Lea Gate July Hot Rod meet

First Friday of the month is American car night at the Lea Gate pub just outside Preston. As the weather has been so good I was expecting a good turnout, and I wasn't disappointed. These are my favourites out of the bunch, with the all aluminium bodied Brooklands style racer being my absoulte favourite. I spoke to the guy who made it, its basically a Westfield with mods the the chassis to make it taller around the sides and then he "just" added the ali bodywork. All designed in his head and added to as he saw fit, every panel was made first go and before he started he'd never used an english wheel or tig welded ali in anger. It was his post retirement project, and took him 8 months working 8 hrs a day 5 days a week. It was proper awesome.

Finally - the wait is over

Well this is a picture I've been waiting a long time to post. My garage with a finished roof and two lockable doors.
My life for the last couple of weekends has pretty much revolved around getting the steel side door sorted out.
Its skinned with a 2mm steel plate and it took me and a mate to put it back on the hinges (cheers H)

Now comes the hard part, getting the electrics sorted and signed off, and getting my bloody builder to come and sort the mistakes and blemishes in the floor. Oh and trying to stop myself filling it before all this is done as I really need to get the floor painted.

And the door (and frame) that's taken me so long to make. It might have come together a bit quicker if I had better facilities to hand but hey ho that's what I'm heading towards. And considering this is my first proper welding project I'm pretty pleased with the results.

I still have to finish the lock properly but I can lock it from the inside and come out the big door which is fine for now.

Check everything

So remember that little Suzuki which is definitely not a project but has not really been on the road since I got it. Well after winning the fight with the air box and getting it on the road it was absolutely rubbish at low revs ie would barely even pull enough to get going especially when just started  and only marginally better when warm. Oh well I thought thats the price I pay for putting pod filters on need to get the jetting sorted and go one up on the pilot jet size. I looked at one of the pair to see what size was in it and checked the spare set too, all 42.5 right then I'll just go up a size and that should sort me out, however I should of checked the other carb too as when I came to fit my newly acquired pilot jets I found it to be 4 sizes too small WTF, whoever had been mucking about with these carbs was fecking retard, different size pilot jets and no blanking plugs. I dont think I could off actually test rode this bike even I I'd wanted to when I went to buy it.

I've also tried to re-build the front caliper but it's not gone well so far as I skewered the rubber boot for the piston with a screw driver and it wont bleed up. Still, I'll persevere.

I've started making the side door for my garage, 3mm thick, 40mm box section. Its my first proper welding project (I'm not counting the frame for the door that I made in 5mm angle). Its going OK even if I do say so myself,  just added some cross pieces half way up today to make a crosss shape in the rectangle.

Things are hopefully happening with the garage again, watch this space.

Big Changes, its all happening at once

So I have some big things and huge changes going on in my life at the minute.

This happened

This is happening but far to slowly and is taking forever to get completed(worlds biggest garage(well in my world anyway))

And finally I've not been able to work on this for months but this is a rough mock up as I left it without anything welded but its a rough outline of how it might look.

First Ride fail

The first ride did not go well, would not pull at all, had to limp it home pretty much just letting it pull on idle.
I knew that the carbs weren't original and had been recently fitted and was told they'd need "setting up"

So the carbs had to come off for inspection, and I figured that while they were off I'd bin the air box and fit pods as a stepping stone towards the Bratstyle make over. It was a long drawn out fight that I eventually won, but there's no chance its going back on as its in a thousand pieces. Another interesting discovery was the use of 4 scouring sponges as an air filter.

 I took the carbs with me on a trip into Manchester and popped into see the nice people at NRP carbs to see if they could help, turns out a vital plug was missing out the carbs and that they already had the right main jets for running pods.
While I had them off I gave them a quick check and the diaphrams are starting to go but will be ok for a bit, and I figured I might as well use the carbs tops off the second set of I think original carbs as they are a nicer and Ali, so i gave them a little buff with some autosol and the dremmel and they came up quite nice, I didn't go ott just got em a bit nicer than they were. And a hell of a lot better than the manky steel tops that the carb cleaner half melted the paint off.

I got it all back together today (eventually) and after a number of issues with the throttle cable being too tight for some odd reason I finally got it to idle properly and was able to take it out for a test ride.

Its flat as a witches tit for the most part then over 7 thou takes of like a scalded cat, lots more work with the carbs me thinks to get it running better. And in spite of mt previous attempts the front brake was still sticking so I had another fight with that too.

May attempt some more tuning this week, and another short test ride to see if I got the brake sorted.

 

 

 Great lines on this bike, kicked up seat loop at the back and a new seat base, then hide the electrics and ditch the side panels and we'll be getting somewhere, far from original, but they look so good like that so why muck it up, but as I'm about to be a dad I strongly suspect that this sort of thing will be going on the back burner for a bit. Still if I can grab an hour here and there on it in the new garage who knows what may happen.

This is mint

Its not a project

So considering its not a project it did take 4 hrs of my time on Saturday afternoon.

Insurance is active as of today so I was trying to get it sorted out to how I want it for now ie minus the massive rear light and indicators plus trying to flatten out some of the nasty scabs on the fork legs in the hope of prolonging the seals.

I also discovered a few more horrors thanks to flattening the battery by leaving the lights on whilst checking the indicators.

This massive ring connecting the live to the battery was barely connecting it and is almost big enough to fit over the bolt, and to boot there's no battery strap so if I hadn't secured it, the damn thing would be rattling round all over the shop. I'll be riding it this week so I hope there's no more horrors.

The seat base has a pretty bad case of tin worm, but should last me long enough to fab up a rear loop and seat base for the Bratstyle look.

It was all going quite well at this point, and I'd done some test fits of the seat to check everything was ok.

But unfortunately I ended up with this, not exactly what I was after, and I'd run out of time to sort it out, as I'd been neglecting my other DIY  tasks and had to crack on with them. Oh well another hours work and a couple more holes in the already swiss cheese mudguard and we'll be there.