A few more bends and a bit of fiddling and the headers are done. Well almost - I made a slight miscalculation resulting in a gap that must be filled so I'll take 1" out of the side towards the head and put 1 1/4" in. 

DEC 2010 - FEB 2011.

Here, the pipes are finished. Well, the fabrication at least. They still need to be coated and I'm thinking of going with HPC or similar in black - gloss if it exists, otherwise flat. The mufflers will be stripped of their chrome and done to match the headers. The system also has Mike Morse's anti reversion cones at the head and peak torque optimisers back near the mufflers.

Not much has happened since these shots were taken as I pulled the head off and sent it away to get the Weekes porting job. It came back just recently and is back on the bike so I can now continue to make and fit other things that are dependant on the head being there. About all I did while the head was away was smooth out the welds on the pipes. I was going to leave them as they were laid as that looks OK on a race bike (or it's street cousin) but when it's all said and done, I'd prefer it if the pipes looked as if they were made in one piece. Oh, I also had Megacycle do me a cam and it's now gone to Nick McGinn to have the sprocket made adjustable. 

Whilst I work 2 weeks on and 1 week off, I'm collecting parts for when that changes to 2 on and 2 off which will free up an extra 56 days per year and when that happens (hopefully soon) I'll should be able to do some real work on the bike as it's been stagnating for over a year now.

When the bike was built by my dad, he put a steel front guard on it. Much as I like chrome, I prefer paint on body parts. I could have had the steel one stripped and painted but when I put the wide front end on my other bike, I put its old front end on this one, mudguard included.  

 The forks had already had their tubes hard-chromed, and I’d fitted Progressive springs and drilled the damper rods as per Joe Minton’s recommendation. The guard is from a Suzuki GSX-1100EFE and has the correct radius for an 18” tyre which my other bike had and not only that, but the mounting holes are in just the right place. Trouble was, it was always a little too wide and touched the forks. I never worried about it back then but now I wanted to trim it down so while I was doing that, I took the opportunity to narrow it as well.  

 It needed 8mm taken out of the middle so I marked out some lines, cut it in half with an angle grinder, and trimmed up to the lines with a belt sander. The guard is plastic and like all plastic, it melts when it gets hot so I had to take a little bit off, move to somewhere else, etc. Once I had that done, I welded it together and filled the flutes that run parallel to the forks. They may look good on the Suzuki and other body panels on it may even have matching flutes but of course, the Yam doesn’t so they had to go.  

 I then put it back on the bike and sure enough, there’s 4mm clearance each side. I marked its final shape by placing a pair of dividers on the centre line and scribing a nice arc at each end. Then, to get all 4 arcs along the sides to be the same, I bolted to a piece of wood held in a vice so I could place the dividers so an arc would run from the one I’d made across the front to near the mounting holes. I then reversed the guard on the board and used the same mark the dividers had mad in it and repeated for the other 3.  

Out came the angle grinder again and then off to the belt sander. As well as cleaning up the edges, I had to sand along the join because when you take a section out of a curved surface and then close up the resulting gap, it leaves a peak which has to be made round again.

I mounted the guard up and stood back to admire my handiwork. It’s pretty short but I wanted it to be obvious that it’d been shortened. No point taking half and inch off in my book.

September 2011

I began working 2 weeks on and 2 off a short while ago and have resumed work on the bike. However, before I could even start, I had to clean out and re organise my garden shed (where all my parts are kept) and my garage (where the work is done). 

Due to lack of time over the last year or 2, I'd gotten into the bad habit of not cleaning up after each little job and going onto the next one, working in the mess and clutter of the last one and the one before, and the one before that.............

The pic above wasn't taken on a particular day when there was a lot of mess just for effect. Sure, it was taken recently but my bench had been like this for more than a year. You can't work in filth like this.  

It'd been so long since I'd stored most of the parts, I'd forgotten what I had and where half of it was so last time I was home, I gathered up all my parts which were stored in unmarked boxes in various locations and laid them out on the garage floor. I then labelled boxes "cafe parts", "chopper parts", "spare parts", etc., put all the parts into the correct boxes, cataloguing each part as I went, and put those boxes into the newly cleaned out garden shed. Then I cleaned the garage out, got rid of all the crap on the bench, and bought a sheet metal top for it. Now at long last, I can start work and with the foregoing done, I anticipate going through it like a runaway freight train. I've never had one and hope I never do, but God I love that expression.

This bike will have a belt drive and I'd bought the trans pulley ages ago. They come solid with just a tapered and woodruff-keyed hole in the middle for use on industrial machinery so I had Lance machine a sprocket smooth and machine out the pulley to match, to a depth that would have the belt running the correct distance from the centre line of the bike, thus clearing the tyre and frame.

As with my last bike, I'm going to bolt these two parts together. However, Lance only put 3 holes into the sprocket and I wasn't sure if 3 X 6mm bolts would be enough to transfer the load. My other bike has 6 and that certainly is enough so I wanted 6 on this one. I knew the sprocket would be hard but wondered how hard. I put the 2 parts together, clocking the sprocket so the holes in it were between the holes in the pulley. I then put that in the drill press and made 3 marks. Well, that's all a HSS drill will do on the sprocket, just make a mark. I bought a cobalt drill and that was no better. Man, this steel is so hard it'd be way off the Rockwell scale. I probably should've bought a tungsten carbide drill. In the end, I heated the areas to be drilled and let them cool gradually, making them soft. I made sure not to get too close to the splines as they must remain hard so they don't get flogged out. Anyway, the drill went through quite easily, the 2 parts are bolted together (only 3 bolts for now), and are on the bike.

