FUBAR

Today after I got off from work I went back to the metal scrap yard to go fetch the last missing bit to the service stand. I was kinda hoping to get a stainless pipe cause it`s not gonna be painted but they didn`t have a suitable one so I settled for the "black". When I asked what will it cost the guy actually said he`s not gonna bother writing a receipt for one or two euros and said to mention it the next time. Sure will!

After that I went to the car parts emporiums to peruse some different color choices but didn`t really find anything that`ll tickle so I rode to an actual professional paint shop. First off the lady almost walked me out of there when I said I`ve used the red rust primer cause it`ll show through from all colors so to get the finish to look like what the color sheet is showing I need to spray another coat of basecoat first. Great, buy shit get shit... Now I`ll know, the hardware store where I got it didn`t have anyting else so I got that, the next time I`ll know to save that money too...

The color that I chose demands a black basecoat to show correctly so I bought a can of that, sprayed it on until I was satisfied and let it dry for a second while fetching the boy from daycare.

What awaited me when I got back wasn`t exactly a pleasant sight...

ALL of the weld seams and quite a few of the tube surfaces had "cracked" and I have no idea why. I waited till the paint was thoroughly dried, sanded one crack open to bare metal, wiped it clean and threw on another coat, and it cracked AGAIN!

The only thing I can think of is that the black primer is somehow reacting to the rust primer repelling each other, so pretty much the only thing I could do is spray the whole cage with paint stripper, make a biblical mess wiping off all of the dripping melting sticky paint, using every last sheet of the fiber paper wipes I had as well as a good half a liter of thinner.

*sigh* Back to square one... Oh well if I had to dig something good out from this is now I can clean up that one crappy weld I`m not happy with. And I gotta say LUCKY the paint corked BEFORE I sprayed on the actual topcoat cause THAT one can was NOT cheap! But once it`s painted: Missy, I swear you`re gonna LOVE the color!

Gonna ride to work tomorrow so gonna have a day off from this project, I have wednesday reserved off from work so gonna go to the city with the car to stock up on wipes, a 5l jug of thinner and another can of the black primer. Ohhh I can already imagine the smug smirk on the face of the paint shop lady...

Getting ready

Had a full day reserved for garage work yesterday so got properly cracking with this thing

The first thing was to finish welding the crash cage. I got the repaired pipe cleaned out pretty well, you can find where the weld is but you have to know where to look for it so I say that`s close enough.

That is one wide cage! Having seen that my own looks so narrow... Although it probly will not look so wide once fitted around fairings.

Now to the other project. I had been planning to do this same for my bike but as stated before the washers-on-tube-ends type fittings on the rear mount pipes will probably break off if this kind of weight would be lifted on them.

I needed some pipe so I visited this one salvage yard I had not been in before. I was very positively surprised about the service quality there and let them know about it as well. I mentioned that there is one other salvage yard which would be around 100meters from work for me but quite frankly have had so poor service there for several times I no longer want to go there, and the guy replied I`m not the first one to say that about the place. Definitely will be getting my scrap metal from this place henceforth, they have bought a full warehouse of both sheet and pipe from some company that went belly up so they have a very good selection of different sizes. They`re pretty rusty but it`s only skin deep and brushes right out with a drill and a flap wheel.

I started cutting pieces wondering what the heck is wrong cause no matter how well I try to follow the lines I always end up getting a corkscrew cut until I realized that the disc I`m using is cracked and warps. A brand new disc! Gotta be more careful when buying them from now on and bend them a little in the shop to see if they have cracks. Lucky it did not break, I`ve had a few faulty discs explode on my face which is why I ALWAYS use long gloves, full face mask and the rawhide apron when cutting, a flying half a dics can do some pretty serious damage, not to mention when the grinder bites in and jerks from your hands.

First bits cut, derusted and somewhat straightened

Ends slotted for extension nuts, threads drilled out from them and a bolt to align them somewhat straight.

Bolt fitted on the nut, and a piece of pipe fitted and plug welded on the bolt.

And the result: a swiveling "skewer".

Some more pipes and a little bit of chain later. So what is it then?

A service stand. First you fit it onto the rear mount tubes of the cage...

...stomp on the tube to lift the bike up and kick it through the leg to prevent it from tipping forward, and lock it down with the pin at the end of the chain. In the pictures the lever sits in a funny angle cause it is not the finished product, I ran out of tube so gotta go get one more piece to be able to make one long enough, this one is for illustration only cause it`s way too short. Although it does rock back and forth a little cause the leg and the lever are not exact fit to each other so there`s little play in between, but it seems to be very stable up there, and the front wheel can be lifted up with one hand so in case it needs service you can pick the front up, shove something under the bridge piece in the cage and take it apart.

