Bodywork, electrics and timing

With the grin still on my face from yesterday, I was up early outside with the bike. The first thing I did was to finish off the exhaust bracket. This wasn’t too bad as it was only a bit of smoothing and making it look presentable. The next task was to look at was the ignition timing. I made the connections on the Koso Rev counter I’d acquired some years ago and fitted the exhaust on its new bracket, which took much longer than it should have done.

Starting the bike was much less dramatic than the previous day. I took the pilot mantle and the only reason it didn’t start first time was due to me not giving it enough revs; I was too eager to look back at Dad to show I’d started it. After the second attempt, we got the strobe on it and saw it was slightly advanced. Those marks I had made yesterday came in really handy.

As the flywheel had to come off anyway, I decided to change the bolts and nuts to give the exhaust more clearance. This was more good practice with the engine as I adjusted all it myself using a timing disc. I was chuffed to get the bike back together in rather a fast turnaround.

 

Before the next start though, I wanted to connect the kill-switch and all electrics to make sure it was fit for the test day. Soldering is something I quite enjoy but unfortunately, today was not my day. The solder and wire just weren’t fit for each other. So I borrowed my Dad for a while to help. Even he struggled, which although wasn’t great, it made me more positive that I had been failing. Molten solder went everywhere!

Whilst he got on with these tasks, I started to finish fitting the bodywork. The first thing I had to do was adjust the steering stop as I had noticed some issues with it yesterday when trying to turn it around on our drive. The timing disc came in pretty handy to keep the steering limits within the BSSO regulations. After this fairly simple task was complete, the mudguard, horncast and grill went on very well if taking longer than I would have liked. By the end of the day, I had fitted the remaining bodywork and Dad had finished with the soldering.

Taking a few pictures to reward myself made me so proud of how far I had got. Only a few more bits to do but I am especially happy with the progress of things.

Race Scooter: All events occurred 11th March 2012

Is today the day?

As last weekend had ended so positively, I wanted to ride the wave of success and get as much done as possible. In terms of starting the bike for the first time, I was only a few steps away but they were rather large steps. As you can see from the photo, last week I had also managed to connect the tank, which I forgot to mention in the last blog post.

The first visit on the cards was to KAS Racepaint and the trip was rewarded with a nice chat and collection of my steel rims. As soon as I got home, the rims were coated silver with as close a match to the alloy colour as possible.

Shortly afterwards, the mandatory visit to Replay Scooters with some parts of Dad’s 2011 engine was made. We also wanted had to obtain some information on ignitions. The visit coincided with Steve Conneely's visit too. His bike not only looks great but sounds the dogs too! The cinnamon coffees finished off the trip and I had some encouraging words from Steve and Chalkie regarding the blog which made me a happy.

In terms of staring the bike, there were just two things that needed to be completed, the front brake, and the exhaust mount. Having swapped out the existing Nissin master cylinder for a Grimeca one (which we have more spares for) last weekend, after leaving it overnight for the bubbles to enter the master cylinder, there was still no pressure.

This was strange primarily because we had only disconnected the master cylinder meaning, in theory, every component below i.e. hose and slave cylinder, should remain as before. As we didn’t know the history of the master cylinder though, we were in doubt of its functionality. Before we swapped it out for the original one though, we thought we’d give one more thing a go.

Equipped with a hose, syringe and spanner, we stared to bleed the fluid into the hose, we filled the syringe from the master cylinder and forced some fluid in. Assuming the bubbles were at the top of the hose we guessed that by now we should have been feeling some pressure. Unfortunately, there was no pressure.

However, in the following minutes we solved it. By sucking fluid, it became apparent that there was air in the slave cylinder?! Recycling the sucked fluid into the master cylinder ended with a fully bled brake line. The only minor issue was on the last lever squeeze, the syringe actually exploded in my Dads face. A bit of water got the fluid off and despite the hiccough, the brake felt fantastic. It didn't take too long to have the routing sorted either.

As the exhaust was off, I took the opportunity to make some timing markings on the magneto cover as I had been told the ones already there were probably no good. Using a trusty dial gauge in the spark plug hole, I marked top dead centre (TDC). I also made some marks at 15 and 20 degrees before TDC in order to strobe her up.

The last steps were to reattach the exhaust and make the temporary electrical connections. The exhaust was done with the unfinished bracket and was very quick to do; I’d had some practice with it. The electrics were also pretty much in place so those connections and checks went without issues.

