PAINT MY WHEEL

I took advantage of the remarkable warm weather to paint the hub of the rear wheel. Hammorite, smooth, aluminium paint was to be used and after a final rub and wipe down I started to apply it with a small brush. It went on very well and I managed to keep the spokes reasonable free of paint.

The photos were taken after the first coat and part way through and the finish was better than I expected, although I did give it a second coat to be on the safe side. The hub will never be seen as it is tucked away under the rear end, but like the swing arm, I feel the need for it all to look good.

The rear tyre posed a bigger problem, the existing, rounded tread bike tyre needs to be replaced with a flat profile car tyre.  My wheel is 17 in. and the recommended Avon sidecar tyre requires an 18 in. wheel, this would mean having my wheel rebuilt with a new rim and spokes at a cost of nearly £300.  However some extensive web searching came up with  
www.longstonetyres.co.uk  They have a new cross ply tyre of the right size 400/425x17 with all the correct markings required by MSVA (Motorcycle Single Vehicle approval). This tyre is actually designed for the old Austin Ruby car, but I asked Arthur, the manufacturer of my kit, to confirm it's suitability and he has given the thumbs up. The new tyre should arrive in a couple of days.

What has arrived is my engine crane. I don't know how the delivery guy got it to my front door as one box weighed over 50 kilos and the smaller one 16 kilos. I put it on my trolley and took it back to my garage and assembled it. I checked it out before partially de-assembling it and loading it, with some difficulty into the back of the car, for transporting over to Reigate tomorrow where it will be put to work removing the engine from the bike.

TURVEY TOPSY

Good friends Lorna and Martin arrived on Thursday evening for dinner, in fact we were expecting them on Friday, but fortunately a call from Lorna at 6pm on Thursday to confirm time of arrival made us realise our mistake. Jacquie pulled out all the stops and conjured up a very tasty meal, but as it was getting dark when they arrived, they where immediately pressed into action.

This time the chassis not only had to be flipped up the right way, but turned around so that the front of the car is at the front of the garage, leaving more room for fitting the front suspension and engine. No problems, but it did seem heavier this time, although the trestles could all be in a straight line as it was just the flat bottom that was resting on them. Thanks guys, but I will need considerable more man-power when the next time comes to lift it off the trestles, but a long way to go yet.

The front wheels and suspension parts are some way off, so on the Friday I spent more time with the donor bike and now the gear linkage, clutch, speedo and tacho cables plus all oil breather pipes electrical connections, are all disconnected ready to drop the engine out. Lots more scrappy bits of paper have been sellotaped in place to remind me what goes where when it all goes back together.

I have ordered from Ebay a 1 ton engine crane which should arrive by this coming Wednesday, so hopefully on Thursday I will have the engine out and on Friday I can do a trial fit in the car, exciting!!!!!

OH!! THE SUSPENSION

I couldn't wait until the chassis was turned over so I decided to install the rear suspension and drive shaft whilst it was still upside down.

A new tub of grease purchased and grease gun filled, I liberally anointed the UV joint, the swing arm bearing and pins with grease. the UV joint was placed in its housing in the swing arm which the rubber boot held in place. I then lined up the bearing with the nuts welded into the chassis, an 8mm allen key screwed the pins through the nuts and into the bearings, after ensuring that there was an equal gap each end between chassis and swing arm, I screwed in the bolts until tight and then backed off sufficiently to allow the arm to freely move up and down.

The shock absorber was bolted back on to one side, before I slid the drive shaft up into the other side of the swing arm and with a little wriggling it slipped into the end of the UV joint. I apologise for not taking any photos of the process, but my hands were a bit greasy at the time.

The final job was to offer up the drive box to the swing arm, again the sliding sleeve and the splines were well greased and it slipped together quite easily. I remembered to push the axle rod through the end of the swing arm and into the drive box before I fully tightened the four bolts that secured it all together, this was to ensure that everything was correctly lined up. The other shock absorber was fitted between the drive box and the chassis, a quick clean up and the job was done, just need to paint the hub of the rear wheel and get the correct flat profile tyre fitted.

DOWN TO THE NUTS AND BOLTS

Not able to do anything more to the car until the chassis is flipped over, in the the meantime I did a bit more stripping of the donor Moto Guzzi.

Off came the petrol tank, after draining out the fuel, in the photo you can just make out the masking tape tab attached to a wire, with the legend 'Petrol Warning Light', the first of many such labels that will be attached as the wiring loom is eventually removed. The exhaust down pipes, followed by the air filter box and battery tray were then removed, the carburetters were next, but the throttle and choke cables took a bit of thought before they could be released from the handlebar control, got there in the end with out having to resort to wire snips.

