6 litres of fuel storage total, across 3 x tiny petrol tanks.

I had a custom sprocket waterjet cut, and then machined it to suit my hub offset. Geared for speed now.

By far the most difficult job as far as brain power goes, has been mounting the rear brake master cylinder for the KX80 disc brakes. The original master was coozed, so I got a generic pit bike one and mounted that instead. I modified the ST90 pedal to the correct ratio, put the master in the only place that it would fit, and then connected the dots with an absolute abortion of an extension rod to bend it around the swingarm pivot. Hopefully this works too...

 

[anglia4]

I had really been dreading trying to fold and weld up mounts for the back of the seat, the reg/rect, cdi and battery.

But then I remembered I am not a caveman and I have some technology, so I 3D printed a single structure that does all of those things. I actually cannot quite believe how well it has worked out.

Which means the bike is actually super close to being "built" (not the same as "finished").

The only things left being an allover bolt check, a horn, and some upholstery.

I quite like just looking at it, and really can't wait now to finish this years ride so I can strip it back down to a bare frame and paint it.

[anglia4]