When the DPO was.... you :-)

I bought a 1965 Austin Healy Sprite to use as a donor car for my Westfield kit car build, sold off all the other parts that I did not need and cut the shell up with a reciprocating saw. Over the course of a couple of months I put a piece or two into the bin each week until it was gone.
 
CLEMTOG said:
who is going to tell the Laverda story of the triple base gaskets that were missing an oil hole?
CLEM
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Well - I have seen some of them... and some with oil-holes drilled slightly out of allignement with the holes in the cylinder/the engine housing etc. etc.

First installation of a DMC 1.1 (blue blox) in 1992 when I had my Jota just some weeks. I installed everything but left the wires long as I did not know where to put the box really. First start of the engine, the bike started right away and ran smoothly. Happy me!

Then I drilled some holes to install the box itself, cut the wires to the length needed, crimped the connectors on and pushed the starter button again. Engine turned, but only by the starter - no spark at all... I searched for about 2 hours and could not find the fault...

Called Uwe Witt and asked for help: "Bring that bike to my shop, we'll get it fixed."

Took them 2 hours to find it, too (at least that is what they charged me...): the ground connector wasn't crimped correctly and so the box did not get any earthing... :rolleyes:
Since then, I only have used very good connectors and bought me a good tool that suits these connectors to crimp them... Never had a bad connection on these crimpings again ever since. The two hours from Moto Witt cost me more than the tool and all crimp connectors I have ever bought in my life...

As Clem said: make faults, but learn out of them...
 
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Well, sort of that kind of story, which happened a long time ago..
So, a friend of mine, parks his really old very nasty looking very un-serviced honda 350 four outside his house. Next morning his girlfriend use the honda as she does every day, to drive to her work: a bank.
During the day, two very intelligent gentlemen decides to rob the bank, and run out of the bank, when they see the honda. Perfect, let's steal that and drive off.
But the little sucker wouldn't start, and they got caught by the police right there, in front of the bank, on the bike, still trying to start it. At the end of the day, my friends girlfriend just started it and drove home, as usual.

Another one:
I went to town to watch my brother and his friends in their custom built old Beetles. While parking, I couldn't exactly see anything right in front of my former RGS (tall fairing), so set in motion, and voila, I found myself sitting on the RGS, in the middle of a large flower pot arrangement - at the town hall square. My brother just laughed and went off with his friends. So, I needed some help to get down, and just at that very moment came two blonde Swedish girls on each their Harley, parked and asked me if I needed help. Not the time to play macho, I accepted the kind offer and I invited them out in town. Many hours later in the morning, I came back to drive home, only to not being able to find my keys for ,y Laverda RGS. So, I looked around and was about to start walking the long way home to get the spare, when I noticed that I had forgotten the keys in the ignition lock. All right, so started and drove home. No worries.
I am not entirely sure though, that this could happen this day and age. Then again, you never know.

Cheers,
Jacques
 
Not Laverda but cringefail…

1985 riding a 600 Tenere from Perth to Kambalda with a mate on an XL600 to catch up with friends and fang around the red dirt for the weekend. The plan, +1200km highway travel plus dirt and be back in Perth before nightfall Sunday, for work Monday. Serviced my bike, nice clean air filter to handle the fine desert red dust, raring to go straight after work Friday.

Dawdling a bit at a couple of pubs, it was after midnight and sub zero desert temps with hypothermia setting in. My newspapers in jacket were working but not for me mate, Tony. 200 k’s out, started a fire to warm up and had to repeat the exercise twice before making the destination not long before dawn.

All good, a great weekend of riding and drinking but a late start back on the Sunday return. After midnight again, the Tenere is making some rattly noises. Oil down a bit and dark and stinky but hey, we carry on. Until the motor seizes…

130k’s or so to go, middle of the night Idiotfeatures (Moi!) decides a length of doubled fencing wire would work as a tow rope tied around a front fork. 4 balls one bike does not go so we don’t dink.