The pulley clears the clutch mechanism but even so, I'll have some metal taken out of the outer face just to save weight - it's cast iron you know.  

I ordered a pulley for the rear wheel a couple of weeks ago and started work on it the other day. As delivered, it’s a solid lump of cast iron meant for industrial machinery and weighs around 3/4 of a ton.

All I have to do now is cut the slots. Wanting to remove as much metal as I could in a single cut, I used my largest bit and cut 6 slots. As I said, I’m relatively new to milling, having not done any since high school, and this is the most ambitious job I’ve tackled so far. Needless to say, I was afraid of making a mistake that would ruin the job and right at the last, I very nearly did. I decided I’d take out 2/3 of the metal with the slots and calculated that to be 240 degrees, leaving in the other 120. Divided by six, that meant each slot would cover 40 degrees with the metal between them 20. I’d already discovered that slotting drills don’t like to be driven head-on into metal like a conical-ended twist drill does so to make it easier, I cut small slots first – call them pilot slots. I machined the first slot the required 40 degrees, withdrew, and rotated the table another 20 degrees to start the next slot. I realized at that point there didn’t appear to be the correct distance between the slot I’d just cut and the one I was about to and that when I came back with a much larger bit, there’d be almost no metal between the slots, but how could that be? I checked my maths and it was correct. What hadn’t occurred to me was that the 40 degrees was from one end of a slot to the other, leaving 20 degrees between slots but what I’d just done was to machine a slot that was 40 degrees between where the centre of the bit started and stopped. I’d not thought to subtract the diameter of the bit from the length of the slot.

I intend making a rectangular section swing arm but in order to do that, I need to know the distance between pulleys and the easiest way to accomplish that is to fit the wheel and belt, tension the belt, and take a measurement which will give me the length of the new swing arm. I have a pretty good idea of what it’ll be and have a belt of a certain length for that but just to be sure before I go making a new swing arm, I’m going to modify a stock swing arm to accommodate the pulley.

Wheel restoration

It may be just a wheel but it has aluminium, steel, chrome, moving parts (bearings), etc. Unlike say, a motor, it’s also quite simple and an easy one to start us off so let’s begin by assessing what we have.

It has a steel rim which is undamaged but the chrome is badly rusted. The spokes and nipples are rusted. The hub originally had clear paint on it like all the aluminium parts did, but 40 years has seen most of that disintegrate, leaving the metal badly corroded. The braking surface is rusted. It's a fair bet the bearings are worn. All in all, it looks a total mess but is easily saved, if you know how.

Re-chroming will make the rim as good as new with no effort required by me, other than sending it away. You could have the spokes and nipples either cad or chrome plated but it’s easier and probably cheaper to buy a new set. The hub will be sandblasted all over, the outer surface of the spoke flanges will be polished, the braking surface will be machined, and the hub will be coated in POR-15 clear except for the braking surface. You could clean and repack the bearings but new ones aren’t that expensive so they’ll be replaced.

This process is the same for virtually any part of a bike. Assess the part and determine if it can be restored or if a better one should be sought. On that note, you could certainly buy a better looking wheel than this and it’d probably cost less than this one will to restore, but you won’t find a wheel that’ll look as good as this one will. Being undamaged goes a long way to it being able to be saved and with that in mind, aside from repacking the bearings and removing the rust from the braking surface, this wheel could be put on a bike and run as it is if you didn’t mind the look of it – but I do mind the look of it. Yes, I know half the spokes are missing but I cut them out before I took the picture. It was complete when I got it.

You might want to photograph the part so you’ll know how it goes back together. If you do that, catalogue your pics into folders with names like; Rear Wheel, Front Forks, etc. Actually, you probably should have been doing that prior to this, starting with a couple of pics of the complete bike as “before” pics because you’ll certainly want to compare them to the “after” pics when it’s all done.

Next, disassemble the item and begin bringing each individual part of it back from the brink. In this case, if you wanted to reuse the spokes and nipples, you’d unscrew them using a small shifter or a spoke key on the spoke side or a large, flat screwdriver on the tube side. On a wheel of this age, you can bet your left one that some nipples will be frozen or rusted solid so before you even start, spray penetrating lubricant into all of them and let it sit a while but as these spokes and nipples are not to be saved, they’ll be cut out. You can use bolt cutters, an oxy torch, or an angle grinder.

We left off last time with the spokes being cut with an angle grinder but I neglected to mention that the wheel had an old tyre on it, which first had to be removed. That fact deserves a mention because it caused me some minor grief which I’d like to save you. I’d never use tyre levers on an aluminium rim if I could avoid it but as these (plural - I’m doing the front wheel at the same time but if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them both) are steel, I gave it a go. Unfortunately, the rubber had gone as hard as a rock (but still had plenty of tread on it – see preceding piece on timely maintenance) and no amount of prying would get the bead over the rim. All that prying made a couple of noticeable marks on the rim so I took both wheels to the local bike shop to have them remove the tyres by machine, which I probably should’ve done in the first place. That cost $10 and is the first money I’ve spent on the restoration (of the wheels, not the whole bike). Back home, and I’ve cut the spokes and removed the hubs from the rims and we pick up the story there.

First job was to use a bench grinder with a multi-tool attachment to remove the marks I’d made on the rim. This is one of those tools that you can get by without, but if you do cough up and buy one you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it. (I’ll add to that by saying if you are restoring to stock you can get by without one but if you’re customizing - making your own parts - you must have one.) If you’ve done what I did and don’t have one, be sure to draw the plater’s attention to it so he removes the marks. Of course, if it’s really bad you’ll have to take the rim to someone who can straighten it. This is when you’d compare the cost of that against buying a new rim which, by the way, will not need to be re-chromed.