I was puzzling about how I would eventually remove the engine and gearbox from the frame, the workshop manual says that a supporting cradle is attached to the engine, the frame and front wheel is then lifted and rolled forward, up and over the engine. I can now at least see where all the engine mounting positions are and as I don't have a cradle I intend to to use an engine crane to suspend the engine whilst I remove the bolts and then hopefully lower the engine to the ground, we shall see!!!

A RIVETING EXPIERENCE

Last week I eventually got the last 120 holes drilled in the base plate and over this weekend I cleaned up the holes with my old 10mm drill bit, both sides of the base plate plus the the chassis, 720 holes to be precise. the photo shows half of the chassis holes cleaned up and swarf removed, back breaking and shoulder numbing manual work, but it had to be done.

OK Monday, set aside for riveting, but what a day!! the first thing to go wrong was that, try as I might, I could hardly squeeze the bonding/sealing mastic out of the tube, by the time I had covered about twelve inches, my hand and forearms where aching even though I was squeezing the mastic gun double handed, I hoped that reason was, that because it had been quite cold over night, the mastic had thickened and my solution was to dunk the tube of mastic in very hot water for half an hour, It did the trick. It was a messy job and hoping to get two nice equal beads of mastic either side of the rivet holes went out of the window. One large bead was erratically applied which Jacquie helped to spread liberally over the chassis rails.

The base plate was lowered and loosely bolted down. With a bit of adjustment to the plate Jacquie started placing the rivets and I followed around with rivet gun which made a very satisfying sound as the big rivets where banged down. Excess mastic oozed out of the joints and got stuck on everything, so whilst I riveted Jacquie cleaned up with liberal quantities of white spirit and paper cleaning cloths.

I was on a role when half way through, the tip of the riveting nozzle disappeared inside the barrel, the tip had sheared off. I checked the air pressure and it was within limit, I was to put in frankly 'buggered'. I tried my hand pop riveter and manged to pull a few home, but no way was I going to be able to pull a hundred odd rivets that way.

Fortunately Machine Mart is only a five minute drive away and I soon returned with what looked like an identical gun although the nozzle had a slightly different profile and this one was shiny red, the only downside that it was twice the price at £60 from the Ebay one. Job was soon completed and all surplus mastic cleaned away. Time and more riveting will prove that buying cheap was a false economy this time.

At the weekend some chums are visiting and I hope to persuade the male halves to turn her right side up, in the meantime I will endeavour to get a refund on the defunct gun,

DELIVERANCE

It all arrived in the same post amazing! Four 4.9 drill bits, air riveter gun and the 20mm, replacement swing arm pins, which have been stored with the freshly painted, swing arm ready for fitting as soon as the chassis is back up the right way.

The drill bits were put to immediate use and half of the holes have been drilled ready for the rivets. There was just enough air left in my baby compressor to try out the air riveter and boy did it bang home those big 4.8 rivets, my Ebay purchase was great value at just over half the price than the same gun at Machine Mart.  Unfortunately my 2.5kw generator isn't man enough to power up the compressor, I have tried it out with a 50m extension lead, plus another 25m of cable and despite my concern about voltage drop it seemed to work fine. However I am still about 15m short of my garage, so I have ordered another 50m reel. I had originally considered putting in a permanent electricity supply, but the armoured cable would have cost in excess of £600 and the final cost would probably be over £1000, by the time a trenching tool had been hired, and a professional electrician had connected it all up, so 80 quid for a couple of extension leads, seemed the best way to go, especially as my genny powers up every other tool that I need.

Another 120 holes to drill and then I can get riveting.

SPRAYED OFF

I collected the swing arm and brake back plate from the sprayers today, they look great. The back plate is still wrapped in bubble wrap, but the guy in the paint shop said 'he had done a little baking, but it was only done a few hours earlier and he would rather not wrap the swing arm in case in left marks'. I laid it in the boot and drove home carefully. The photo shows it laid on a dust sheet and tomorrow I will wrap it and store it safely until the floor plate has been riveted on.

Talking of which, I have now marked out where most of the holes need to be drilled for the rivets, every 50mm, each mark has been dot punched and a pilot hole drilled into the alli. Just need to finish off and hopefully the 4.9mm drill bits should arrive soon.

I have also order from Ebay an air riveter, as my trial rivet with a 4.8 rivet, using the usual pop rivet gun required an enormous amount of effort. Several hundred rivets need to in place before the sealant goes off and I realised that I was going to need some extra muscle to do the job quickly, it should arrive in a couple of days.