Honda SL100 1970

A new addition to the fleet, with an extra twist of difficulty!

Purchased as an import, having spent its first forty years in Minnesota this will need to be UK registered, the first step is an MOT, which it passed first time last week. Apparently its a relatively simple process... But I think I've heard that before somewhere!

 Pretty much all we did was clean out the fuel tank & tap & replace the carb & battery. The battery was inevitable, but the carb had almost "dissolved" inside the float chamber... The first time I'd seen anything like it! A new carb came with another project, so that was fitted & it runs fine.

August '13

An added, & rather unfortunate twist to this one... It was stolen recently during a garage burglary... Infuriating given its age & rarity, we never expected to see it again, or at least not in a useable state. Fortunately it was recovered with minimal damage, the only significant losses were the plastic side covers, not easy things to replace as they are no longer made for this bike, but at least it will ride again!

Suzuki TS185 '76

This bike came our way a year or so ago & has been sitting waiting for attention for the past few months as other projects (& the cold weather) got in the way...
It came as a runner & was largely complete. The downside was that there was evidence of some amateur hacking to the wiring!
However a quick google search came up with this excellent diagram which was pretty much the same as our bike, save for a couple of colours being different
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/TS185_Wiring_Diagram_new.jpg

A couple of days with a multimeter traced the problems... The headlamp is designed to work only with the engine running & there is a resistor to absorb the excess output from the alternator when the light is switched off & thereby preventing the battery from being cooked. Not an unusual system on classic motorcycles with un-regulated charging systems, but it does take a bit of logical thought to work it all through & fault find.
The problem with the light was traced to a wire on the lighting coil having come un-soldered...

The MOT was passed, the only remaining problem is to find out what's causing the "flat spot" as the revs are increased to around 5k...

Honda CG125 1976

The latest rebuild gets underway... This is a very early example of one of the most famous Hondas. We bought it a few years ago as a basket case & I've spent the last few days collecting as many of the parts together as haven't been used in other projects! The most significant missing items are the front fork legs...
The frame is being stripped & then re-sprayed...

The frame stripped, ready for primer...

 

Primed...

With more parts sourced, the re-assembly continues...

Krys' Garage

Really good progress this weekend... the roof is on, the awning (over the bikes in the lower picture) is done. The cladding is almost finished (using the old shed, which is now dismantled & removed).One of the side doors doors is hung. The interior now has shelves, tools have racks, motorcycle parts are being sorted...
Krys is confused as he can now find things too easily!
Jobs to do: ridge; vehicle doors; side door (x1); cladding to side & front (around vehicle doors); find glass; window cills, guttering, rainwater collection....

Yamaha Viragio 535

After a few months sitting around over the winter it was time of an MOT, tax & a ride out, followed by a clean & polish!

Krys' Garage

Another on-going project is a garage/workshop at the bottom of my son's garden. They were lucky in that the previous owner had laid a concrete slab which was just asking for something to be built on it! For ease & speed of construction we opted for a timber frame prefabricated in sections & errected on a dwarf wall three courses high.

There was another criteria it had to meet... the cost had to be as close to zero as humanly possible!

Bricks & glass (frecycle), sand/cement (damaged bags from DIY stores), studs & plates (either factory waste or recovered & comb-joined, 50p/m) cladding f/edge boards (recycled from pallets & existing shed) roof material TBA... corrugated iron?

This morning we made the most of the wearther & started fixing the cladding on the long side... got half way up...

Intro Feb 2012

I thought its time that I attempt to make contact with the other person in the world who might be interested!!

I've always had several projects on the go at any one time.... & right now is no exception...
so here's a list:
Morris Minor, '58, two door saloon, black, familiy owned since new
1950's Sunbeam motorcycle, still collecting parts, about 85% there... just the difficult bits to find now, anyone got a distributor?
1976 Honda CG125, an early one
1987 Honda C90, the bike the world went to work on! almost there on this one
1981 Honda NC50 Express moped, a recent ebay bargain, just started stripping
Leisure 17 sunspot, a freebe, needs some repairs to the deck & bulkhead, but otherwise, just a paint job...
I'm a volunteer at a local windmill, where we're currently re-making the sweeps (sails)
My full time job is a Design Technology teacher...

I'm sure there's more but this'll do for starters