Above – A regular bench grinder with a Multi Tool attachment. This one has a polishing mop on the other end, and a drill sharpener can also be seen. The cardboard is a flattened box attached to the wall to catch the crap the polisher throws out. The whole thing must be bolted down securely. Earmuffs are a good idea.

With the marks removed, I boxed up the rims and sent them off for chrome. I could’ve driven them to any number of chrome shops in Sydney but my preferred shop is in Queenbeyan so $20.25 ($30.25 so far) was spent at the post office and presumably, a similar amount will be added to the plater’s bill to get them back to me. I don’t know what the chrome will cost and I don’t really care as it simply has to be done. Perhaps new rims from Mike’s would’ve been cheaper than whatever this will cost but I can’t see the chrome on them being as good as these rims will get.

I will say that although this story is about restoration, which is rejuvenating whatever is there, the wheels are going onto a heavily modified bike (why doesn’t that surprise me? – Ed) and I originally thought of replacing the rims with shoulder-less aluminium jobbies. However, the front wheel is off an XS-1 and you can’t just buy an aluminium wheel for those things. I’d have to buy a dimpled rim and have it drilled to suit the hub. That’s 2 trips to the wheel builder (drop off and pick up). If you’ve never thought much about building a wire wheel, each dimple is drilled in a certain location so each spoke runs straight from its hole in the rim to its hole in the hub. Where that hole is in the hub relative to the hub’s dead-centre (in 2 planes - distance out from the axle and from centre line of the bike) determines the location of the hole in the rim’s dimples. There’s more to buying a replacement rim that it just taking the correct number of spokes. If the holes in the rim are not correctly matched to the hub, the spokes will be bowed when they’re tightened up and that’s a no-no. Spokes must be dead straight.

Ah, you say, but I have to go there and back anyway when I take the newly chromed rims for lacing. Yes, but if I’d gone with aluminium rims it’d be 2 trips for drilling and 2 more for lacing. If you’re wondering why I wouldn’t have it all done at the same time it’s because I’d want to coat an aluminium rim with POR-15 clear so I don’t have to spend the rest of my life polishing it and that job has to be done between drilling and lacing. Not only that, but my other bikes have aluminium wheels so I wanted something different on this one. Oh, and this bike is of a certain style and the wheels must be period correct and while both kinds are, steel is probably more so. In any case, if you have more than one option, it’s another example of checking all the alternatives before you commit yourself and that includes not only cost, but running around, follow-up work, etc.

With the rims away, I can now focus on the hubs. They need to be cleaned and the bearings have to come out. You could do this in either order but I chose to remove the bearings first. The seals need to come out so clean around them so there’s nothing to impede their passage, and then try getting a large screwdriver under the inside and levering them out but be careful not to damage or deform them if they’re to be reused. If they won’t budge, leave them in place for the time being or only if they won’t be reused, you can use more force and it won’t matter if you damage them but that’s only if they’re headed for the bin.

Of course, driving the bearings out from the inside will push the seals out but if they’re in tight, it makes the bearings all the harder to move so at least try to remove the one that’s smaller and/or has less distance to travel. The other one can then be easily pushed out by its bearing as we’ll see shortly.

Heating the hubs makes all this a lot easier as the aluminium hub will expand more than the steel bearings, making them a looser fit and more willing to be driven out. You can use an oxy or propane torch and gently heat the area around the bearing but beware if you’ve never used heat on aluminium because unlike steel, it doesn’t change colour as it gets hotter and gives no warning it’s about to melt.

If you don’t own a torch or you just don’t want to risk it, use your kitchen oven but again beware as that comes with its own dangers. Heating aluminium in an oven at around 250 C is perfectly safe but not if your wife catches you and especially if you haven’t used a tray covered with foil. If the hub has grease or oil on it as these did, she must not only be out, but not expected back for several hours during which time every window must me opened to air the place out. I forgot the tray and the windows and yes, words were said. It’s amazing that even after all these years I can still make that mistake.

Above – As Nigella Lawson would say “Here’s one I prepared earlier”. Jokes aside, if you want to go on living, for God’s sake don’t get caught doing this.

While the hubs are in the oven, go to the garage and place a couple of wooden blocks on the bench, and get your hammer and a drift ready. About 20 or maybe 30 minutes should be enough and you can remove the hub (if you’re doing both, leave the other one in until you’re ready for it) using the wife’s favourite oven mitts, I mean rags from the garage. By the way, in restoring a bike you’ll go through a ton of rags so make sure you have plenty on hand before you even start.

Place the hub horizontally over the blocks of wood with a gap between them wide enough for the bottom bearing to fall into and if you’ve only managed to remove one seal, have that side facing down. The wheel bearings in most bikes (certainly Yamahas) are ball bearings which have an inner and outer race. The outer race butts up against a shoulder in the hub and so can’t be driven in any further than that. The spacers between the forks and/or swing arm and the wheel butt up against the inner races. When the axle nuts are tightened, the inners would be squeezed closer together than the outers can be and this would cause side-load on the bearings and indeed lock them up. Because ball bearings (as opposed to tapered rollers like the front wheels of cars have) can’t take any side-load at all, there is a spacer between the inner races of the bearings to stop them being pushed closer together than the outers can be.

