Re: What did you do to or for or with your Laverda today?

Took the Jota 120 and the Corsa out for a final spin with a friend to Devil's Bridge in Kirkby Lonsdale in Northern UK. Beautiful day and country roads too. Had a superb time. The bikes ran well all day. Drained the tanks of both bikes and the wee rear side panel less 125 Uno as well. Gave them all a good clean and took off the float bowls. Disconnected the batteries and stored them all, and the Blackbird, away for the Winter.
Did a bit more work on rebuilding the rear end of the Atlas before calling it a night. Nearly there now after taking time to make 2 new brackets for the cleaned off and sparkly alloy rear carrier.
Damn shame to be going back to work tomorrow to Oman but never mind, retirement looms next year so looking forward to burning a lot more rubber then. I managed about 2000 miles on the 4 bikes during the month off which isn't bad considering how much work we had to do on the house. The weather has been good - it has rained only 4 times in 28 days - as the Rugby World cup watchers have seen.
Till next year then....
Cheers
DoC!
 
Laverda Eagle s/n 1247 rides again after a 15 month hiatus thanks to some good old engine work by Redax. Fully sick and running beautifully. Big thanks to Vince for getting the lump up to Queensland, Red for his fine workmanship and Paul for safely transporting the donk back to Sydney.  :D

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Jedzo said:
Laverda Eagle s/n 1247 rides again after a 15 month hiatus thanks to some good old engine work by Redax. Fully sick and running beautifully. Big thanks to Vince for getting the lump up to Queensland, Red for his fine workmanship and Paul for safely transporting the donk back to Sydney.  :D

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Nice ......... looks like my old back lane in Stanmore.
 
Good to see you back Jedzo you will have to catch up with the NSW Laverda guys they are nearly as good as the Victorians.
As far as my Laverda goes I counted a few more rivetson one of the oldest  girls
 

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Thank you gents. Not far from Stanmore Chris - Lilyfield. Vince, Red'd be best to say what he found but he did keep me well informed of what he was doing. He did say that it was 'different'  :) I should Maurice now that I won't be embarrassed by a rattling motor. Fuck the Mexicans  :D I don't know about the colour Tippie, it's a sort of metalflake bronze / orange. Someone put it on here I think. When it left the US it was a very patina'd American Eagle blue. I like it so it's stayed on. Cor Dees sold me the panniers a couple of years back now LJ.

Cheers
 
Vince said:
Looks stunning Jed, be interested to here what Red found. Bit older then his usual Laverda lump
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did not find too much wrong apart from old age which I could so relate to
couple of bent valves, piston ring lands flogged out, pistons had a partial seizure at some stage, worn clutch plates, bits and pieces here and there
had to Timesert one spark plug hole, gave it a head job, 1st oversize Ross pistons, Kevlar lined the clutch plates which are vastly different than a modern Laverda  :D
new chains, bearings, couple of thread repairs, relieved one big end as it was hanging up

had to impose on Mark to come over and set the points for me before we shipped the engine back to Jed, buggered if I could remember how to do them, not seen a set for years  :D

enjoyed working on that engine, was very interesting to note the differences in the engine when compared to the later twins/triples
had to ask Piet a few questions along the way which he knew the answers to

Jed, your bike looks great


 
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new discs and pads front and back ready for the weekend down at the Albany Classic and Vintage Motorcycle Club Hill climb.

I bought some other doodads as well as the discs, they came in two Australia Post satchels in boxes just like when I used to buy bootleg LP's a long time ago. 2 discs in one box and the other disc and other bits in the second box. Both packages pretty much the same, a box in a satchel. One was delivered to my house by a man in a van, the other they left a card for to tell us we had to go and pick it up from the post office. Perhaps 2 discs was more than the carrying limit of the van.

pete
 
Could probably add to Technical ... but it IS what I did with my Laverda today  :D

Stretching my innovation and fabrication abilites to the max trying to create two sets of Keihin FCR 39s for an SF out of a bank of four from a GSXR1100. Sheesh  :-\ 

Had one float bowl for four with the accelerator pump feeding all four (essential for starting - don't intend to run them on the throttle) - swapped #1 float bowl (with one inlet barb) and #4 (with accel pump and one feeder barb) float bowl with Piranha brother 1 (aka Tippie), for his two, each with accelerator pumps in the float bowls ... prob solved??  ??? they had no supply barbs for the other float bowls. VERY carefully drilled into the supply line (using a holding template on the lathe) and machined press fit brass barbs to run the linking hoses from. Made good use of Loctite Epoxy Weld. That job done. Happy.

Idle screw boss missing from one carb. Hours of fiddly aluminium cutting and filing and more epoxy - that prob solved.

3 x threaded spacing rods for each bank of two were a breeze.