The controls are still a little far but once he figured it moves back and forth like a rocking horse he had to be pried off from it :D

The finished product, minus the lever tube. That one will not be painted cause it`ll strip right off anyway so a light oiling will suffice for ease of sliding and rust proofing. I also left the bottoms unpainted cause frankly what`s the use, it`ll come right off from them too. The color choice because I happened to have an unused bottle in the shelf, I bought it for my truck but turned out the paint is nowhere near what the cap let me think so it got tossed to the side.

First basecoat on the cage. Professional quality paint my ass, the thing runs like Forrest Gump! Gotta wait until they dry and sand the runs off before spraying on the topcoat. Still haven`t bought the actual color, I was thinking of a very spesific hotrod cherry red but turned out it`s a metallic pearl color and the finishing shade is done by red candy clearcoat so the paint alone would cost nearly a hundred euros, so that is still somewhat out in the open. A matte neon green would also look kinda groovy ;D

Finally some progress

well this thing surely ain`t letting me off easy. First off getting more gas proved to be much more difficult than expected. The gas company has two kinds of bottles, the ones they rent and the ones they sell to you, the latter being meant to and mostly used by hobby welders who usually don`t manage to use the whole bottle within the rent perioid so it pays to buy the bottle and go change it as it goes out, the swap process is exactly the same.

...Unless the gas company orders a huge batch of the wrong kind of bottles and cannot provide the retailers changelings, and everyone runs out of gas at the same time! I phoned or visited every single shop in Lahti that has AGA retail spot, to no avail. Further phoning quickly revealed that the Unicyl bottles are out EVERYWHERE! Luckily help came in the form of one shop near Helsinki after dragging the shell with me for two days at work. I went to ask if they had any, and they said that they can make a deal with the gas company of another kind of bottle with one year free rent. It`s a different gas, the one I had was Mison 18 (18% Co2, 82% Argon) and the new one is Mison 25 (25/75) but since that pretty much was the only option I took it and gonna try to get through the 10 liter bottle within a year (the last one lasted two)

Garage time has also been a rare luxury lately, and because of how the house is built I can`t do noisy stuff late so one day when I happened to get from work a little early I immediately drove home and straight into the garage since the boy was at daycare and the wifey at work.

The first thing was to make the rear mounting pipes. I first tried the same method how I did mine which was to weld washers at the ends of the tubes but no matter how well you burn them together the contact surface just isn`t big enough to hold so they broke off right away, just as happened to mine the first time round. On this one however I will be needing much sturdier mounts for reasons that will be revealed eventually, so I had to think of something else. Then it hit me, so hard that I actually did slap my forehead saying how did I not think of that on the first time round! I went to a local bolt shop and bought some extension nuts and a rod of threaded bar. I would have wanted to use stud bolts but a quick phone-around later it turned out that absolutely no one stocks M12x145mm studs so the threaded bar basically was my only option. I grinded the galvanizing off from the nuts at opposite sides and drilled four holes to both tubes to be able to plug-weld the nuts in place.

Nuts plug welded and the flanges re-welded in place after removing any porous seams. I just MIGHT be imagining things but it feels like it`s slightly harder to weld with the new gas.

Getting shape. The flange weld seam seems to touch the ground but not bear weight so not gonna grind it flat. The overall design is a little bit simpler than the one I did for me, but it also means it should actually be more rigid as well since there`s less pivot points to bend from. Should have done the lower link with a flange joint to my cage as well, no idea what I was thinking making it from little tube bits...

 Not entirely happy with how the weld seams on the little cross strut came out but I fear if I start grinding them down they`ll look even worse so probly gonna try to just tidy them out a little. The shape of the cage could not be much better given the fact that it`s pretty much shot from the hip. The main rail that goes from the front to back licks the ground at pretty much the same height from the entire length. Just hoping really hard that any place won`t hit the fairings. The main crossbar probly will need a little space made to the side of the big air vents at the lower fairings but that SHOULD be the only mod needed.

Had a little oopsie with the other side rail... Long story short, rushed, followed a wrong mark and cut the tube about an inch short. Being my last bent tube I decided before getting a new one made I will try to fix it, I got it aligned pretty well with the magnets and got it to burn through about 95% so once I file the weld down no one will be the wiser once it`s painted and shouldn`t cause any structural integrity issues either.

As an ending to today`s broadcast the latest fashion tips straight from Paris! Sorry, Garage!
This summer`s hot things are raw leather and perforated sleeves, also remember proper protection for your eyes from the sun. Automatic lenses and carbon fiber pattern on frames gives a contemporary finishing touch. For a more dramatic look I`d recommend burnt metal around the eyes for a little darker shade, and the scent of the day is most definitely cutting disc number 1.0

NOT a good day at the garage...