The axle running through the spacer keeps it in place radially but with the axle removed, the spacer can be pushed away from centre to expose a small part of the inner race of the bottom bearing. This is done by inserting the drift or a large screwdriver down into the spacer, the closer to the bottom bearing the better. Then, using the top bearing as a fulcrum, try to lever the lower end of the spacer away from centre. If it’s in tight, you may have to get someone to hold the hub while you do this (using rags or gloves ‘cause it’s hot). You could mount it in a vice if you have one big enough, but only in a way that will not cause any deformation or breakage when you tighten it. If in doubt, go with the helper. You only have to move the spacer a small amount to expose part of the inner race of the bottom bearing and indeed, the spacer will now be askew and won’t want to move very much but once you’ve done that, position the drift on the race and gently tap it down. As soon as the bearing starts moving downward, the spacer frees up and becomes much easier to move around in there.

Once that happens, you move the spacer over to one side and tap the exposed part of the race once or twice, then move the spacer across and tap the other side of the race. Go back and forth in this fashion so the bottom bearing is driven out as squarely to its bore as possible. If you tap too many times or too hard on one side, it’ll become askew and jam. Also, as we’ve said, a ball bearing can’t take side-load and by driving it out by its inner race when the outer doesn’t want to move, that’s what you’re giving it as you do this so try to keep it to a minimum by tapping gently and only once or twice in any one location. This is especially important if you intend reusing the bearings should they prove to be OK.

In any case, be mindful of the hub cooling down so don’t take all day about this and if you’re really lucky, you may not even have to as sometimes the bearing falls out at the slightest touch. When the bearing does come out, the spacer will follow it and when that happens, turn the hub over. With what would now be the upper bearing and the spacer gone, you have an easy shot at what’s now the lower bearing. If you have a socket just smaller than the bore, put an extension on and tap that down onto the outer race. This will drive the bearing out squarely but if you don’t have a socket that size, use a drift on the outer race, tapping gently once or twice on opposite sides until it falls out. If the seal is to be driven out by the bearing, it won’t be difficult as you’re tapping on the outer race which transmits all the tapping force through to the seal. That’s why we left this side till last. Once both bearings are out, leave it all to cool and while that’s happening, check the kitchen and the path you took from there to the garage, cleaning up any mess you made. This is vital if you wish to live long enough to ride the bike. Was that a car I heard? Oh shit, she’s home early!

With the hubs cooled off, it’s time to clean them. This can be done in a plastic container with a few inches of kerosene or proprietary degreaser in the bottom, or there’s cleaning equipment you can buy if you think you’ll get the use out of it. Parts cleaning tanks are a metal tank with a perforated shelf about halfway up that you rest the part on. Under that is the cleaning solution which an electric pump circulates around and out a small hose aimed at the part so as you brush the part, a constant supply of fluid washes over it. They come in all sizes with prices to match and are available from auto parts suppliers and accessory shops.

I use a plastic container but in any case, you’ll need a selection of brushes including toothbrushes, bottlebrushes, etc. As for cleaning solution, buy as much as you think you’ll need. I have a 20 litre drum of kerosene with a tap on it which saves me having to tip the drum over and is more than enough for one bike (that’s every last part). If you can’t spare the space for a 20 litre drum, just buy a litre from the supermarket whenever you need it.

Scrub every square inch of the hub with whichever is the most suitable brush for each area. If the crap is really hard to move, let the hub soak for a while, even overnight, and try again. Once clean, hose the solution off and dry with compressed air if you have that, and here again is another piece of equipment – a compressor – that you can get along without but if you think you’ll get enough use out of it, is handy to have. If you don’t have one, you can simply let the hub dry naturally or to speed things up and dry the water out of every nook and cranny, put it back in the oven on a medium heat. Using the oven is perfectly safe this time as the part is clean. No mess, no smell. No sleeping on the lounge.

The other parts also need to be cleaned and inspected. I’m throwing these bearings out as new ones aren’t that expensive but if you want to save some money, check to see if yours are OK to reuse. Clean them until all traces of grease are gone, hose out with water, and dry them off. Be aware that unlike plain bearings (of which the XS has none), rolling element bearings don’t wear out gradually. Rather, they can be fine for years and then a piece of the chrome in the race will come off and the bearing will shit itself very quickly. Check yours by looking all around the rolling surfaces of the inner and outer races, and by rolling it by hand while listening for clicking noises and feeling for “notchyness”. If they seem OK, pack them well with HTB (high temp bearing) grease and put them in snap-lock bags or similar.

Above – Bearings and spacers as they came out.

Below – Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

If they didn’t pass inspection or you’d just prefer to buy new ones, make sure to extract the sleeve/spacer from the LH rear bearing before you throw them (or at least that one) out. Just like you got the bearing out of the hub, sit the bearing over something with a gap in it and using a socket just smaller than the ID of the bearing, tap the sleeve out, clean it and save it. There have been people who’ve not noticed it was there (thought it was part of the bearing), thrown the bearing out, bought a new one either from Yamaha or the local bearing supplier (go with the latter) which is just the bearing and no sleeve (it’s a Yamaha part), installed it into the hub not knowing they were leaving something out, put the axle through and tightened the nut. Without the sleeve, the ID of the LH bearing is much bigger than the axle and so only the RH bearing is supporting the wheel and because it’s over to one side, it’s being forced askew in the wheel. If that weren’t bad enough, without the shoulder between the LH bearing and the long spacer between the two bearings, the inner races will be drawn together more than the outer races can be as they’re hard up against the shoulders in the hub. They’ll be locked up by side-load and if the bike is ridden, both will fail very quickly. We know for a fact it’s happened. One idiot who bought his bearings from Mike’s XS was convinced Mike has sold him the wrong bearing and when Mike insisted he hadn’t, never thinking the fellow had thrown the spacer out, the man waged all-out war on Mike’s XS and urged every 650 owner on the face of the Earth to do the same. Please don’t do that.