The bike was pushed in trepidation up the drive and the fuel and choke turned on. I popped it in gear and pushed. Seconds later, realising our efforts were futile, we stopped. The clutch most definitely needed adjusting. A few more minutes passed and the second push, this time solo, also went without a peep from the engine. I gave in and let the older, more experienced rider be the pilot and I went back to my more familiar pushing, something Chalkie and others who have seen me about the paddock can tell you many a story about.

The first run was good we had a couple of fires and simply ran out of road. Second try and I told Dad to not start it so we could get third time lucky for the audience we had (Mum and Steve of Ambivent). Unfortunately though, it started! What a shock. It was fantastic. My dream was coming true. We spent the next few minutes testing the machine up and down the drive. Brakes, clutch and suspension all felt really good. One thing to fix was the steering stop, which made the turning circle really bad. But I’d had one massively positive day. Really great! Smiling and shaking with adrenalin, I put the bike on its stand for some fixing and fettling the following day. Fredo Frogs and Fudges all round!

With the short amount of time I had left, we fitted some M8 retaining nuts on the exhaust bracket to make life easier with it coming on and off. The evening was cut short though with a night out to celebrate.

Race Scooter: All events occurred 10th March 2012

Cabling, wiring and the elusive spark

Last Sunday I gave you an update on the paintwork. In one of my comments though, I confessed to it being a ‘backup’ post. I had just about fully prepared the panel work in parallel with the bike so it only seemed right to show all this work before it was fitted. However, last weekend I was doing something a little different.

For starters, I must admit to having a long weekend available to me having booked the Monday off. Nonetheless, I had my targets and set off to complete them early on the Saturday morning. A couple of errands here and there including visiting Replay Scooters set the morning off to a good start.


The main priority was to get the rear brake sorted as it was a design copy from my Dads race scooter. A new adjustable cable was purchased alongside some cable nipples for the gears and clutch. As the brake was reverse pull, and was not a standard length, a outer cable needed to be sourced. After viewing some handbrake cables, a better (cheaper) solution was found in that of an outer we already had. Due to the generous length of the new inner cable, we even managed to utilise one of the original brake cable clamps.

 

After an afternoon, we had connections on the gears, clutch and rear brake all operational. This however is where we started to hit the problems.

The first of which was the throttle cable. I had yet to complete the cam in the headset so this needed to have some time spent on it. A few holes drilled had the cam sorted but the spring return needed modification as it became coil bound rather quickly. I also needed a better positive stop as the solution I had found not only wasn't properly secure but rubbed against the headset top and allowed the throttle to stick open – not good.

The cable fitment provided the next issue. The choke fittings on the carburettor were not the cable type so this had to be sorted. For a start, we had to steal the parts from a spare carburettor. Secondly the cable was too long so needed to be shortened, which was done in a guess described by my Dad as ‘jammy’. Lastly, the choke lever/cam needed to be sorted as its operation and the positioning could definitely be described as Indian.

And I hear you asking; what about the front brake that’s the last thing?! Then you can bump-start the beast right?! Wrong. We will visit the brake issue in the next post.

It was not until this point that I had even attempted to get a spark. Excitedly, connecting all of the electrical cables (and making sure to have connected the earth from chassis to frame) we span the back wheel, hoping to see a bright blue spark jump from the bare HT lead to the cylinder head. Nothing. Spin it faster. Nothing. I was gutted. We even checked everything twice and saw no mistakes. Those familiar with race scooter electrics will know that there isn’t actually much to check.

Dad yet again came to the rescue though and referred to Sticky’s manual for testing the stator. One of the readings was very intermittent. This was actually great news. I have never known one of our issues to be identified as quick. I just needed to take it to Replay to get the issue confirmed. The Sunday night was nearing its end and a few more trivial things were completed but I still had the ace card – the Monday off.

Monday morning came and I was out in the garage bright and early. I began by fitting the Legshields as the rear brake was the only thing that was stopping me before.

After this rather rewarding task, I popped over to Replay to sort the stator. When Chalkie tested the readings though, they were fine – weird. However, he did find that there was a spacer plate underneath the pickup which could have meant the pickup was out of alignment with the flywheel. So after removing this, I went home in hope of obtaining that sought after spark.


After fitting, unfortunately, there was no spark which was most puzzling; yet another trip over to Replay. This time Ciro looked at it and immediately spotted a loose – well detached – earth wire. Brilliant! There was the issue, as plain as the nose on my face. A bit of solder later I hopefully had a working stator. Cinnamon coffees all round on me.


However, despite the trips when I put it back on I had no spark. After double checking everything twice I could not see the issue. Then, I had a brainwave: I wonder if I need to reattach the pickup spacer? No more than five minutes later, a nice spark could be seen on spinning the flywheel; success!

