[jonnyb]

Ok first thing, while I live and study in London, my parent's have the pleasure of hosting this dirty old thing in their garage in guildford, which is 20 miles south but still pretty close, and will proudly parade the streets of London when completed!

I took a real gamble buying her - an ebay punt. the seller never responded to my questions and I couldn't even see her before the auction ended. So all I had were some photos and a description of of her condition. Non runner but turns over, complete, no battery but electrics work, binding brakes, gummed up carbs, decent tyres, running until 2013, not even any paperwork (V5)! The indicated mileage however was only 20,000, but there's no way of telling if this was true. After a low bid, I'd won at £640. Pretty cheap if it turns out to be ok. Here are some photos from ebay:

At least it looked reasonable from the photos. The chrome seemed ok, not too much corrosion on the frame and there were tread in the tyres.

My vision for this bike is along the lines of the photo below as a guide, however I think it imperative to make it my own and not just a copy of someone else's. I will be using more chrome, different silencers a anthracite wheels and a strap across the tank to give it a unique personal touch.

In keeping a bit of a British theme, I want this bike in British racing green with white stripes, as often used for two other popular old English classics the Rover Mini Cooper and the AC Cobra:

 

[jonnyb]

After winning the man offered to deliver it to me for £30, as he lived nearby so, he said I'd have to apply for a V62 registration to declare it's mine, so total outlay at this point with the girl in my garage and registered as mine was £695... and she looked ok overall.

Dirty as sin, with some pretty awful bodged repairs. I'm still debating whether the mileage is genuine. It seems there are a lot of repairs for a bike of that mileage although if it's been left out to the elements things do corrode so it is possible. I was able to recover two mileage recordings from 1996 and 2001, both at 12000 miles, so they are in line with the readings but can't say more than that.

The collector box (or H-box) has been removed and pipe extensions welded so badly it looks like someone dribbled chocolate sauce around the seams with dribbles all over the place.

Other odd things that popped up from the check: the engine number is different so presumably this has been changed and it used to be black! so someone has gone through the effort of changing the tank and all the plastic cowling to red! Why they did this is beyond me!

I can also see there is a leaking head gasket, the seat is ripped and rotten underneath (not to worry though as I'm chucking it anyway), the engine bars are roughly painted over black, and the exhaust is badly spray painted silver over the whole thing.

 

[jonnyb]

First job, carbs out, carb cleaner ready and rebuild the gummed up carbs!

As I went along I replaced as many old rusty bolts with nice shiny A2 stainless allen key bolts. It had a clean-out, the tops polished, the support bar repainted and I realised the air cut out valves were perished so replaced those. £26 seemed a lot for 2 tiny rubber bits but it was the cheapest new ones i could find.

With the carbs all back together, I also replaced the choke cable which was stuck and back in the engine. A new loaded Yuasa battery later, the bike switched on and all the lights work apart from the back right indicator which also was stuck on and not flashing.

Pushing the starter button, nothing moved, but a whine from the solenoid could be heard. I thought the engine was jammed! :sad1: but after I realised I could turn it over with the crank bolt, I took the starter motor out. There was a hole in the back and when the cover came off, a whole pile of ash poured out the back! After naively thinking I could clean and repair it, I bought a working repalcement off ebay - £25 inc deliv. not bad. During this time I also took the wheels off for repainting

 

[jonnyb]

At this point the bike is looking like this

and after ages of prep work (didn't have the right power tools at this point) cleaning, sanding, cleaning again, masking, 3 coats etch primer, 1200 grit sand, 4 coats halfords anthracite grey wheel paint, 1200 grit sand and 3 coats Poly-Urathane Laquer the wheels look like this:

I'm glad to say they came out really nicely.
I think it took me 10-12 hours work to do both of these (not inlcuding drying time!) I don't want to have to do that again!

 

[jonnyb]

Aaaannd... on Easter Sunday, with the new starter installed and some Ether in the spark plug holes, something else rose from the dead!

That's my lil' bro in there by the way

 

[jonnyb]

Then, brakes and final drive were brass brush dremeled down, cleaned, primed, painted and PU laquered to look like this:

During this time, I sorted the binding rear brake, the axle was jammed stuck with the rear brake on fully. I broke the shoes getting them out, so new ones went back in, all after a thorough clean out and some lithium grease into the axle so it doesn't get stuck again!