Can't buy the cable pulley as a spare, so machining one up for #2 set.

Single FCRs have two needle rollers supporting the throttle shaft - banks of four run only two across the entire set (relying on the rigid coupling). Have fitted a couple of extra needle rollers where needed, cut the (hardened steel!) shaft into four separate pieces and now in the process of linking left and right in such a way that I have easy external adjustment for syncing - far too fiddly to use the VERY limited adjustment available on the throttle shaft. Hoping to get there today.

Last job will be making new accel pump actuating arms and fitting a spring loaded starter cable to the bars (effectively a choke) so I can squirt fuel when cranking.

So ... buy a bank of four and make two banks of two?? NOT RECOMMENDED!!!  :-\ :-\ :-\ But it is a fun exercise in extended creativity!
 
Big job, Q. When you finish that I?ll get you to just whip up something similar for a couple of smoothbore roundslides for my racer. The Nordic Motorsport Council just decided that my class (7A 1974-1979) has to have period carbs, thereby ruling my FCRs ineligible, after racing with them for 12 seasons, fucking cunts, to put my opinion clearly!! Grumble grumble kick the wall and spit the dummy. I am the only one using them in the class and it is not like I am a threat for the bikes using mid 90s engines with fins ground rounded and thin to look like Mk1 models etc. There were flat slide carbs in the 70s but just not exactly like FCR so I might take it up with them. Tons of the pre 73 class bikes use Keihin CR Special smoothbores and they weren?t available in that period either, grumble grumble sour grapes. The FCRs give no more outright power per se, over any good roundslide, they just don?t stick open in the wet like the Dell fitted racebikes tend to do here, and the throttle action is a dream. A bloody big job not just to get them mounted and functioning but to jet them takes a lot of work and likely a shitload of jets. We also have to mount undertrays under the engine now, but the rest of the world has had them and they are a pretty good idea, just fairly challenging to fit to my bike with the exhaust tucked up tight under there. The rules say that this pan on dry sump bikes only has to hold 0.3 litre as the sump doesn?t hold so much oil. The bikes that often drop their guts are dry sump Hondas which proceed to circulate until they have pumped out the contents of the oil tank for everyone to crash on, so that is really smart. Anyway regardless still and all I have some work to do over the winter if I wish to continue my passion. The alternative is to just let them win and put the racer back on the road. Have a good weekend :-)
 
I finally threw the towel in when it came to sorting out the years of bodging done to the wiring by a previous owner and it's having a full loom made and fitted next month.

It had reached the point that nearly every time I went near the bike I found something else wrong and simply don't have the time or the patience to do the job for myself.
 
called both shops that have my engines for the 1000 SFC and the Motoplast and it looks promising that at least one of the engines will be ready by the end of January 2016, mabe beginning of February (on this one, this is really fast, as the crank was the bottle neck and that was not in the hands of the shop...)... The other shop that has my 1000 SFC - after some discussions... -  finally agreed to beef-up the frame now (8 months after I gave it to them stripped...) and return it to me this year and made a calculation that the engine could maybe be done by end of April... potentially... if everything goes well... no health issues... no other things... and so on...

Red: what lead times do you have on an engine that needs a head-(valves mainly) and crank job as well as an overbore to 78mm pistons, please, if nothing else is really broken? Surely not 3 years, right? ::) ::)
 
Took advantage of  the mild afternoon & and early finish to take the Mongrel RGS for a blatt round the back roads of NE Scotland. Trouble free ride through the center of Aberdeen to get to the Ellon Road. Cleared the engine with a nice steady run to Ellon then headed for Auchnagatt, Stuartfield (Crichie), Old Deer(Al deer), Fetterangus(Fishie) & up past New Leeds to Fraserburgh(the Broch). Took a wee de tour to St Combs & a nice coffee & scone at the community cafe(Roads) Helliva nice folk there.. Took the tiny tiny wee road that links St combs to Inverallochy by the golf coarse & eventually came out at Fraserburgh. Through the Broch & headed for Macduff & Banff in beautiful sunshine & dry roads. Couldn't believe how nice a day it turned out!! 8) From Banff I headed south to Huntly then continued on to Gartly, Rhynie, Lumsden & home to Alford.
Great run, bike ran faultlessly as usual but is covered in mud, cow shit & anything else the NE farmers can spread. The new Aberdeen By pass construction doesn't help either.
Almost 8 months of riding this year & not a gritter in sight!!

Smiddy nae mates  ;)
 

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Laverdalothar said:
Red: what lead times do you have on an engine that needs a head-(valves mainly) and crank job as well as an overbore to 78mm pistons, please, if nothing else is really broken? Surely not 3 years, right? ::) ::)
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if we don't have to replace the valve seats then probably 2-3 months generally
 
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