The long weekend was finished off with the semi-manufacture of the new, safer exhaust bracket and a mould. Both of these pieces will need more work so expect progress pictures in the following posts.

Race Scooter: All events occurred 3rd March 2012 to 5th March 2012

Temporary Bodywork - An Overview

This post has been building up for quite a long time. The purpose of it is to show you the entire process of producing my temporary bodywork in one, large, post. This is one of the Scootering promotional shots I took along the way and when you see what I started with, I hope you can see the hard work I've put in.

The sidepanels took a long time to prepare! Their purchase even pre-dates that of the ex-DKS spare bike. They were seen at Wicksteed Park Scooter Fair back in late 2011 and were purchased with the intention of having a spare pair of "rough" panels (to be used for track days, practice etc). In all honesty, the more I did on them, the better I wanted their finish to be.

For a start, they had been down the tarmac their fair share of times and had been trimmed in places unsuitable to me. However, after a kind dose of fibreglassing and filler, I had got them to a much better state. I even went to the trouble of strengthening the weaker places at the same time.

As with most fibreglass panels, they did sit quite high on the frame loop, so using a router we had the flanges at a depth much closer to the original metal parts. As you can see from the photos, a fair few layers of paint were added in addition. I decided to leave them in their matt 'pimer' white, giving them the mandatory numberboards in blue. I also manufactured some decals from some special printer paper, giving the bike that well-prepared, professional look.

After a bit of satin black paint on the inside and the panel louvres fitted, they are ready for fitting. Here is the photo set of the progression:

The Legshields were another area where I spent a lot of time. I struggled to find any cheap temporary legshields locally, so decided to use the ones from ex_racer 81. However, there were a few things to fix first, for instance, there were a number of damaged areas that needed weld repairing (thanks to Replay Scooters). Aside from the time spent straightening these out, luckily after a handfull of hours of preparation, I started to paint them. Again the progress can be seen in the following shots. My favouite parts were definitley the finishing features.

There were a few other bits which I had put aside for spares which I decided to use for this paintwork iteration, these being the Horncasting and Front Mudguard. As such, very little was one to these, nothing that a little elbow grease wouldn't sort out anyway. The spare floorboards were recycled from the DKS ones and were given a coat in satin black to blend in with the rest of the scheme.

Rolling Chassis Two

Whilst I was planning to be showing you my paintwork this weekend, the bodywork has sat on the back burner for a while, and is still unfinished. All is not lost though as I thought seemed a good idea, with the surprisingly nice weather, to roll the bike outside and fit the engine.

The first obstacle was to remove the engine block that I had temporarily fitted, which was an easy task. This block almost immediately went into my Dads chassis so that we could sort his engine(s) out on a bench rather than in a frame. I also had my eye on the Indian silentblocs.

 

With Dads 2011 engine on one workmate and mine on the other, we changed the engine mounts. Removing the Indian mounts went fairly smoothly aside from a small niggle with an exhaust bracket. However, one of the engine mounts in my engine posed a greater problem, our tool simply would not work properly. Even after dressing back the welds so that the tool would fit, the mount was so long that it could only be extracted part way. But after a bit of innovation on my part, we finally removed it thoroughly. Pulling them in was a much more easy task.

However, before the engine went into the frame, I had a couple of things to do to it which would be much easier with it on a bench.

For a start, the exhaust needed to be thought about. After popping over to Replay Scooters in the Bongo, Chalkie had repaired my cracked/holed exhaust and re-attached the bracket – great news. As soon as I got home, it received the standard treatment of some black exhaust paint to be drying so that I could properly mess around with it on the Sunday.

While I was at Chalkies, he also re-iterated the advice he had given me about the exhaust bracket mounted to the magneto flange. Basically, we want as little vibration there as possible. This involved removing the flywheel to get access to the bracket bolts but luckily I was going to be doing this anyway due to having a replacement, lighter flywheel.

I also wanted to have a look inside the engine as I knew nothing of its components or history. In fact, the only part that I had been told about was the LI150 gearbox inside; perfect for a beginner.  After taking off the engine cover, I was pleasantly surprised to find a few great things. For starters, everything inside was shiny. It had a new chain and what looked to be a fairly unmolested eight plate clutch. The oil was still green in colour so in summary, everything inside was fresh and exactly what I would have hoped for.

By the late hours of Saturday, I had successfully got the engine back together and in the frame. I was even lucky enough to slide the engine bolt straight through, which I am told is a very rare occurrence. The hard part came on Sunday morning when, with no hub or wheel fitted, I wanted to move the bike. I now realise how accustomed I had become to having a rolling chassis, so this had to be rectified as soon as possible. With the help of my Dad and a few arm aching minutes, we positioned the bike outside, in the Sun.

