New bike project.

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New project, a bike with a motor this time, I’ve been working on this for a while so done quite a bit so far. It’s been 20 years since I sat or worked on a bike, last one was a Triumph Bonny, they just cost too much these days so I settled for a 74 TX650 wreck and boy did it turn out to be a wreck. I have psoriatic arthritis so I’ve largely lost the use of my hands but I manage a few hours work on it every day. I’ll never be able to ride it thanks to the PsA so this will be a long term project: Every nut, bolt spoke, piece of steel was rusted through. Inspection also revealed the chain had come off at same stage, as well as removing the top section of the crankcase as in the picture, it also tore the top section of the gearbox drum shifter bearing housing off. After tearing the engine apart I sent off for a second hand set of crankcase.

The bike came with an extra set of carbs, mag wheels and a pair of spoked wheels and a box of assorted bits and pieces. While I was waiting for the cases, I cut the rusted spokes off the wheels, stuck the hubs on the lathe, trued up the castings and then polished them using cloth wheels and progressively finer compounds. The rims, which were badly damaged from tyre irons and badly pitted from oxidisation, were repaired, ground and polished. While on a polishing kick I also polished the top triple tree, lower fork sliders, brake backing plate, brake fluid distributor, brake master cylinr and also bead blasted the switches and polished them up. Polishing on the buffer machine really hurts my hands so I have to loop a roop around my neck, tie it to the item to be polished to support it and then polish. It took quite a while to do the polishing as I could only manage an hour or under each day, any more and I’d be laid up recouperating for a few days. A very painful job for me, polishing. Some pics of the journey:

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New seat I'm working on and some engine mounts I fabricated.

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Here's the engine, second rebuild:  Painted it silver first time around, didn't like the colour so stripped it down again, painted it black and rebuilt it again.  Last pic is a manometer I constructed for syncing the carbs.

[TomG]

Wish I had a manometer for synching the carbs on the MG's i used to have. Had to settle for doing it by ear.

Looks like a fun project. 

Tom

[Dr Stan]

Please make a post about building a manometer.  When I rebuild the engine (a 383 high performance) I intend on getting a Tri-power manifold and running it on 3 two barrel carbs with the middle carb supplying the majority of gas during normal driving.  When I get on it is when I want the extra fuel from the front and back carbs.  Edelbrock made the intake manifolds and every now & then one is listed on EBay.  Once I get serious about the rebuild I'll need to start searching for a manifold.

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Easy to make: Two equal lengths of 35mm clear acrylic tube, about 150mm long, drill two holes in each tube, about 25mm from the ends. Construct two wooden platforms, two should have two 35mm holes drilled in them with up to a 25 mm gap between them. Next make two more wood pieces of the same shape and two 6mm thick neoprene gaskets, again the same shape. Sandwich the neoprene gasket between one blank piece of wood and one piece with the two 35mm holes and dril ll three holes so they are on opposite sides of the 35mm holes, do the same with the other pieces so you have two identical platforms. Slide the acrylic tube through the 35mm holes and clamp the neoprene and wood platforms either end of the acrylic tubes. Measure the height and cut three lengths of all thread to length, allowing for a nut each end. Screw a nut on each end of the three allthreads and insert them into the 6mm holes, screw on another two nuts, top and bottom of the allthread and tighten until the acrylic tubes are tight enough to form a seal with the neoprene gasket. Then tighten the six nuts so the wood with the Two 35mm holes compresses the neoprene gasket against the top and bottom pieces of blank wood. Cut two lengths of plastic tube and insert into the hole at the bottom of each acrylic tube. Next cut a short length of plastic tube and insert into the two other holes, joining the two acrylic tubes together with it. Fill with water until around 1/3 full. Then insert a jet of some type with a small hole, under 1mm, into each tube. The holes in each acrylic tube should be slightly smaller than the outer diameter of the plastic tube. Slash cutting the ends and heating with a heat gun should make it easy to push through the holes. Connect tubes to the vacuum outlet and start the motor, adjust until water levels are the same. Tip. Connecting the tubes to the manifold will not work, they need to be connected to the carbs, near the venturi. If you have more than two carbs, just add more acrylic tubes as required. Two coke bottles will do the same, or you can buy manometers from auto shops or ebay, they are more accurate than vacuum gauges as the needles on vacuum gauges tend to hunt. Just make sure the water you add is not enough to fill one tube enough to cover the vacuum outlet.

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Finished off the front hub:  I drilled the disk with some lightning holes, installed new sealed bearings, polished the hub and because the left side cover that covers the disk mount holes was rusted, I fabbed a new aluminium one and polished that as well.  Bought some stainless fasteners, polished them up and assembled the hub.  I want to go with an electronic speedo, if I can find one, so the speedo drive on the left will probably go and I'll turn up a stainless spacer in it's place.  For a bit of extra bling, I also polished the edge of the disk.  Hub should look nice laced up to a polished ally rim with polished stainless spokes.

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After trueing, skimming, straightening and polishing the hubs I attacked the rims.  These were in terrible condition, looked like the PO had used screwdrivers, claw hammers and pry bars to remove and replace the tyres and they were badly oxidised and pitted.  
After grinding the gouges out of the rims using a nylon fibre wheel, I ground down the edges of the rims then polished the rims.  They came up pretty good, there are still some marks visible, but too deep to remove altogether.  

Next I ordered some stainless spokes.  The supllier only had front spokes, so when they came I spoked the front wheel, trued and centred the rim and torqued the nipples.  Unfortunately, there was thread showing before the nipple, about 3mm worth.  I compared the stainless spokes with stock spokes and found the spokes were the same length, they just had an extra 3mm of thread.  Spokes are normally ordered either for a particicular bike, as was the case with these spokes, or the size worked out via a mathmatical equation, thus if done properly the excess thread is covered by the blank, threadless area at the begining of the nipple.  I've been spoking bicycle and motor bike wheels since 1968, never have I seen this problem before, and I've spoked dozen and dozens of wheels.

I contacted the seller expressing my concern, but all I got in response was a series of abusive emails and texts.  He actually sent me a picture of a wheel his 'profesional' wheel lacer did for him showing exposed thread, saying both he and his 'profeional' lacer considered them ok.

I ordered spokes for the rear wheel 'from a different supplier and when they arrived laced, trued, centred and torqued the wheel - no exposed thread, perfect.  I emailed a picture of the wheel to the supplier of the front wheel spokes, saying this is how a wheel is supposed to look.  Not surprisingly I received no reply.

After both wheels were laced, I cut and polished a blanking plate for the disk mounting hole on the left side of the hub and turned up some wheel spacers from stainless, then turned up some aluminium dust covers and pressed them over the spacers.

Both wheels look nice polished up and laced with stainless spokes, but I do cringe when I look at the exposed thread on the front wheels.

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Continued.

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This is the rear hub.  I mounted it on the lathe, trued the flanges and removed the casting bridges between the fins and then polished it, along with the brake backing plate.