If you’re buying new bearings, they are an industry-standard size and can be had from any bearing supplier. Either take them with you or just record the numbers stamped into the seal. The number ends with a Z, which denotes a metal seal on one side only. Tell the bearing supplier you want them with a neoprene seal on both sides. They’ll come in a sealed bag inside a box and should stay there until you’re ready to fit them.

Even though the hubs are clean of grease and such, they’re still covered in corrosion and even traces of the clear paint they had when new are still there. All of that has to go and the easiest way is to sandblast. A blasting cabinet is another piece of equipment that you can get by without but is handy to have when you need it. I’ve never owned one but I have access to one. Even if you do buy one, it probably won’t be big enough to take the frame so you’ll be going to a commercial sandblaster sooner or later. With that in mind, you can take everything that needs blasting all at once but that means taking the bike apart to the last nut and bolt when you may prefer to finish one part before starting on the next and if you’re new to all this, that’s a good idea as a whole bike taken apart can be a little overwhelming. Again, the choice is yours and depends on how you want to tackle the entire restoration, how far away the nearest sandblaster is and what they charge, whether you can accommodate your own cabinet, etc.

Above – Sandblasted hub ready for beauty treatment. Inside of brake drum is as clean as outside.

The backing plates were painted and to make blasting them easier and quicker, I soaked them in stripper while I blasted the hubs.

Above – Industrial tank of liquid stripper (not mine). Most people would buy gel stripper in cans and brush it on.

Below – A longer soak is needed.

I said last time that the braking surfaces would be machined but it turns out that once the rust was gone, they were quite OK so that’s one job I don’t have to have done. On the way home, I dropped the hubs off at the polisher’s. Up until now, I’ve always done my own polishing and you can too if you like. We’ll look at polishing aluminium and stainless steel next time and check out all the new and newly-beautified bits that’ll make up this restored wheel.

In the meantime, what did we learn about restoration that could be applied to any part of a bike?

1; If something won’t move, don’t just apply more force or use a bigger hammer in case you do some damage.

2; See if there’s a better way of doing it, even if you have to spend some money.

3; There are certain tools and equipment that are not essential but can make life a lot easier if you think you’ll get enough use out of them to justify the expense and the space they’ll take up.

4; Decide whether to do the whole bike at once or break it down into smaller projects.

5; You’ll sometimes have a choice of parts to restore and you must decide which one suits your needs best.

6; Send stuff that must be farmed out (like chrome) away as soon as you can so it’s being done while you do your work at home.

7; Assemblies come apart a certain way.

8; There is a certain way to clean parts and a certain way to inspect them.

9; Don’t throw anything out if there’s a chance you’ll need it.

10; You don’t have to buy your supplies and consumables all at once.

We left off last time with the wheels having been taken apart and the various bits were sent away for chrome, polishing, etc. I also said that while I prefer not to do my own polishing any more, I’d do a small piece just to show how it’s done in case you want to try it. Well, I haven’t had time for that but I’ll get to it in the next instalment. In fact, due to other commitments, no further progress has been made other than all the parts have arrived back and I’ve bought a few new bits as well.

With some hole drilling and machining of the fins with my new milling machine the hubs are now finished and ready to lace up.

The hubs are polished and cost $80. The rims are chromed and cost $420 with return postage but a pair of Mike’s aluminium rims would’ve cost around $265 delivered plus the cost of coating them with POR-15 clear, so the true cost of having these chromed is really around $180 or a little less. By the way, the chrome is the best I’ve ever seen in my whole life. Mike’s stainless spokes cost $145, and new bearings set me back $60. So far and not counting what I could have saved by buying Mike’s wheels because I didn’t want them anyway, that’s $705.25 for the pair and they’re not laced yet. I should’ve mentioned at the outset that wire wheels are by far the most expensive wheels you can have on a bike. If your bike has cast wheels, restoring them won’t cost you anywhere near these figures.

Next job is to put the new bearings in and then coat the hubs with POR-15 clear so I don’t have to spend the rest of my life polishing them. When that’s done, I’ll have them laced.

Update 10/12/12

Update 11/01/13

Update 27/1/13

The pipes were made ages ago but just recently I welded in the peak torque optimisers from 650 Central. This involves grinding down the head-facing end so it’s a tap-in fit into the pipe, filing a groove into the flare so it will go over the seam of the pipe and not jam as it’s being tapped in, drilling a few holes around the pipe where the end of the PTO will be, tapping the PTO into place, and welding it in, and grinding down the welds so with the mufflers in place, you don’t know they’re in there.

With all the fabrication on the frame finished, all that was left to do was detail it. That means dressing some of the welds (both mine and Yamaha’s) and carefully going over every inch of the frame removing any nicks and other imperfections, including welding spatter (mostly Yamaha’s) with a file. You wouldn’t believe how much welding spatter is on a frame when it leaves the factory. Anyway, that done, I reached a minor milestone the other day when I sent it off to the sandblaster. I wanted to send the swing arm with it but time at home is running out and aside from the pivot tube, the swing arm hasn’t been made yet. That doesn’t matter as I bought a blasting cabinet the other week so I can do the swing arm myself at a later date. The idea is for the frame to be blasted when I come home from work so I can paint it, with or without the swing arm. Getting the frame painted is a major milestone in the building of any bike, and where I am now is like around 3.30 pm on a Wednesday – almost over the hump.