The tow was fine until we were approaching a roundabout in Northam. Car coming from the right, Tony does a double take, go or stop: GO! Except I was stop. You know what’s coming and there’s nothing to do about it. His bike stands up in the air and they both go down.
So we decide to tow the bike to the local cop shop to have a chat with the coppa’s about leaving it there. Now of course, the unmarked car in the roundabout was the cop we were talking to. “Wondering what you blokes were up to. Fencing wire ain’t a good tow rope.” So they give us coffee and we have a laugh about stupidity. The last 100k’s home was great, dozing off most of the time with me balls nestled in Tony’s warm arse and my back against a gearsack rack. Sweet dreams.

2 points to this story; the first is that modern coppa’s would probably lock us up and fine us for idiocy rather than coffee and anzacs. The second is, don’t think leaving the outer foam sock off an XT600 air filter for GoFast gear is going to do anything but suck half the desert into your carbie.
 
We once towed a Montsa Dirtbike using a riding jersey 20ks back to the trailer, it ended up slightly stretched in the arms. If you have to choose between having a chain constant come off the sprocket, early days of long travel suspension, or running the chain tight, Don't do the latter, smashing countershaft bearing out of cases gets expensive. They invented spring-loaded chain tensioners at about that time.
 
Another Dirtbike tail, in the early 2000s just about every 4 stroke Dirtbike ran huge Kehen Flat Slides and being they made huge top-end power but typically bogged bigtime down low so the tuning blokes developed thousands of ways to lessen that bog by manipulating the accelerator pump squirt that caused the bog. These mods got crazy after a while. And then FI arrived and everybody thought finally perfect fueling. NOPE, suddenly a whole new industry was needed to YEP manipulate FI and that was Really Complicated. It never ends.
 
One more that I am not sure whether to divulge but here goes anyway...

Back in `76 had a Triumph T140V , bought new in March and by December had covered 10,000 miles on it .
It was around then I stopped by the side of the Fosse Way in Gloucestershire and as it was ticking over I heard a slight clunk from the motor , hardly anything .
This clunk noise remained audible at tickover , but only slightly , from that point on , but I didn`t worry too much about it .

Towards the end of December I was passing H&L Motors in Stroud , a main Triumph dealer , and I noticed a new T160V Trident in the window , probably one of the last remaining in the country , as production would have ceased several months earlier .
I decided to part exchange the T140 for the new T160 , went into H&L to arrange this...They looked at the T140 , I started it up , they listened to it...I could detect the slight clunking noise at tickover , but H&L pronounced themselves happy with it and a deal was done .

A few days later on the ride up from Bristol to collect the T160 I noticed the clunking noise was now becoming more and more noticeable as I rode along .... no longer just at tickover , and by the time I rode into Stroud this racket was now bouncing off the walls of the buildings as I passed by...

I rode into H&L , parked the T140 , picked up the keys for the T160 and rode away....

Strangely I didn`t feel much guilt at the time ( I was 22 at the time ) , just relief at having made it to Stroud without breaking down , and I actually feel worse thinking about it now , 46 years later , although I try to console myself with the thought that being a main Triumph dealer H&L would have had all the necessary parts on the shelf , and at only ten months old it was still in as new condition ( visually ) .

This brings me onto the subject of Suzuki GS500`s....stick with it...there is a connection , sort of...

Do you ever toy with the idea of obtaining a European 500 twin , but don`t have the necessary £12k in your back pocket for that Montjuic or Pantah or whatever...?...

Well don`t despair...get hold of a Suzuki GS500 K4 from 2004 onwards ( the ones with the black frames )...these are made at Gijon in Northern Spain and feature Italian Paioli suspension , which means of course they differ quite substantiality from the earlier Japanese built versions , with rougher more vibratory engines and harsher more unforgiving suspension ( true )...so you can have all the delightful character of a thoroughbred European 500 twin for a fraction of the price of a Monty...( around 1500 quid... bargain ! ) .