Oh man what a weekend... We had the midsummer festival here this weekend, aka Juhannus, so friday was off from work. My wife had booked the whole weekend full of work including a night shift to get maximum pay from them, which meant that I`ve spent the lest three days practically alone with my two year old son, mainly listening to screaming in gibberish and going no don`t touch that, come down frome there, yes you will eat this, no come here, no stay in bed... YAARGH! I mean I love the kid to death but three days in a row starts to creep up in your soul...

So today when my wife returned home i immediately announced that I`m going to the shed later today and I gotta do noisy stuff so it`s gotta be before 8pm cause there`s little kids on both apartments of the house.

First off I lifted a sheet of 5mm stainless to the table that I once bought off a metal company skip along with some other bits. They`re great for getting quality stuff for peanuts, when I asked the guy after lifting a few sheets to the side what does he want for them I immediately saw from his face "nothing really but if I let you take them you`re gonna empty the whole skip" so he went aaaa........... gimme a fiver. I don`t know exactly what that sheet is apart from being stainless, but I`ll tell you it. is. HARD. Normal HSS drills hardly make a dent, I had to use cobalt drills to get holes made, along with ROCOL cutting grease. I haven`t managed to find that stuff anywhere for sale to common joes but managed to get a hold of a nearly empty jug at work some years ago. It`s great stuff cause in room temp it has this waxy substance like vaseline, but when you heat it up it turns to liquid so it holds on very well and cuts way more efficiently than any spray on foam. Also lasts forever, I melted the remains of the jug onto a glass baby food jar, got it about half full and am still using it.

So i got the center flange done along with cutting and beveling the rear mounting pipes that the main rails will attach to...

...went to test it to the bike, cursed loud when I realized I`ve made it according to the cardboard template but forgot to factor in that the flanges overlap the center bridge so it is 20mm too short so had to make another one...

...went to weld them onto the bike wondering why the welds look so awful, I`ve welded stainless to black before with no problems. At first I thought that since the vertical pipe is going to be sealed in the heating and expanding air is pushing my welds out but realized I`m not all the way through yet so that can`t be it...














Until it hit me... no hiss from the pistol...

Oh well it did last for a good two years... This however means that I`ll be needing to cut all the welds open from the flanges and grind them flat cause at least some had been welded without gas so the seams are compromised. I loaded the bottle to the car and hope I`ll have time to go swap it tomorrow.

You know, if you are what some people call a "maker", not having a project open is at the same time the most liberating and also the most frustrating time. A thinking mind NEEDS something to ponder or it starts to over rev. On one hand you`re free from the confines of any given project, but on the other you`re constantly trying to find the slightest excuse to start some side project, no matter how irrelevant, so this little thing came at the exact right place and time. I`ve been thinking about it for some time but this was... well is, it`s not finished yet, the best possible time to get stuff done since I can`t start the "el cafe" project yet for reasons stated before.

I`ve promised to make a crash cage for my friend`s bike as well since she also has a 955i Daytona, some of you might know her as Missy so will be using that henceforth. I pretty much got everything needed already apart from the two pieces of the big pipe for the main crossbar and some lengths of the smaller pipe, which I got from one metal company a few days back. A funny thing happened while getting them, I was fetching cargo at work from the metal shop and casually happened to ask the forklift driver loading my truck if they could sell me some pipe. He replied sure what do I need. I said some 50mm "black" steel pipe with around 2,5mm wall, he said no such thing exist since the closest standard pipe diameter is 48,2mm outer dia. I told him that I bought some pipe from another local company about a year ago and have a recollection of it being 50mm but since it`s not a standard size it must have been the one mentioned. He asked me if it was for a motorbike crash cage, which totally caught me off guard, I said yea but how can you possibly know?
-Cause I used to work there and I was the one that made the bends for you! Small world eh?

So I got my bits the next day and today got to do some work. I had to remove my own cage to be able to use the frame as a jig to make the new one, luckily it`s not that big of a job since my bike is naked.

Man it`s gonna be wide! but it has to be since it`s going on a fully faired bike. Which in turn causes some additional challenges since I`ve never had fairings on my bike and therefore am lacking most of the mounting points as well so I had to partly study all the pictures I could find and partly guess where the fairings go. Luckily I got some help from a user in one bike forum who took pictures of his bike for me for reference.

So Missy if you`re reading this, surprise I`m going full monty on this one instead of just the rails we spoke of  :D

One derusted one to go. I don`t know what the tool with the rotating blade is called in english, a some sort of a deburrer, but I totally love it! Something I`ve meant to buy for years but never got around to until lately when I`ve been starting to work more with metal.