Thinking about the cabling was the next major hurdle for the day and as I was jumping in straight away with a non-standard rear brake, I was understandably nervous about its position with regards to the exhaust silencer. So as the exhaust had now dried, I delicately moved it temporarily into position, making full use of a bungee to help hold it. It also allowed me to test the replacement bracket I had made, which now just needs a bit of shaping. In any case, the brake was luckily clear of the exhaust silencer, not by much though.

 

After this panic was over I had to fit the rear hub and wheel to make it into a rolling chassis once more. However, until this weekend, one of the things I had neglected was the rear hub. We had drilled out the extractor studs that had got stuck in from the previous owner, but we had not tapped out the M7 thread required as we simply didn’t have the taps. After receiving delivery of these some months ago, they were finally used and we have a hub that can be removed. The hub was fitted and wheel added in no time.

In all of the excitement, I even treated myself to a sit on ride down the drive – she handles well at 3mph. On a serious note though, I had a productive weekend through the blood, sweat and tears. We are a few steps closer with mine but I have inadvertently aided my Dad too with the removal of his engine. I have even tidied the garage to help with working on our bits which should speed things up.

Thanks again to Dad for the time, advice and help he has given me over the weekend. Chalkie also deserves big thumbs up for giving me honest advice and useful suggestions and of course the repair welding. Lastly but no means least, Mum for providing the food, spirit and putting up with my grubby hands constantly making a mess in the house. Who knows what I’ll be writing about next week? I don’t think I do yet.

Odds and Sods

I mentioned in a previous post that, I was going to be doing a few bits during the week. The plan was that I would be cutting and laying safety walk on my newly painted floorboards from KAS Racepaint. The week’s activities went to plan and they are now only short of their mountings.

The next task for the weekend was the collection of our race transport, the Mazda Bongo. It turns out that the cylinder head had cracked due to lack of maintenance. The functional fix it was treated to make it driveable, so it was driven homeward bound for a cosmetic – erm –clean. As we had taken delivery of it in the snow, neither one of us had properly spent long enough inside to see how dirty and messy it was! The Bongo was in a bit of a state. Needless to say one very long afternoon was spent giving it a well needed valet.

We also had an opportunity to test the other features of the vehicle including the electric windows! We quickly figured that the passenger side window only goes down; which was a bit of a disaster. However, despite these few teething problems, I already think that the vehicle is fantastic. Really good quality and it will serve our purposes extremely well.

 

Other good news during the week was that I was featured in Scootering, a little write up with a picture is a small step in the right direction for the team. Really proud to have been included, here is a scan of my piece.

However, the last part of this blog really wasn’t planned. After the manufacture of a crash protector for my exhaust (genuinely made from my floorboard off-cuts), I had the part tack-welded on at Replay Scooters.

Unfortunately, on cleaning up the exhaust for black paint, I discovered the mounting point was loose – no biggie I thought, we’ll just get that welded on. However, on further investigation, it dawned on me that this loose point was masking a crack on the exhaust. Bit of a problem so definitely watch this space.

However, rather than leave my blog on a negative point, I want to identify a few positives about the problem: I did find it, I did find it before painting and I did find it with a few weeks to get it sorted. I most definitely will be keeping an eye on it over the season but in all honesty, I’m not too shocked bearing in mind the treatment it has had over its short life.

Engine and KAS Racepaint (Batch Two)

Gary kindly collected my batch of paintwork on Monday. This had been completed at KAS Racepaint over the weekend. I was certainly looking forward to recieving the professionally painted batch of Lambretta parts. However, it appears that my week was in for even more of a treat. I received a call from Chalkie of Replay Scooters on the Wednesday to say my engine had been built and was ready for collection. The grin I had just acquired went form ear to ear! The only negative to all of this good news was I would have to wait until the weekend to see it all.

Saturday morning was cold but despite the weather, we ventured out to collect the bits. So with great pleasure, I present to you, the pictures:

As there is still so much to do, I painted the temporary Legshields in a makeshift spray booth. Pictures of the finished product will appear in the coming weeks. Here is a couple of the spray booth for now though.

 

I also had a car issue over the weekend that put a strain on my timings but this was fixed by my Dad so a shout-out goes to him for keeping me on the road. A shout-out also must go to my Mum who provided us both with excellent bacon sandwiches at the weekend and of course for letting me spray paint in the house. Lastly, a thankyou to Steve of Ambivent for coming to visit on the Sunday and keeping up the morale.

I am hoping to get a few bits done during the week so I expect I will have a few more odds and sods off the list by next weekend.