I`ve owned five of these little bleeders , and the reason I mention them is that I once got 85,000 miles out of one ( Jap built version obviously ) , when one of the big ends started knocking in a similar manner to the T140 , but I kept riding it ( gently ) for a further 1000 miles by which time it was making enough noise to attract the attentions of pedestrians passing by on the pavement .

So I decided to part exchange it...not to some unsuspecting Suzuki main dealer , but to the local bike breaker , and rode away on ..... yes , you guessed it , another GS500......Didn`t feel quite so guilty this time...
 
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My old friend Eric, alias Dude on this forum knows this story, he was there.
We lived in the same suburb at the time and had joined a local moto club along with an Italian bike riding friend. That was a right lark, many stories about that. The main activity of the club was to go into town with the bikes, park them in full view and spend the afternoon drinking a single coffee at the terrasse of a café. When one had spent all one's money on the biggest, flashiest bike available, that's all one had left to spend.
One Sunday, we organised a group ride out for the club to a forest area maybe 50 km from home. Plenty of riders said they would come but when it was time to meet up, it was raining, and only 3 of us turned up. I was riding a Honda 750 F2 at the time that I'd bought new.
We set off but after a few km, I waved everybody down because my bike was making terrible noises around 4500 revs. I decided to turn back for home and the other two, with Eric, followed.
In my garage, we promptly took the Honda engine out and took it to bits to the very last nut and found.......nothing. Over the next couple of weeks, every bit of that engine was checked, and still nothing. Eventually, I put it all back together and looked elsewhere for the cause of the noise.
I found it. The petrol cap on those bikes is under a trap door which clicks shut and has a lock. That door rests on an anti vibration O ring. The O ring had perished, the trap would vibrate and the tank would resonate, making a terrible noise.

That was in 1979. I haven't had an engine noise since.

Paul
 
I have a similar story to that Paul, I was racing in 1979 using a Honda, it was a two day meet at Snetterton in Norfolk about 31/2 hours drive away, (with caravan) on the Sat morning, I practised and didnt make the fourth lap, in those days three was compulsory for a start in the race to be permitted (dont know about now) and the engine seized solid, I was trailered back to the paddock, and we took a quick look, everything externally looked hunky dory, it didnt free on cooling, nothing showed through any of the eight tappet covers, so we loaded up and headed for home, this was before lunchtime, about half way home a pal who was coming to watch, aproached coming the other way, spotted the Land rRover and a s soon as we passed we recognised each other, I saw his brake lights come on so stopped, he returned and we chatted, the long and the short of it was that he would meet us back at home (he was on a similar bike) and we would see if we could do anything, later that PM at home we looked at everything possible, and failed to find it, so we took the motor out and stripped it progressively thinking we would find it, but failed again, and (as you) it was stripped to its last nut, so we started to reassemble it again thinking that the fault would show on the re-assembly, but it didnt, we had no new gaskets so used all the old ones, (I had previously had it apart and greased all the new gaskets) didnt find anything wrong, continually turning the motor as each part was added, nothing found, finally re-adjusted the tappets, set the timing and fired it up, it ran well, balanced the carbs and at 2am Sunday put it back in the van, and got a few hours kip, drove back up to Snetterton (I was sponsored at that time for petrol costs) and got in two races, due to the fact that I had got those three practice laps in, it never faltered and I rode it for the rest of the season, buying a Monty in the Winter ready for the following March. We never knew what it was, never saw anything physical and could not elieve that we missed whatever it was, very strange, but locked solid it was.