A lesson lies here. Measure twice cut once, and NEVER trust anyone else`s measurements no matter how much they swear they made them the same length!

And another here. It`s neat to own every single drill extension rod and all that stuff but if you really need them like once or twice a year and can mcgyver your way around the times does it really pay to invest money and storage space to them just for the joy of owning them? Cause let`s face it when you need it you don`t remember you already got one and go buy another, done that a few times...

Gotta shave off some of the corners to be able to weld around since those square ones for some reason are like 1,5 times as thick as the thickest round washers so went for them on my own cage as well.

Little welding and grinding later the main crossbar is ready to be test fitted to the bike. Still needs further cleaning but not relevant right now.

Hmm, ran into a bit of a snag, the standard T55 T-key which I`ve used to get my cage on and off is too short...

...luckily an 8mm allen socket will hold the bolt down enough to be tightened for test fitting.

...so according to the pictures the fairing goes from here to there through that one ear I still got so if I put the pipe there it shouldn`t hit the plastics... 60 degrees flat says the gauge.

Even if I say so myself not a bad seam for someone who has had zero hours and zero minutes of welding training and has welded very little overall. That one bead got away a little in the center but I thing it`ll hold nicely. Gotta love that automatic welding rig, worth every penny of the eye watering 1600 EUR I paid for it.

Same for the other side. Looks sooo wide without the fairings but since the fixing point is so high up it has to be that way.

Perfect alignment on the first try, this is going too smoothly... I`ve done the same amount of progress in two hours what I did in a whole day with the first one, but to my defence this time round I have a vision of what to do, the last time I was kinda winging it on the go.

Designing the joining flanges. All the measurements seem to be in beercans :D

Out of curiosity I dropped the bike on it`s side to see how it falls with the crash bungs and the angle could not be better. The lower bar bends the tinyest amount from the tip but since it`s cut to length it shouldn`t be touching the gound anymore, the rearsets are safe as well as the exhaust, and the bike lifts up with minimal effort. Shite, I may have to redo my cage as well!

As a last pic for today that is more or less how the cage will look like once finished.

Welcome to the asylum! Grab a beer from the shop side fridge and find yourself a nice spot to sit.

So, having kept several overlapping build blogs about the Triumph written from slightly different points of view depending on the target audience I got somewhat frustrated about it and decided it`s probly better just to do it once, do it right and do it from my own perspective. There most probably will be other projects as well as random thoughts of my life around motobikes, motorbiking, ride reports and life in general to whatever extent I see fit at any given time, but the main goal of this blog is to document as closely as possible my upcoming project of trying to convert a late seventies/early eighties motorbike to be electric driven. That spesific era for juristical reasons to what I will delve deeper into in future posts. I have named the project, at least until/if I can come up with a better name for it, the "El Cafe" for obvious reasons. The main project however will probably have to wait for some time until I can get pretty much anything done to it for the simple reason that I currently do not have a motorbike to start with, and to my amazement neither seems anyone else. I spesificly want a Honda CB because I studied the frames of different motorbikes from that said era and the CB frame seems to best suit my intentions, there just currently isn`t any for sale for any kind of even somewhat reasonable price. So my first project will probably be to change the timing belt of my old winter banger Renault Clio and try to convert that into cold hard cash and keep prowling for a suitable specimen. I`m in no hurry with this as I currently own a perfectly working motorbike so I don`t really care if I have to wait for an extended perioid of time, at least I have more time to study the subject so for once I would actually know beforehand what am I getting myself into.

So why an electric motorbike? They don`t generate much power, the range is terrible, parts extremely expensive and many say that they lack "balls" so to speak. I beg to differ. Of course you cannot get very far with one of those on one charge, but if it`s a commuter bike why should you be able to go further that to work and possibly back, if you`re planning to take a detour on your way home just plug it into the heater pole in the parking lot for the day and when you get from work you got full batteries. Yes they do have the distinctive lack of not making any engine sounds but let`s be honest the purr of a seventies 350 twin doesn`t exactly rock your world either eh? I find the thought intriguing to have a motorbike that will get going completely silently and when you`re riding all you`re hearing is the chain, the slight whizz of the engine and your tires. Oh, and EVERYTHING AROUND YOU which in an urban environment is not a bad thing at all. If I can pull off the design lurking in my head the bike WILL get noticed even without sound, or better yet because of it. The design will be something between neo-retro, fifties googie style in the style of "The Jetsons" topped of with a hint of cafe racer. I will post some preliminary design renderings once I can get something drawn well enough to be publishable. So stay tuned, honestly I don`t know can you subscribe to this somehow or not, but I will promise daily updates will NOT be coming :D In fact there probly will be quite long gaps between since I don`t have a frame to work on yet but I`ll keep one ear to the wind!