Atlas Questions

Well, Piet doesn't have any so hopefully that Swiss place still makes them. BTW there's looks upgraded and a bit stronger. Their website doesn't mention Atlas but it does a blurb on Cagiva Eliphants and they do uprated bits for them including Speedo Drives for its 21-inch wheel so that's a good sign.
 
Used to love watching them do 200kph being followed by the Helicopters in the Dakar. Just too dangerous with the twins, crazy fast. Too many great riders killed back then.
 
Tomorrow I will attempt to get a spacer turned up to attempt to get some clearance for the Speedo Drive off the wheel hub and still allow the bit that turns with the wheel to still move. That might allow me to use the original one till hopefully, a replacement arrives. It's worth an attempt anyway.
 
We have here a long tail of unrelated events that just like a good movie has a twist in the tail. My Speedo stopped working and Drive decided to start rubbing on the wheel hub and felt a bit rough so I decided to take it out to Gowys and see if there was a Ducati equivalent, It was a hot day and as they had nothing I then went to another place so that's approx 3 hours of driving about in the full Sun. The next day the new cable arrived and I was also getting a car service and rego inspection done at home. That went fine but for some odd reason the speedo drive was now much closer and locking up on itself and the wheel. I fucked around for ages trying all manner of things but nothing would help with spacing the speedo drive away from the wheel. So I decided to get a spacer made to do just that. So yesterday I was driving down to that machine shop and noticed a fully greasy nut-like thing sitting on my dashboard. I was wondering what the hell it was but assumed the Mechanic doing the service must have left it there. I had no clue what the hell it was. So I get this spacer made and heading home it suddenly hits me. I must have put the Speedo Drive on the dash at some point, the day's heat had softened its grease and that thing was the original spacer, it must have fallen out while sitting on the dash and I had not noticed. Talk about getting fully fucked. Well, at least the new spacer has a lot more meat to it than the original, the exploded diagram shows no separate spacer. What a fuck up. BTW the speedo now works.
 
I must be getting old, it was staring me right in the face but the penny just didn't drop. Thats a week where I should have been fitting the new rear mudguard, it least its a good result in the end.
 
And in Gardening news, remember those 3/20kg bags of Crushed Granite I used to load the rear suspension on the Atlas to see what the rear tyre was rubbing on, well there now filling the holes in my driveway at its gutter crossing. I have a proper lowered car-type gutter crossing but its inside lip at ground level had dropped a bit. Lately, I was bottoming the big bore collector out on my 3c and crashing my Atlas dropping into and out of this depression when riding over it. I added a 20kg bag of Top Dressing and hopefully, the Buffalo will roam back over the Top Dressing, that is the type of grass there. We have a few days of heavy rain due so that should water the crushed Granite in nice and solid.
 
I finally managed to pull the butchered forward section of the rear guard but had a few issues with rusty fixings. I needed to remove the chain guard, I have removed a few over the years and every single one had a section of material snapped off around a fixing hole, and I also needed to remove the rear shock guard. It's plastic and held on with 2 very very rusty philps head self-tappers into the swingarm. Clever using mild steel screws in a spot where they absolutely will rust to bits. They will be replaced with Stainless Steel screws. Refit is going to be tricky, it's going to take a heat gun and longer bolts to stretch it around the still protruding a bit battery box. Hope it doesn't rub the rear tyre as much as before.
 
Get a different shaped battery and battery box, Vince!! No poin t tempting fate by modding the STD guard! if it doesn't fit, the battery box is not right for the bike.
 
It's close enough to soften and bend to fit. This battery is halfway between the way to big one it had and the apparently too small to get reliable starting standard battery. Forgot to mention while I was at it I discovered there is a missing airbox mounting bolt to a frame member, it looks like the airbox should move 15mm left at its rear and that will help as well. Depending on exhaust and shock clearance. It's all snug in there.
 
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The new rear guard is 90% in, It was a full-blown arm wrestle though. I used longer than required bolts to pull it into place. I just need to refit the chain guard, plastic side covers, seat, pannier racks and rear rack. But first I choked the front 100mm of the guard right up against the shock protector with some timber packers and gave it a douse of hot air gun. It should with luck clear the tyre. I also needed to adjust the muffler a bit to get the guard into place and that resulted in losing the stack of washers on both bolts shimming it away from the tyre as well. It looks ok but I bet it will need an adjustment later.
 
Really looking forward to your riding the dam thing Vince just quietly but am sure that we will see it Dec 30 at the club Xmas party in Avalon… thanks Tom you are the best for volunteering your joint. Looking forward to seeing the rooster tails on the dam beach.
 
It's been out a few times and made it home, I even did a whole 80ish ks of dirt out past St Aubans Pub on a club ride continuing on my own after the road blokes headed home after breakfast. Such an Adventure, its was like Pitt St. There must have been probably a dozen others out there on modern high-performance Adventure Bikes, so many of those White Ducati Desert models. Apparently, it's a thing these days but from what I saw that day they mostly appeared to be newly minted Road Riders. Not a huge amount of confidence in corners on pretty easy gravel roads. I wasn't trying too hard, it's got its quirks and will take some time to learn its limits.
 
Cannot finish assembling, the pain in the arse seat mounting bolts strike again. They're pretty hard to align and They go into captured nuts inside the subframe and are very easy to cross thread but I just noticed something I hadn't seen before. They also should go right through these captured nuts and then continue through the mudguard and an internal rear mudguard brace and then have a nylon and washer on the end, every one of these bits can move so that's why they're hard to fit. The bolts need to be 65mm long M8 and I have nothing that long here. So it's another hour's drive to the nuts and bolts shop on Monday. I hope to hell I never need to pull this seat off mid-ride any time soon.
 
Perhaps you should have a look at modifying the means of attaching the seat to overcome this problem which I agree can be a PITA.
 
As an example my modern Husky seat has one Dzus fixing plus a push-in front connection, 3 seconds has its seat on or off. My Atlas now has its 2 seat plastic spacer washers silicone in place, one went AWAL once lucky I found it. Just to get access to the seat bolts it needs 2 wing nuts removed off the rear rack, 6 bolts off the pannier racks, and 4 bolts off the plastic side covers pulled. I at least tried to make it so one size Alan Key fits 80% of this. That's why I fitted a better version of remote battery charger connection. So it doesn't take an hour to assess and connect a battery charger. I tried drilling an access hole through the pannier racks to get at the seat bolts but that was a bust. You cannot win them all.
 
Is it not possible to cut the seat fixing lugs off and move them forward a bit and re weld. I know you would still need to get the side panels off (unless you drilled a hole to allow access with a socket) but you wouldn’t be undoing the fixings for the carrier etc and would only need to align the bolt with the seat lug and whatever fixing method you chose, presumably another captive nut?
 
Vince said:
As an example my modern Husky seat has one Dzus fixing plus a push-in front connection, 3 seconds has its seat on or off. My Atlas now has its 2 seat plastic spacer washers silicone in place, one went AWAL once lucky I found it. Just to get access to the seat bolts it needs 2 wing nuts removed off the rear rack, 6 bolts off the pannier racks, and 4 bolts off the plastic side covers pulled. I at least tried to make it so one size Alan Key fits 80% of this. That's why I fitted a better version of remote battery charger connection. So it doesn't take an hour to assess and connect a battery charger. I tried drilling an access hole through the pannier racks to get at the seat bolts but that was a bust. You cannot win them all.
Click to expand...
Maybe the guy who designed it got a job later at the Zane factory where he perfected his skills.
 
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