Update

Well just thought I would post as it's a quiet Sunday and ages since I wrote anything.

From a technical perspective here's the list :
Had the Ducati rev. Counter restored and it came back beautiful from Peter Bond in the UK. Not cheap but good. The needle still vibrates a bit, but I think it's as good as it gets. Also changed oil, and filter I used 15W40 mineral oil. I also repainted the frame under the rear master cylinder, which must have come in contact with brake fluid as it was rusting a bit.

I am in the process of redoing the fairing on the FZR, I have 2 repaired side fairings that have been primed and the rear side panels. I have 2 nose fairings both a bit broken. The one that Carly broke, has the least damage so I got my soldering iron out for a bit of plastic welding. Which went quite well,I managed to weld the inside and outside and used tie wraps as filler rods. I fibre glassed over the inside of the cracks and filled a hole with fibre glass and gelcoat which isn't really solidifying, I will wait.

The Daytona was the last bike to be used before the shutdown, so I cleaned it yesterday and touched up the frame wheels where paint has been chipped off. I have this silver paint of a well known brand which is great! And leaves a good finish.

I am starting to think about how to convert a clothes drier filter into basic air filters for the RG, but so far little creativity is abound!

I cleaned the garage floor so all the bikes were out on a splendid sunny day.

Peugeot 125 T51

I have been working on a Peugeot two stroke from 1953. The points needed changing and the clutch wasn't right.
The timing is relatively simple to do with a dial gauge giving TDC, and then working back 4.5 mms to the point at which the points are just opening! Then setting the arrow on the fly wheel to be lined up with the stator arrow and good to go. On this particular fly wheel there is no Woodruff key so just screwed up on a tapered crankshaft, the customer asked me to put a couple of drops of loctite bearing stuff on it to prevent any slipping.

The clutch is extremely light and made of bronze and steel plates, alternated on the end of the crank. The previous owner had added a bronze plate, which my customer had removed. During a test drive pre disassembly, the clutch was slipping alot so I decided to put back the additional bronze plate. So the bike ended up with 12 plates bronze and steel, which gave the clutch a much better feel and seemed to transmit the power a little better.

Inserting bearings

I had magnificent plans of cooling the bearings and heating the suspension links, however all went to pot when I had a 20 minute phone call in the middle.

In the end I repurposed the puller I had made for another job and successfully got them all in place.

Daytona suspension linkage bearings

Internal bearing puller

Just a few photos to help me remember what I did for the next time! The bearing puller worked but only after a night in the freezer, then I heated the outside hoping to create some temperature difference to break the "seal".

Full complement Vs. Not

I will only take full complement needle bearings shown at top, these would  have been the ones I didn't swap out last time versus the lower one whihc was replaced in 2013. To be fair the bearings all seem to run OK, but all of the axles are marked.

What gets changed minus 2 seals

Showing the marks on each of the axles the bearings and seals that are going in the bin.

The 2 link piece, easy to remove bearings from the RHS bit and difficult from the LHS bit

So to remove the bearings from the ally piece was quite easy with a G clamp and socket, removing the bearings from the steel bit was a lot more fun, involving freezers, heaters and big hammers!

Silencer and link pipe cleaned up

 The silencer and link pipe came up well, the build quality of the scorpion titanium silencer is really quite good although it does mark quite easily.

Daytona suspension link bearings

So I looked at these and changed some in May 2013, thought I would take a look to regrease and see how they were doing. We'll they are all knackered, here's the story.

You remove the rear wheel and then get a17mm socket on the link bolts which turned out really tight, I used penetrating oil and then the rattle gun on the nuts which worked in the end. To remove the bolts you need to remove the silencer and then remove the lower exhaust header bolt and push then header slightly to remove the last bolt.
The axles were all well marked and need replacing, and one is specific Triumph, so 55 quid on a piece of hardened machined steel ordered from world of triumph No. 2, 7 and 10. I ordered full complement needle bearings and seals from 123roulements in France all together about 200 euros!

A word about the bearings, some people (eBay, Sprint manufacturing etc..) sell kits for this however I didn't find one kit that came with the full complement bearings, that means no space just needles in the carrier. So beware of you pay less you will need to do the job more often. Not full complement FYI.

You need to pull one of the axles out I used the following bolt and old bearings to pull the axle out (photo).

The old bearings can be pushed out using a gclamp and socket however the ones in the horizontal link are a bugger! They are in the freezer at the moment and I will heat the outside later with a heat gun to try and remove them. I ended up with a Dremel last time but you never know!

Ducati gone

It's gone!!!! and I am starting to miss it already, although the extra space will be welcome! A fair price - I'd say.

In the meantime I found a couple of things on the RG, a hairline crack in the clutch cover and a hairline crack in the no. 2 carb float bowl! The rear cylinders and pistons look good (the guys told me one cylinder was smoking quite a lot). And it started up no probs, am looking forward to testing the new ignition curve. I also checked to see if the exhaust valves were working and they are. I fixed the clutch cas with JB weld and found a perfect float bowl on an old carb, still put some JB weld on the cracked float bowl just as a spare!

Brake adaptors for the 350

I upgraded the brake calipers on the FZR 600 to Yamaha blue spots that I got for 50 euros, so I had a spare pair of 4 piston calipers going spare. I thought I would get them to fit the 350, they are not a straight fit, the 350 calipers are 83-84mms between mounting holes and the FZR calipers are over 100 mms. I had a good think about different plate systems and eventually went for a flat plate with spacers behind it. The most difficult part of this is to get the correct amount of pad on the appropriate part of the disk.

The second most difficult part is to ensure the bolt holes are exactly in the right place, if they are more than a 10th out it won't work smoothly!

Well it took more than 3 attempts to get it right! The first time I tried it  I only had the fork leg and calipers - no relation with the disk and wheel. The second time the disk to pad relation was still a little out.

First attempt

I worked this through with templates however the cardboard cutouts only go so far... You can't get good accuracy with a cardboard template!

The third time lucky!  I will fit them tomorrow and then clean up the ally, only then will we really know!

Still all this gave me ample time to use the mill, lathe and plenty bench grinder!