I wish I had half that energy now.
CLEM
 
CLEMTOG said:
I have a similar story to that Paul, I was racing in 1979 using a Honda, it was a two day meet at Snetterton in Norfolk about 31/2 hours drive away, (with caravan) on the Sat morning, I practised and didnt make the fourth lap, in those days three was compulsory for a start in the race to be permitted (dont know about now) and the engine seized solid, I was trailered back to the paddock, and we took a quick look, everything externally looked hunky dory, it didnt free on cooling, nothing showed through any of the eight tappet covers, so we loaded up and headed for home, this was before lunchtime, about half way home a pal who was coming to watch, aproached coming the other way, spotted the Land rRover and a s soon as we passed we recognised each other, I saw his brake lights come on so stopped, he returned and we chatted, the long and the short of it was that he would meet us back at home (he was on a similar bike) and we would see if we could do anything, later that PM at home we looked at everything possible, and failed to find it, so we took the motor out and stripped it progressively thinking we would find it, but failed again, and (as you) it was stripped to its last nut, so we started to reassemble it again thinking that the fault would show on the re-assembly, but it didnt, we had no new gaskets so used all the old ones, (I had previously had it apart and greased all the new gaskets) didnt find anything wrong, continually turning the motor as each part was added, nothing found, finally re-adjusted the tappets, set the timing and fired it up, it ran well, balanced the carbs and at 2am Sunday put it back in the van, and got a few hours kip, drove back up to Snetterton (I was sponsored at that time for petrol costs) and got in two races, due to the fact that I had got those three practice laps in, it never faltered and I rode it for the rest of the season, buying a Monty in the Winter ready for the following March. We never knew what it was, never saw anything physical and could not elieve that we missed whatever it was, very strange, but locked solid it was.

I wish I had half that energy now.
CLEM
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Ah, energy.
I wish that they made pills for that. Well, they do, but side effects are deadly.
(Particularly at our age)

Paul
 
Last winter I removed the cams and followers from the RGS for refurbishment and learned how slippery - and fast! - cam chain ends are. Despite taking some precautions to avoid the chain ends going AWOL, down the tunnels they went.

Over the next two months, this happened thrice, last two times due to lesson not learned. But I learned how to fish them up with two telescoping magnet rods and got so good at it that the last time it only took me five minutes to get the ends up.
 
ksoholm said:
Last winter I removed the cams and followers from the RGS for refurbishment and learned how slippery - and fast! - cam chain ends are. Despite taking some precautions to avoid the chain ends going AWOL, down the tunnels they went.

Over the next two months, this happened thrice, last two times due to lesson not learned. But I learned how to fish them up with two telescoping magnet rods and got so good at it that the last time it only took me five minutes to get the ends up.
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We've all done that.
I hook the chain up either side with copper electrical wire before splitting it.
Keith Nairn told me that he wedged a screwdriver either side in the cam chain tunnel.
I've just done both. Belt and braces.
Paul
 
The petrol cap on those bikes is under a trap door which clicks shut and has a lock. That door rests on an anti vibration O ring. The O ring had perished, the trap would vibrate and the tank would resonate, making a terrible noise.
Click to expand...
Sounds familiar:rolleyes:
 
I use two pieces of wood (oak) cut in very slim wedges, plus s/s lockwire for safety, but only a coupe of months ago, I dropped one side of the chain (exhaust) into the bowels, this was two days before departing a 2,000+ mile long weekend to Denmark for their 40TH (+1) rally, I dont know where I found the energy, but I got it out and all buttoned up in time for a few hours sleep before departing, the realy stupid thing is that I was changing one shim, and realy, I should have just left it, it was close enough.
CLEM
 
CLEMTOG said:
I use two pieces of wood (oak) cut in very slim wedges, plus s/s lockwire for safety, but only a coupe of months ago, I dropped one side of the chain (exhaust) into the bowels, this was two days before departing a 2,000+ mile long weekend to Denmark for their 40TH (+1) rally, I dont know where I found the energy, but I got it out and all buttoned up in time for a few hours sleep before departing, the realy stupid thing is that I was changing one shim, and realy, I should have just left it, it was close enough.
CLEM
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Was there any cussing involved?
 
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