With the frame gone, I could turn my attention to said swing arm. After designing it on paper, I wondered whether to just make a swing arm or make a jig first. I made parts of the swing arm on my cruiser many years ago but this will be the first one I’ve made from start to finish and I decided that if I could make one for this bike, I should make one for my chopper as well as I don’t really like the Kawasaki swing arm it has now. So, to make the second one easier, I made a jig first. At the risk of stating the obvious, a swing arm needs to be absolutely straight so to make sure the jig was straight, I wanted to make it on a surface plate but since I don’t own one, I used the only piece of metal I have that I know is perfectly flat.

This is it with the main rails in place, perfectly parallel and level with each other for their entire length and the pivot shaft at perfect right angle to them. All I need do now is weld in the cross rails and then I can start cutting out the two main elements of the swing arm. During all this, I’d constantly refer to the drawing on the drafting table in my garage.

The two arms have had a small wedge taken out, closed up, and welded to form the bends and are now having the coping cuts where they attach to the pivot tube done.

UPDATE 1/4/13

Before I go back to work I want to take a few bits to have work done and have been getting them ready. On one trip, I’d like to take the crank, rods, and pistons for balancing, pipes for ceramic coating, all outer cases for vapour blasting, and the frame for sandblasting. The places that do those things are a fair way from me but all close to each other.

The mufflers were originally chromed and I had them stripped ages ago. Trouble is that the atmosphere in a chrome shop is very conducive to rust so anything de-chromed will rust like there’s no tomorrow. That didn’t bother me as I intended soaking them in molasses and indeed, they’ve been in a tank of the stuff for the last two weeks. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a pic to show how rusty they were but take my word for it, they were rusty.

I had Ross Pistons make 4 slugs for me, 2 for this bike and 2 for my chopper. I sent a sectioned head to them from which to design the piston’s crown.

However, I wasn’t sure what compression ratio I wanted at the time so I told them to make the crown a good deal too high. I’ve had these for 2 years now and just the other day I pulled them out to check the compression ratio as is, and adjust if needed. I had a crankpin made of plastic that was a push-with-your-thumb fit into the flywheels so I could assemble a cylinder and inject water into it from a syringe. You smear grease around the valves, on the gaskets, and around the top of the piston to make the cylinder watertight. You then tilt the motor so the spark plug hole points straight up, and squirt water into the hole until it reaches the bottom of the threads, recording how much it took. You take the head off (4 nuts and only just tight), empty the water out, wind the crank around 180°, and repeat.

Update 03/05/2013

23/5/2013

Next step is to get it into primer. Tomorrow I'll go to my brother's panel-beating shop to get the paint and Rams Head Service is nearby so I'll take the head there while I'm about it. The head is one of three I had "Lillied" a couple of years ago and Rams will be fitting the Kibblewhite bronze guides and 1mm OS stainless steel valves.

I took the frame to my Brother's last Friday and primed it. It'd been sandblasted some two weeks before and I was worried that it'd be quite rusty but straight after blasting, it was coated with a mixture of phosphoric acid and something or other and showed no signs of rust at all. Even so, I spent a good hour or more cleaning the metal before I sprayed it. I left it to dry over the weekend and went back on Monday to paint it. Of all the things in the world you can paint, a bike frame is one of the worst. If the surface area of all that tubing were added up, it'd total less than the bonnet of a car but it's so intricate. It took four hours of rubbing with 240 and a further two hours with 400 to get it ready for colour. Speaking of which, way back at the beginning I said I wasn't sure what it would be but that was a few years ago and I'd long since settled on black and in fact, I bought some black paint recently. Black ties in well with the overall colour scheme as it's one of the three colours that the bodywork will be done in. Then just the other day I decided that black was too boring. One of the other two would have to do.

As for the swing arm area, it'll never be Jennifer Hawkins but it's sure as hell not Roseanne Barr anymore either.

I'm off to work again tomorrow so it'll sit here curing for two weeks. When I get home, I'll start putting it back together. Yippee!

27/6/13 Update

Now that the frame is painted, the bodywork will have to be done soon. I’ve seen seats attached to the base but I want the seat to be removable so I made a new pan from fibreglass, using the seat/tail as a mould.  

First step was to cover the seat/tail with gaffer tape because I’m too lazy to polish it for easy release as is the normal practice, and brush on some gel-coat.  

The next day, I pulled it off, cleaned the tape residue off, and marked the outline for trimming.  

After cutting away most of the excess with a hacksaw, the edges were cleaned up with the belt sander.  

Ta-dah.  

Last thing to do is insert bolts into some of these holes and glue the heads in place so they won’t turn as I tighten the nuts up as they’ll be inaccessible once the foam goes on. Speaking of which, the whole thing is now at the trimmer’s.  

I also picked up the crank but it’s wrapped in plastic and I’ll leave it that way for the time being but it’s worth a mention that I’m using the rods from a Honda CR-500 (that’s a 2-stroke moto-crosser). At 144mm long C-C, they’re 14mm longer than XS rods. The big-end is identical to an XS and you could use the XS crankpin but the Honda rod comes with its own which has a hole through it, making it a bit lighter so I used that. However, it’s a few mm too long and so has to be shortened. Also, because the rod is for a 2-stroke, it comes with a needle bearing in the little-end. That goes in the bin but the hole is way too big and needs a bronze bush. The Honda thrust washers are too thick so the XS items have to be used.  

The rod kit is not genuine Honda, but a Hot Rods item. I have no idea what a Honda rod looks like but these are really nice. They are an I-beam as per stock, not a H-beam like a Carrillo, but at least they come with no surface imperfections and are shot-peened. They have 2 oiling holes in the little-end and the big-end bearing has 15 rollers compared to the Yam’s 12. The crankpin is not splined as is the Yam’s pin so as it goes into the flywheel, it doesn’t try to pick up a spline in the hole.  

