Doing it yourself

Mek is a feed stock which is produce on oil refining units for use in the plastics industry, not popular nowadays. Regards Andy 😁
 
motoddrob said:
So it's the peroxide that makes all the difference then. What is MEK used for? After a lifetime of using MEKP I've never come across MEK, Learn something new everyday.
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MEK is used often in aviation to clean gasket surfaces and to remove some adhesives ......... great for washing dirty hands too.

Jim
 
I've found the Decarboniser / Stripper that I was looking for .. ARDROX 2871A. Made by Chemetall GmbH (a peroxide-accelerated paint remover) and now I need to find the same or similar in the US. In a bath it might / might not remove the epoxy in the fuel tank. TBA.

Also a similar product (maybe) (from the MDS) is A8770 made by APPLIED in NSW.

So, methylene-chloride to try or find a shop that specialises in gunk removal ... last choice, but maybe necessary ... cut and blast!
 
Get a ali tank made , no more issues ,  done , never look at it again , its what i did , fuel tank seam opened up after pissing around with old  steel fuel tanks and you cant weld a seam the heat opens up the next place as the rust jacks open the seam , and ruined the job and the new paint work i had done , cost twice as much in the long run should have got one made in the first place , lesson learned . Well it was for me
 
John lord said:
Get a ali tank made , no more issues ,  done , never look at it again , its what i did , fuel tank seam opened up after pissing around with old  steel fuel tanks and you cant weld a seam the heat opens up the next place as the rust jacks open the seam , and ruined the job and the new paint work i had done , cost twice as much in the long run should have got one made in the first place , lesson learned . Well it was for me
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.... that sounds like the right thing to do and supported by others, but in keeping with 'do it yourself' I'll try a few steps first (might be lucky) and then look at alloy or carbon if needed.

Fingers crossed. ATM it's just a preventative measure against contamination of the carbs., but winter (snow) on the way and I'll need a project for a few months.
 
I once made a wooden tank. Used plywood for the basic shape, then lined it inside and outside with fibre reinforced epoxy. That was 30 years ago and it's still in service today. Not on a bike though, it's in a boat. The same method would work on a bike. Might look like a coffin though.  :D
 
The ally tank that came with my Motodd was a nightmare. It cracked many times. Welds on top of weld. Then epoxy on top of epoxy. Wouldn't go anywhere without tubes of epoxy and wet/dry sand paper.
Spent most of it's life with a fuck-up paint job as I couldn't be bothered repainting every few months. Was the reason why I ended up making a carbon tank. Several years later no leaks and the paint still looks fantastic.
 
wrong guage ali for a start thats your issue , and who made it  is the other,  obviously a  shit job , by the sound of things as you said . This guy i got to make my tank ,makes  fuel tanks for the TT lads so no issue there , as sometime you cant do it all yourself and have to ask for help sometimes  . The tank that came with your motodd was toss, dont blame the ali  blame the maker of the tank .
 
It came with the frame so Phil could answer those questions. In all fairness it was ridden on oz roads and goat tracks and done 95000 kays before I replaced it.
 
Longshanks?
split alloy tank?
was it John the tank Pearson, Asa Moyce or Peter Hichinson (Lyta) it cant have been the tank shop (Jockland) they take three months to answer the phone and 18 months to make your tank.
all of these people make only ally fuel tanks for bikes and I have known owners from all the first three who have all had a split, racers and road riders, one of them probably made the Motodd tanks, JP I suspect.
CLEM
 
psg said:
Try living in western Canada in the early 90's with a 1200 with the bad centre  bearing that went bang at 140kmph. Fixed it myself, parts (bearings, a few valves and guides, gaskets etc) from Slater in the UK and Wolfgang newly established in Canada I think at the time. Sent the crank and C3 bearings to a snowmobile shop in Winnipeg well known for doing snowmobile roller bearing racing cranks (cue in Ron!). The local Harley shop had a guy with his own Cosworth valve grinder (did racing valve jobs on the side for local road racers) who did a 3 angle my head, and a local machine shop owned by an old no nonsense German guy (who had an immaculate Mercedes 300SL Gull Wing he brought from Germany) who was able to re grind my 4C cam lobe that was damaged back to original, keeping the original base circle. He had a cam grinder, made a cam profile from a good lobe, welded up the damaged cam lobe, and re ground it, absolutely first class work at a fair price. Most of my time was spent looking for the out sourcing mentioned above. Little or no internet then so not a google search in those days. Got it done in my garage ,at night ,by myself after the kids had gone to sleep. Runs like a champ today.