I then got the rear swingarm out which was badly corroded - so I sanded it all downand there were holes poking through the support bar.

Whilst it was damaged, the support still looked pretty rigid so I knew I could just get away with protecting and supporting with fibreglass reinforcement. After cleaning and removing as much debris as posible, a layer of hammerite direct to rust went down to prevent corrosion, then fibreglass repair to the holes:

then another coat of hammerite over the whole swingarm

It's good stuff that! I looks well protected now to get back on the bike

I then thought I'd have a go at polishing the rocker covers. Here's before and after:

Also the crash bars went from crappy black to a clean new smooth white via strip and sanding off the rust underneath (that should have been done before) with Hammerite smooth white.

I then cut off the old mufflers, ground down all the rough welds, sanded it all down and painted over with a Very high temperature black paint.

by the way, anyone who wants to know what the inside of an old muffler looks like... (I found it interesting anyway )

Also, my new chrome shocks arrived from tec bike parts and reverse cone peashooters from classic bike shop (ebay), so here's a little mock up although nothing's attached at this point

And now... with the rear wheel back on:

A helicoil insert has now fixed the ripped thread on the rocker head cover that was causing the head gasket to leak oil. Hopefully that's the only gasket leaking!

I've also brass wired down and repainted the front brake calipers and sanded down and polished the front forks although I cant seem to get a chrome like mirror finish on them except with my dremel and brass wire wheels which I've burnt through now. so the front end is still yet to be put back together.

So that's where I am right now. Updates to come as progress is made. I've now bought almost all the components I will use to complete the bike, so it's a waiting game plus getting the time to do the work, but as it's at my parent's house, it'll be a weekend activity. The seat I've ordered is from Motorcycle seats direct and looks like this which I am excited about...

 

[ki4radiocom]

I will not say timber! Though I know you used some. Can I get that stand on e-bay ???
Just kidding.
Nice that it started. That is always a good thing.

 

[jonnyb]

Those logs don't come cheap ya-know! Once you pay Fed-Ex delivery it becomes a pricey support tool!

Budget wise I want the entire build to be under £2000 ($2950) and by that point it needs to look $1million, although £1850 ($2700) is the target I've set myself. I've rather pedantically been keeping a tally of how much I've spent, and I'm almost at my target already! Should be fine as long as there are no nasty surprises.

Looks like loads of stuff when it's all written down!

 

[Motomicah]

What a lot of progress! Great pictures and the bike is turning out sublime! Keep up the great work, and I look forward to seeing more.

 

[jonnyb]

Thanks Motomicah, had a look at your build. Really very impressive! Love the paint job and rear hugger/plate mount particularly

So a couple weeks down the line and a little more progress made. I got going on the tank; there was a large but slight dent on the tank near the fuel cap which i managed to improve with a bent stainless rod, now it's nearly back to normal unless you look at it closely. I've bought some body filler so will probably apply it, sand and get it perfect as I everything to be done properly.
So after stripping with no nonsense stripper (this was actually pretty hard work and took 3 applications and a paint scraper). I had to first remove the lacquer from the stickers on the first coat then use a heat gun and scraper to get the stickers off

and then using a nylon wire cup and power drill, I removed all the rest of the paint/primer/residue leaving a shiny finish

My bro said he likes it bare metal and that I should keep it like that, but unprotected steel sounds like a bad idea to me, and I'm inclined to stick to the original plan. Also, I can't body fill any imperfections if it's bare. I could use a adhesion promoter and clear cellulose lacquer to protect it, but not sure yet about it. Plus I've already bought the green paint and lacquer... will think about it.

 

[jonnyb]

I wanted also to keep the front forks bare metal, but in the end decided to go with a Simonez steel colour paint and lacquer because I don't want to have to constantly worry about the bare alu tarnishing and needing constant polishing. So they were repainted and came out quite nicely.

The big job that I really wanted to get completed was the engine refurbishment. It is a really dirty mother and once it's done, the whole bike will start looking like it's getting there. I found it a little hard knowing how to disconnect all the cables and wires attached to it as the Haynes manual didn't show any pictures but eventually it came out. Getting the fan off it's shaft was really tricky. I had to use a crow bar for this! It's only pressed onto a tapered shaft but was so stiff. Once I got the radiater/fan off I could disconnect the tachometer cable and finally free it from the bike. The other trouble was I didn't have a proper stand to lower the engine out, so it got lowered onto the log shown earlier and eventually managed to slide it out.