One last thing, if you’re thinking of using these, you’ll need pistons with the pin-hole raised 14mm. I had mine made by Ross a couple of years ago.  

Update 27/7/13

I picked up the seat from the trimmer the other day and what a great job he did. Bad Arse Trim Co of Werrington and I'd thoroughly recommend him. Call Dave on 0402689955. Sure, this is a very simple job but it's well done and exactly what I asked for. Many times I've found that when you ask someone to make something, you get something that's not quite what you had in mind. Not this time. 

Anyway, you may have noticed that this seat is not the same Ducati SS-750 item the bike had at the beginning of the story. You may have also noticed that the small part of the tank you can see is not from a Manx Norton but is from an XS Special. So, am I still building a café? Yes, and no. Quite a while ago, I thought it might be fun to have 2 sets of bodywork for the same bike. Yes, I still have the Norton tank and Ducati seat and fully intend using them, but not for a while. Because I rode the bike in café guise for a number of years, I thought I'd run it in tracker guise first this time around. I have to say that I never really wanted a tracker as they just didn't interest me and I probably hit upon the idea of the dual identity after a session of many JDs but the few times I've had it all mocked up in tracker form, I really liked it and can't wait to see it finished. When it is, I'll get the café gear ready at my leisure and change it over every once in a while. You heard it first, right here.

The forks are off my '77 with the skulls painted on it and of course, take twin discs but I think a café (I still call it that) needs a drum brake in front. I cut the lugs for the callipers off and filed them down to the contours of the leg, and then took them and a bunch of other stuff to the polisher as I just hate polishing. You can see the upper lug is completely gone and the lower has just been cut off with a hacksaw and is ready for filing down.

My other major accomplishment was to get the swing arm finished. It's sat around as you last saw it, in 3 pieces, for several months but now it has to go on the bike so I can fit certain things up to and around it. Having a jig was great as I could (and did) get it half done, put it aside for several months, and resume work with no setting up. Not only that, but have to make one for my chopper and having now done it once, I could do another in half the time.

I'm off to work tomorrow and when I get back I could paint everything that still needs painting, or I could assemble the motor up to the head gasket, unless Rams has the head done in which case I could fully assemble it, or I could make more bits and pieces. We'll see.

Update 21/8/13

Well, the shocks I ordered from Ikon came the other day so at last I can set up the rear end. Before that though, I had to make the missing bits - paint savers, belt tensioners, and axle spacers - to properly fit the wheel into the swing arm.  

 That done, I could then lower the bike to the ground and set the ride height at the rear. To do that, I tied the handlebars to the garage walls so she wouldn’t fall over, took the lift away, and put a trolley jack under the rear of the frame so I could raise and lower it as required. Of course, the height of the front end is set at stock.

 To get the rear end right, I placed a level gauge along the seat rails and adjusted the jack so the gauge read zero. That looked right, but is it really? To make sure, I checked a spec sheet which listed the rake at 27 degrees so I placed the gauge on the forks and guess what?

 Now I could make the lower shock mounts and weld them on.

 At long last, I could now put the bike on the floor and throw a leg over it. Like getting the frame into paint, this is one of those milestones in building a bike. Speaking of the frame being painted, I hate paint to be scratched by simply using the bike so I glued rubber bungs onto the steering stopper and also on the lug for the side stand. As for the stand, it’s of the early type (forked over the frame) so I wanted to put washers on both sides of the lug so the stand doesn’t touch the frame. This required the fork in the stand to me machined out a mm or so wider. It’s one of those things that no one would ever see but little things like that make all the difference to me. Now, not only can I put the bike on the floor and push it around, I can even leave it parked wherever I like. However, it still needs to go back onto the lift for further work and I forgot to take a picture while it was on the floor. Here it is though, on the lift but this time with both wheels in place.

I picked up the head from Ram’s Heads in Windsor and the last transmission bearing I need is on its way. With those bits, I hope to assemble the motor or at least the bottom end next time I’m at home.

Update 17/10/2013

The transmission bearings (1 for this bike and 1 for my chopper) arrived so I dug out all the gear-sets I’ve had in storage for several years and picked out the 2 best looking (1 for this bike, you know the rest).

 Here is the one for this bike apart.

 I cleaned this set and put it all back together with 4 new bearings. It’s in a plastic bag until I get a crankcase ready.

 About the only other work I got done this time at home was to machine some metal out of the trans pulley just to lighten it a little, and then send it and a bunch of other parts to the plater to be done in yellow chromate zinc. They should be done when I go home again and I can put them where they need to go. In this pic, you can see the kick starter shaft, gear-change shaft, brake-shoe cams. Although they are mostly out of sight, you can see the ends of them and I hate that they’re not very nice to look at. So, even though the gear changer for example, has a fair bit of surface area to be plated, it’s only the end that’s smaller than a 1c coin you’ll see. Did I mention I have detailitis?

If you look at the rear brake pedal shaft on your bike, you’ll see the arm welded to it was stamped out of a larger steel plate and the edges are very rough. I hate that so I ground it smooth all around. While I was at it, I drilled a couple of holes in it just for fun.

 I also found these foot peg rubbers in my collection. I have no idea where they came from but they’re genuine Yamaha so I thought I’d use them. I know most people would make aluminium pegs considering the bike is a street replica of a race bike (either café or tracker) but I owned Yamaha DTs as a kid and they had rubber pegs. I’m trying to replicate the “street” version of Yamaha’s dirt bikes of the day, that is DT instead of MX or YZ with their steel, serrated pegs. It’s also the reason I used steel wheels instead of aluminium. In any case, they’re entirely different internally to XS pegs so I’ll have to make mounts to suit. Here is the unknown rubber outer with an XS inner.

