Pinned So what have you done to your bike today?

Picked up a Yamaha RT100 last year, stored at Gyros, finally got around to unsiezing the conrod..... there appears to be some of the conrod missing... and some floatys in there.....
will price up fix and/or.....

 

Finally got my dad's 1959 BMW R69 back on the road. It got a full mechanical rehab but just cleaned up the paint. Runs great but the brakes are a little exciting.

Here it is straight out of the barn it lived in for 50 years.



Here it is all cleaned up.



My dad and some of his friends up to no good sometime in the early 60s.

 

That’s fantastic, great history and sensational looking resto. Congratulations.

 

Thanks to @BasketCase I have finally fixed my choke lever on the ZXR, no longer do I need a spare thumb or elastic bands to hold the choke lever!

If anyone needs a "choke widget", the good sir also sent me 9 extra to distribute to forum members in Australia if required, if you cover postage that's all I ask too

 

Few weeks ago I put a set of DNA air filters i have kept from the last K1300 in. The originals ones are the same conical shape as the DNA filters. Runs much better now, those flat ones are the wrong kind for this bike.


More surprises... fairing bit was just sitting there when it came off... dug up the last of my Emerkit 2 part epoxy, worked a treat.


needed a new rubbery screw hole bit too.


ran well out to Condobolin and back last weekend.

 

what an incredible amount of pissing around!!!!

Well done mate, no way in the world a mortal could have done that!

 

Got some time to myself last night, so installed the recently rebuilt rear brake master cylinder and new rear caliper on the 2kr.
Not enough time to fill and bleed, but it's something

 

I've got a Velocette that's like that. they timing marks only line up every 60 something rotations. It's easier just to pull everything apart and put it back together than to try to get it to line up again.

 

so im riding home from work, and a 15year old on a mountain bike decides to cross the road in front of a k1300s..... i clipped his front wheel and he fell off, i pulled over bot down the road and looked back to see if he was ok, he waved at me and ran off with his bike, anyways, put a hole in my lower right fairing (bellypan) and scratched up my upper fairing.....so down the track will be another post of me fixing it....

 

Bought some secondhand Sports Panniers for the K1300S, they came with a kit so you can key the new pannier barrels to the ignition key.
All done and fitted, ready to tour.

 

Spada

Not so much what I’ve done today, but more like the last 6 weeks…



While in Queensland recently, I happen to purchase a 1989 Honda Spada for a good price ($1,800). This bike has been raced as a Period 6 Historic and is fully log-booked and ready to race. I will take this bike to TAS where it will be my new track day bike as well as my racing bike if I get confident enough to have a go. I have already received my updated Log Book from Motorcycling Australia, so I am all set to go. My VT250F track bike will eventually make it back out onto a track, but that’s a story for another day.

The Spada’s PO (previous owner) mentioned he was up to his 3rd engine, which worried me a little bit. He said one engine had succumbed to cam damage and the last engine had crank damage. He felt the that he had caused the second motor’s demise due to not letting the engine warm up enough before pinning the throttle around a racetrack. Later, I would wonder about this as the temperature gauge does not work on this bike. The FAN has been overridden and works from an on/off switch on the dash which bypasses the wiring system altogether; if you accidentally turn the fan on it will keep going until the battery runs flat, even if the bike is switched off!



Anyhoot, after picking up the bike and a few extra bits, I got it back to my brother-in-law’s place and started giving it a once over. Being a Honda, it basically starts first time every time, but the engine has a tick which is coming from the top of the engine and not the clutch area. The oil is also really dark, so I’m not 100% confident that the PO had serviced the equipment as stated. He certainly didn’t strike me as a person who did things the normal way.



He didn’t like the standard Spada seat, so he made a custom one out of wood…yes, wood. I sat on it and I think it instantly gave me piles! The last meeting the bike attended was at Carnell Raceway (Stanthorpe, QLD) in July or August and the PO had set the bike up for that circuit. The gearing was super low. I took the bike for a test ride and I was in top gear before I got out of the garage! I made a list of what I needed to make the bike more ‘Frankster-centric’ and I also thought about taking it to Gunnedah on the way home (to TAS) to race it down the 1/8 mile at the next drag meeting. Ideally, I'd like the bike to look more 'standard'.



First ‘mod’ was to remove that awful seat and replace it with something more appropriate for my butt. The original seat was in one of the ‘bits’ boxes, so I set about trying to make it work on the bike. The sub-frame had been cut and a few important bits are missing, so I started making attachment points for the normal plastics, guards and seat.



In the end I decided to use the seat from my wife’s Spada and bring it up to QLD when I came back up to get the bike. I also knew I had a near-new 17T front sprocket somewhere that would help with the gearing. My wife’s bike has a custom-made 18T front sprocket and runs the smallest available rear sprocket (51T) to give the bike a more comfortable cruise speed/rpm. The engine’s torque overcomes any of the extra stress from the higher gearing.

October/November 2024

So, I drive up to QLD to get the Spada. I spend a day at my brother-in-law’s place making changes in order to prepare it for drag racing at Gunnedah. I drain the old fuel and remove some of the ‘track’ bits and replace them with dragstrip bits, such as a chain guard which is apparently not needed for track bikes (I’d never noticed). I also swapped the 14T front sprocket for a 17T and also aligned the sprockets properly. While changing the sprockets I notice that a couple of bolts are loose. They were loose because they have been broken off from over-tightening.

The seat from my wife’s Spada went on and some work was done to secure the rear plastics without a tail light assembly. I also had to rig up a way to remove the seat without any of the standard key-driven mechanisms. A bit of spray paint here and a touch up there and the bike was ready for a test ride around the block. The test ride went okay, but I notice the throttle was hanging and that rear cylinder was WAY hotter than the front one. So, I decided to race it anyway, but to limit the revs to 10,000 and not do any banzai launches. I'll leave the tyre pressure as is. I think the PO ran 24psi in the rear and 28psi in the front. I would race with much higher pressure in both, but I'm not too worried about it.



Gear upshifts without a clutch are easy on these things, but I decided to use the clutch anyway. My final task was to make a securing stay for the bike in the back of the van. The Spada wheelbase is almost identical to my ZXR250, but the mid-bike securing point is different.

I will pull the bike down properly when I get it home and see what I find. I have one of the damaged engines, so I will try and find what’s wrong with it and try to make it a running spare. I’m sure @Gizziracer has access to Spada parts. The PO gave me a set of carbs that he said were spares, but as soon as I took them apart I realised the diaphragms were torn. Fun and games coming my way.

 

In light of recent issues, I bit the bullet today and replaced the patchwork wiring loom on the ZXR, well over due really...

All in all about 2.5 hours work + 3 beers

Started first time

 

Chucked on a "new" pick-up coil, new oil and filter, and synched the carbs
Weather permitting back at the track next week!

 

A while ago I did a respray of a Moto Guzzi 1000 Le Mans. The tank had been dented on the left side and the PO had filled with bog over an inch thick. I was able to cut and reweld the tank back to close to original lines with only a thin wipe of filler. Looked pretty good when finished.

Today the owner asked me to look at his carbs (Dellorto) as the bike was not running right. He told me he had cleaned the carbs. His idea of clean and mine are at different ends of the country.

After five minutes in the ultra sonic cleaner this puss like substance had come out of the body. Lots to do here.