This probably wont surprise anyone who's already done this but I couldn't believe how heavy it is! It took me and my brother to lift it onto a bench so I could work on it. It's definitely heavier than I am!
This thing was dirtier than a (insert inappropriate joke here). Literally caked in muck and grime!

Note the nice shiny rocker covers compared with the rest of the engine! It seems there is a lot of muck behind the fan. Is that normal or could that be an oil leak that lead to debris adhering more readily?

I started cleaning it with a solvent sprayer/air compresser and brush so far this is where I'm at (until I get more time)

 

[OCR]

Looks as if that cam seal might be iffy?

 

[jonnyb]

You could be right, it looks like oil must be leaking from somewhere in that region. I've got a full engine gasket set just in case so I'll open up the fan output/tacho cover and put a new gasket in there.

 

[jonnyb]

A while has passed now with little progress but I had a little time to get a little further. After many many hours of scrubbing with white spirit, wire wheel drilling, dremmeling and wiping down again, 34 years of muck and oxidation had come off. I could approximate maybe 15 hours for the whole cleaning process, maybe more it's hard to say it took so long! You learn to get quicker as you do more of it though.
I managed to suspend the engine from the ceiling so I could clean the underneath cooling fins in the same way and so I could get access for repainting
Then remove all the appendages, some of the covers and a lot of the bolts, and cleaned inside the water pump housing to get most of the rusted/precipitated crap out along with the old water. Then masked up everything that didn't want painting with masking tape and a scalpel for precision.
so it looked like this:

Then I used Halford high temperature enamel silver spray paint. I got 2 generous coats out of it till it ran out.

And finally removed all the tape and replace all the appendages/covers/bolts (after they had been cleaned/refurbished themselves)

And a video of the engine spinning on its chain:

 

[jonnyb]

I gave the clutch cover a good sand with 600 up to 1200 wet/dry and buff and even polished it with Brasso but cannot get a mirrored finish on it, what I have is not bad, but I'm looking for the chrome look finish. If anyone knows how to do that let me know cos I've tried a number of things with no success. (Maybe Brasso is no good on Aluminium? It just goes black/dull until it's all thoroughly wiped off)

 

[jonnyb]

Then next the tank. I showed previously that I had removed the paint and got a shiny metal finish on it. There's a little dent in the top than I wanted to smooth over so I added P38 filler and sanded down to a flush finish. (it's not 100% perfect but not bad for a first go). Actually I had to have 2 goes as the first one left little bubbles in the filler when i sanded down. 2nd time I really pressed the filler into the surface to push all the bubbles out and it came out well.

After sanding I wiped it all clean and dried it, then painted with a grey bodywork primer. 3 coats:

then sanded down with 600, 800 and 1200 grit dry paper, then 4 coats of the pearlescent British racing green spray paint:

I have to wait 24hrs for the paint to dry fully before lacquer so that's all I manged then.

I'm wondering if the one coat enamel paint is going to be hard enough on the engine. It's a matt finish and thinking maybe I should mask up again and add a clear enamel lacquer on top for extra protection? Any thoughts?

 

[Motomicah]

On my engine I used a primer, two coats of color, and then a clear top coat. It has been holding up really well I found, but any paint can chip if something hits it hard enough. I would probably put a coat of clear on your engine, even though it's not totally necessary, it will look better if the paint get's scratched as the metal is less likely to show through.

I like the green pearl paint btw!

 

[chocolatelvis]

I applied several coats of high heat enamel to my engine with the proper curing times without any clear as I prefer the matte look as opposed to the wet. Zero chips so far. Probably a full can of base from my recollection and a couple cans of hi build prime. I'd be weary of using certain clear coats on the heads or cylinders as they (heads) tend to get extremely hot and then very cold in which paint doesn't like that too much. Also within a year or so, tend peel and yellow. If you decide to go this route, go with a quality high heat clear.

 

[hurley]

Wow, very nice work. I love the way the mock-up looks!

 

[purplecx500]

Yyyoooo had 2 be the worst lookng CX engine ever.


Look good as new now.