Stu
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as Stu, I am also in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. When my RGS bent a rod no stock rods were then available so I "had" to use Carillo's for replacement. I sent the crank to a machine shop that did a lot of snowmobile cranks, did not seem to be an issue for them to press the Laverda crank apart, install new bearings with the new rods, etc. "While I was at it" with the engine apart, I had the engine case top half milled to accept a 1200 block and cylinder liners, which was done by a local shop that specialized in air cooled VW Beetle engines. I used 80.4 mm high comp J & E pistons supplied by Wolfgang. I used new 1200 cylinder liners, which I installed myself using the kitchen oven, then had the new bores matched to the new pistons by a local machine shop I have used for 30 + years for car engine stuff. The only thing I did not trust to have done locally is the head, the valve guides seemed OK, so I used valve grinding paste to hand grind the valves to the seats. Then I assembled everything myself from the bare cases.

None of this is particularly complicated, read the manual, ask for advice when stuck, and be careful on assembly of the engine and timing the cams. Bike still runs great several years later.

I cannot imagine waiting a month for a commercial operation to do whatever I was paying them to do, never mind a year, or 5 years, or 9 years, or whatever. I would have gone nuts on the shop before a month was up, retrieved my parts and gone elsewhere......
 
None of them Clem as they are crap , as you just explained , so why would i use em , come on Clem give me some credit , you dont think i jumped into it without some knowledge of their work , you said it so dont dish what you dont know , same as springs really , didn't know owt about them either , you still owe me a tenner if you remember , they might have Bosch wrote on it doesnt mean it for a laverda , 👍🏻sogo piss on somebody else parade , cheers man have a nice day 😂😂😂👍🏻ill let you know when it leaks then and
Only then can you have ya say ,
 
So John, how old and how many kays has your ally tank done? My ally tank hasn't leaked in several years helped by the fact it's been sitting on the shelf.
Carbon over ally any day from my experience. Of the 4 Mk3 Motodd frames in the southern hemisphere that I'm aware of, none of them are using the ally tank.
I made a total of 4 carbon tanks and the 3 spare were all snapped up. In fairness one of those frames didn't come with a tank but I reckon as it gets used on a regular basis it would be sporting a carbon tank now due to I bet an original one cracking.
 
Dear John (no 'tis not a dear John letter) I did offer you your tenner back and you were not in the least bothered about it, I have quite a few more sets of those 750 ATD springs and several have been fitted by others with great success and huge benefits in the running of their bikes, I have no idea why yours are not good, and I will still give you that tenner back, but open wide as you will be swallowing it! after that I will buy you two pints to wash it down with. I sold many solid copper head gaskets for triples over the years and a lot of bods did not get on with them, (three times that number did) and had problems afterwards, mainly oil leaks, Red (Australia) bought 25 off me and he couldn't make them function to his satisfaction, so I bought back about 21 or 22 of them, but there was one individual who actually said that they don't fit! oh yes they do.

The problem with alloy tanks is as you rightly state the gauge of metal thickness, this is everything as is the welding, it seems to me that as time goes by this gets worse, TIG machines can now be bought up to about 200 amps to run from a household mains supply, these are cheap machines, have no pedal variator and do not have water cooled torches, or core, they function OK, but have little stability. much better for castings than for sheet. In the past they were usually gas welded (oxy/acet) but no longer (except in my household) this gives good annealing to the metal and as such vibration resistance, it doesn't last long as alloy work hardens, but it is enough over the first couple of months running to allow the tank to "settle" and  problems after that are unlikely, TIG welding does not do that and the tank needs very secure rubber isolation, on soft rubber bushings not 40 year old Laverda ones. I have seen your tank and it looks great, and exactly as you wanted it (ie stock shape and profile, finished but not polished) and I GENUINLY wish you well with it, but please please, don't talk about longevity until you have done 30,000 miles with it.
CLEM
 
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