A FITTING TIME

Swing arm and rear wheel are back in my home garage and the first thing I did was to offer up the swing arm to the chassis of the kit and yes, a lovely snug fit. However when I tried to screw in the pivot pins, they wouldn't. Arthur had welded in to the chassis 20mm threaded nuts that fit older swing arm pins and my 24mm ones just weren't going to screw in. Turns out that Moto Guzzi have, understandably,  made many changes over the years to the California, one of them being an increase of 4mm on the threaded section of the pins. Arthur's advice was to order the correctly sized ones and this I have done.

Also ordered were the dual shock absorbers from Hagon, which arrived within three days. High tensile nuts, bolts and washers, that were needed to locate the top end of the shocks. arrived in one day, Westfield Fasteners excelled themselves.

The swing arm minus the drive box is now temporally located using short lengths of 15mm copper tubing, one of the photos shows where the correct pin will eventually be screwed in. The top of the shocks have been approximately positioned using the large washers. In time the swing arm will need to be removed, shot blasted and powder coated before being permanently bolted up.

 

 I placed the rear wheel in the carrier on the back of the chassis, where the spare one was carried on the original Barrel Backs. This was a good place to start cleaning the hub, rim and spokes, after I first removed the brake disc. The spokes are stainless and a little wire brush on my Dremel got rid of the light crud, and various polishing heads also on the Dremel have got the rim back to a showroom shine. Paint was peeling from the hub and white aluminium oxide crystals had built up underneath. again, wire brush on Dremel worked between the spokes has removed the flaky paint and white crystals, but I now have to decide whether to repaint or lacquer, whatever I choose to do it will be tricky, spraying is out of the question as the spokes will get in the way, so hand brushing would appear to be the only realistic option, leave that one for another day.