LL's Bikit list

[legendlives]

Nice having a rear light, but I need a place to mount it. I came up with this:

Seam-welded in aluminium. Threaded bosses on the inside that accept bolts that come up through the mudguard.

The 'good' tank came out OK:

I bare-metalled it to get rid of the tatty paint and rust 'veins' that were underneath it. The small dints have been filled, a few coats of primer and 4 coats of top coat. Not perfect, but perfectly adequate.

The colour was an absolute fluke, I bought the cheapest can of 'blue' paint I could find and it's just about perfect.

Not much more to do now and I can get back to sensible bikes....

[legendlives]

Basically finished now:

Very disappointed with the way the seat turned out. The vinyl I used has been on the shelf a few years and the glue between the shiny bit and the backing has rotted so it looks a bit secondhand. When I find another bit of vinyl I'll stitch up another cover.

It's all running properly now. The carb was literally glued up with old fuel and took a lot of de-gluing to get it to work, and the wasps nest in the air filter box didn't help!

There's a few mods I'll get round to eventually. Chain guard is pretty much essential. A shield over the headlight would be nice (hence the M6 captive nuts in the (ex)rack, and some kind of engine bashplate would make it complete.

[Bearded Baldy]

I can assure you those wasps were not an assassination attempt. Bastards nested everywhere last summer, in the roof of the house and even started in my upturned wheelbarrow. 

Bike is unrecognizeable, amazing work!

[legendlives]

I love my Triumph, but there's one part that really upsets me every time I see it:

That exhaust mount bracket.

I don't have (and never plan to have) a pillion seat on the bike. The other pillion peg bracket has been completely removed but this one just looks messy. Unfinished. Generally sh!te.....

So I pulled it all apart and not only found the bracket was ugly, but the exhaust bushes were two different sizes, the bolt was M6 (should have been M8), and there was no centre support tube through the rubber bushes. There were issues with the Ohlins remote too.

With the old bracket in hand I made a jig so that I could make a replacement (sorry, forgot to take photos) and made this:

It's al T6061 alloy. The spars are solid 1/2" diameter (and a real b!tch to bend). 

I could have just made it with straight spars, but I figured the bends would match the bends in the frame tubes.

[legendlives]

I made this to compensate for the odd sized mount rubbers and missing support tube:

It's threaded M8 through the centre so no nasty exposed nut on the other side of the exhaust bush.

There we go!

The Ohlins remote also got some love in the mount bracket area, and a couple of stainless-steel cap-heads to hold it in place.

There's a couple more parts on their way for the Triumph so I'll update when they arrive.

[legendlives]

Bit of a before & after on the Aprilia.

This is the front brake master cylinder/reservoir when I bought the bike:

The clutch master was in a similar condition, as were the brake & clutch levers.

After a few hours work they looked like this:

And after sanding, etch priming and coating with fluid resistant paint they now look like this:

[legendlives]

The levers have had all of the corroded pits removed and then polished.

All of the bolts (except for the special pivot bolts) are now stainless-steel.

All of the bolts have anti-seize on them so there shouldn't be any galling between the alloy and the stainless steel.

I'm super-happy with the way they turned out. I've already refinished the top fork yoke so the whole of the steering head assembly should now look good-as-new.

The bike is entered into the Motorcycle show in October (along with my Blackbird) so I need to get my finger out!

[legendlives]

I'm in the process of giving the Aprilia a deep clean, and there are just so many inaccessible areas it was inevitable that I'd need to do some disassembly. I started at the back and decided to remove the rear suspension unit to give better access to the swing arm and back of the engine.

To remove the suspension unit you have to remove the battery tray panel, to remove that you have to remove the exhaust rear section, and to remove that you have to remove the pillion footpeg brackets. Easy. At this point it was only 4 more bolts to take the subframe off, so off that came too, and as the rear of the exhaust was off it seemed almost rude not to take the downpipes and front silencer and add them to the pile of removed bits It's given loads more cleaning access to the back and underside of the engine, but the bike's now looking a little sad:

The exhaust was caked with dirt. The front downpipe and front silencer get everything thrown up by the front tyre, and the rear downpipe gets all of the cr*p from the rear tyre. I intended to do 'before and after' photos of the exhaust cleaning, but here's a half-way through the silencer clean pic:

 

[legendlives]

It was a very long and dirty process to clean the whole exhaust, but it was well worth it:

The only part that will actually be visible is part of the 'organ pipes', and the back of the rear silencer.

Now it's just clean, clean and more cleaning.

[legendlives]

With almost exactly a month to the NZ Motorbike Show, and with the Aprilia still in 1000 pieces and the Blackbird needing a deep clean it was time to get on with it. So I decided to work on the Triumph.

This is 'things that piss me off' part 2, the rear brake light switch.

At some time in the past the genuine hydraulic switch must have failed, and the then owner replaced it with one of the classic 'pull' mechanical switches. The wires from the hydraulic switch were cut and the top capped.

I bought a new hydraulic switch and removed the pull switch. I don't like unused 'holes' in things like this so I used a drilled M6 cap-head screw to fill the pull switch mount hole, and used the spring from the switch to go between this bolt and the pedal as a return spring.

