Gaz's Suzuki AC50 'Green' Laner

[gazguy]

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

[gazguy]

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.

 

 

 

[gazguy]

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.

[RUNAMUCK]

Looks like ideal Moped melee fodder there Gaz!

[Flash]

@gazguy thanks heaps for bringing back some memories for me. I owned a AC50 back in the day. Bought it brand new in 1978 and sadly it got written off less than a year later. Uncannily enough exactly 47 years ago today.

 

[gazguy]

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

[gazguy]

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

[gazguy]

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

 

 

[gazguy]

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 

[gazguy]

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.

[gazguy]

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