Well, it’s about time I put a motor together. Here is the crank sitting in the lower case and you can see the pins are welded in. I was in two minds about asking for this. Yes, it increases rigidity (I dislike built-up cranks) but it’s also permanent. Greg Ball said he only welds a crank if the fit is too loose and there’s a real chance it could separate and when I said I wanted it done regardless, he gave the distinct impression he was unhappy about that, but did it nonetheless. I hope it never bites me on the arse.

This crank was from an XS-1 or 1B as it had no gear for an electric starter so I sourced another No. 4 flywheel from a later model. Back when I started playing with these bikes, the starter mechanism didn’t work very well and there was no fix so many people, myself included, removed the starter motor. When I built the motor in my other bike (the one with the skulls all over it) I also removed all the gears and shafting. Well, nowadays we know what the problem was, there is a fix, and I’m thoroughly sick of kick-starting that bike. I bought 3 starter motors (having sold all of mine many years ago), 3 replacement gear sets, and 3 relays. I recently tore the motor in the other bike down to install the gears and cross-shaft. The lesson here is that if you want to remove the starter because it doesn’t work, to save weight, only sissies need a button, or whatever, leave the shaft and the gears either end of it in place in case you ever change your mind. As long as they’re there, the rest can be put in without splitting the cases or even taking the motor out of the frame.

Well, it’s finally time to start putting the motor together and the first thing to do is clean everything. I wanted to make sure the oil gallery that runs across the front of the motor, and from which the mains, big ends, and the top end are fed, was completely clean. Being so long, with smaller feeds going off to the side every so often, and plugged at the far end, it’s possible that over the years, crap that’s come through a torn oil filter would be carried along in the flow of oil and keep going past the last side feed and settle in the section that’s full of oil that doesn’t go anywhere. If enough crap settles there, it could bank up past the last side feed, blocking it. That means something will be starved of oil and that’s bad.

I wrapped a small cloth around the end of a length of wire that’s end was bent into a hook. The idea was to wet the cloth with solvent, and push it right to the other end, turning it as it went. The hook on the end of the wire was to catch the cloth so as to pull it back out. Bugger me if the hook didn’t catch on one of the side feeds and no amount of jiggling would free it.

I’m not a fisherman but I do know there’s only one way to remove a fish hook that’s in your finger and that’s to push it through. It looks like I’ll have to do that here. I drilled and tapped a 6 mm hole in the plug at the other end, put a bolt in, put the head of the bolt in the vice with the crankcase resting on wooden blocks, and tapped the case away from the vice with a soft hammer, thus pulling the plug out.

With that done, I could push the wire through.

OK, the gallery is clean but to make this job easier in future, I bought a gun cleaning kit. Anyway, the hole needs to be plugged so I got a piece of metal the correct size (actually, it was a section of shank I cut off a drill bit), heated the case in the oven (you know the rules for doing this), and tapped the new plug in.

It was then a simple matter of cutting off the excess and grinding it flush.

Job done but what a pain in the arse. Still, with the correct tools now I won’t have to do this again.

Next step was to get the cases ready to paint. You wouldn’t believe how rough the cases were made, and years of use and abuse by unknown POs just made them worse. I spent many hours filing off dags, sanding out gouges, and even milling some areas to get them ready for paint. Before that however, it’s off to the sandblaster. Here is the lower case masked up and about to be sprayed with black satin engine enamel. Like the colour of the frame, I changed my mind about the motor at the last minute. I was going to leave it bare.

I forgot to take a pic after I painted it but we’ll see it again soon.

I’m running Ivan’s high-ratio primary-gears in this bike. He said the inside of the clutch cover needs some metal removed to clear the larger gear on the crank.

It probably doesn’t need that much taken out but what the hell.

Here is the head all cleaned and ready to have its Kibblewhite valve gear installed. I know a few people who run these heads and they all say they are the duck’s guts. I had 3 done in the US around 4 years ago, this one had the valve guides put in and the seats cut by Rams at least a year ago, and I’m only now getting it ready to go onto a motor. If you need something like a steam locomotive, a ship, a WW2 aircraft, or anything like that restored, don’t call me. It takes me long enough to do a bike. Incidentally, the other 2 heads are off to Rams tomorrow.

 

You know how I like short front mudguards, well the Suzuki item looks nice but since it has a very round cross section and goes well with the cafe tank and tail, I thought it might look a bit odd with the tracker tail which has a square cross section. So, I bought this ‘guard off a pre ‘77 model but just like the Suzuki item, it’s way too long. First job was to separate the sheet metal from the bracket. Then, some rough cuts were made.

 

I marked out my final cut lines with tape and dug out the old angle grinder.

 

 

 

Much better.

 

 

Well, it’s time to get at least one set of body panels into paint and since the tracker set is stripped and the cafe set is not, the tracker gets the nod. Not only that, but I had decals made for the tracker tank a good six months ago and I’m sick of looking at them sitting on a shelf. Before I can take it all to my brother’s shop though, I had to check the fit off the front mudguard and that means “adjusting” the bracket. I marked out lines following the curved section as mentioned earlier and cut along them with an angle grinder. The belt sander cleaned up the edges and after a test fit just to make sure I’d taken out the correct amount, I tacked all the pieces together as seen here.

 

 

That’s better. Now to weld the seams and grind it down smooth.

 

 

With that done, it’s off to Richmond tomorrow and since Windsor is just down the road, I’ll see how Rams is going with my other two heads.