While I was there I thought it would be prudent to renew the rear brake hose with a sexy translucent blue 'HEL brake hose, made easier as I'm a HEL agent and can manufacture them myself.

Also replaced the front brake hoses:

[legendlives]

The colour match between the translucent blue HEL brake hoses and the bodywork of the bike is extremely good:

Other colours are available. Including a clear braided hose that I decided to make for the Aprilia. Brake and clutch hoses now replaced:

Hoping to get the necessary paint / touch ups done on the Aprilia this week. I'll share when it's done.

[legendlives]

A lot of the trim and panels on the Aprilia are coated/painted with a metallic grey colour. I just happened to have 10 litres of metallic grey that I'd mixed for a previous project and it turns out it's an exact colour match.

The grab handle ^ had been damaged (I think the bike had been dropped) and the front corner was badly damaged. I repaired the damage and just painted the damaged area so the rest of the handle hasn't been painted. Match is good eh? The flat panel between the handles has also been partially painted.

The dash surround panels had lost their sparkle so the grey paint rejuvenated them nicely.

Before on left, after on right:

 

[legendlives]

The dashboard itself was in a pretty poor state. The gauge surrounds had yellowed over the years, and the gauge glass was slightly opaque.

And after:

New HEL brake and clutch lines also visible in this pic.

[legendlives]

And as if I need another two wheel project, this arrived the other day:

The plan is to turn this heavy monstrosity of a bike into a light(er)weight 'adventure' bike along the lines of the Triumph Tiger, Ducati Multistrada etc.

We've christened it 'Guzzi Bro'......

 

 

It needs a few bits, so if anyone has a starter motor sitting around, working or not, I'd be interested. Or anything Guzzi.

[legendlives]

All finished and ready for the Motorbike Show next weekend.

It's not perfect, but it looks very presentable.

I ended up painting the front mudguard, bellypan and the bottom of the LH fairing panel and the colour match is pretty good.

I'm happy now the wiring is tidy, secure and safe, the grey panels look great, I've fitted stainless-steel bolts and screws wherever possible. It's now a lot more reliable and fires at the first prod of the starter.

Although I'm happy with it I'm not in love with it, so it will be for sale to make way for?????

Stay tuned!

[legendlives]

Well the bike show was almost a month ago now. All went well, the Blackbird got some really nice comments and the Aprilia started a lot of "What is it?" conversations.

Since I got back I've been working on the Guzzi Bro. Here's the progress report:

As I said before I want the bike to be a lot lighter than standard, but even the standard Guzzi was lighter than most of the adventure bikes. Some of them are proper hefty! So to that end I went searching for an aluminium frame and came up with this from a Honda CRF motocrosser:

Looks like it might work. Time to throw away everything I won't be using:

Not entirely true. I will be using the carbs and the wiring loom. I won't be using the lower frame or the rear wheel.

[legendlives]

With the bottom half of the frame cut off it was tie for some mock-ups. First to see if the frame could be made to fit the Guzzi engine and trans:

Check! The inside of the frame is the exact same dimension as the mounts on the transmission so making the frame fit should be relatively easy.

Next is to trial fit the newly acquired Suzuki upside-down forks and Kawasaki alloy wheel. Not sure about the wheel so it may not be on the finished article.

This nicely establishes the relative position of the frame, so time to make some mounts!

[legendlives]

The plan is to mount the frame on both of the available transmission mounts, so I accurately(!) designed the mount bosses and spacer, and turned them out of T6061 alloy:

Two of these were counterbored to accept M12 cap-heads. The cap-heads were cut short and tapped M10 so there will be no visible hex-nuts on the outside.

Then the frame was drilled to accept the front mounts which were welded in, and an additional plate welded on to pick up the back mount bosses:

The frame is now extremely stiff. The additional plates have been left oversize to allow for any design alterations in the future (mounts etc.) There will be another plate welded on the outside to match the outside of the frame.

[legendlives]

Apologies for the lack of posts. It's not that the project isn't progressing (it is!), but we are really rural and the internet just basically gave up. I signed up with Starlink which appears to be working very well after sizeable delays. Word of warning, if you sign up for Starlink do not believe their installation date predictions.

Back at the Guzzi Bro, plan is to run two lower tubes from the front downtube to the footpegs, incorporating the bottom (sump) mounts so I repurposed the CRF frame splitter, turned it through 180 degrees and welded in two 20mm slugs which were then milled and tapped M10:

This will be welded into place once the lower tubes are finalised. I'm not sure if the two drillings at the front of the 'Y' will be used but I'll leave them there until I know either way.

It frames the alternator cover nicely:

At the other end of the lower tubes will be the footpegs. The original mounts were machined flat:

And then had a couple of milled top mounts welded to them:

These use the rear engine mounts, and have a new tapped boss welded to the frame to accept the front bolts.

[legendlives]

At the top of the frame there are two holes either side that were originally top engine mounts/steadies on the CRF. These are conveniently close to the 5th head stud so I made up these mounts in 2.5mm Stainless plate. They'll polish nicely and will have SS bolts on the final build:

The LH side is different due to the cylinder offset:

And rather than having nuts on the other side I made these in solid aluminium, tapped M8:

They'll stiffen the frame and ........