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Slow Monster Rebuild

Discussion in 'Builds & Projects' started by expired road racer, Nov 24, 2016.

  1. Work started on tank starting with the base Tank base rear mounting.JPG

    Tank base plug 2.jpg

    Tank base plug 3.jpg

    Tank base plug 4.jpg

    Tank base plug 5.jpg
     
  2. There is a familiarity about this thread.
    My own 750 monster is in a constant state of refinement and follows similar principles of lightness and simplicity.
    But more particularly, the ingenious use of throwaway items rings loud bells.
    My first paddock stand, for example, was built by cutting and rewelding my friend's late mother's zimmer frame and adding wheels from a pair of "streetgliders" (or somesuch name), which used to strap on to the heels of the wearer's shoes. To my great amusement, these wheels have multi-coloured led lights which flash as you spin them.
    Similarly, I once made some nylon bushes to tighten up the fixing of my bar-end mirrors. These were turned on my centre-lathe from the remains of the internal modules of a display firework, which fell in my garden.
    And I too have salvaged material from a redundant road sign .. on more than one occasion.

    Keep up the good work.
    You may also perhaps consider posting on the UKMOC forum perchance ?
     
  3. Work on the tank skeleton Tank airbox cutout.JPG Tank plug 2.jpg

    Tank plug 3.jpg

    Tank profile.JPG

    Tank skeleton 1.JPG
     
  4. Sorry about the poor quality/ upside down nature of some of the pictures. The files are the right way up in my pictures gallery but seem to rotate when I upload them.
    Latest position on the seat with the rear hugger plug in the background - rear mudguard plug.jpg rear mudguard plug.jpg sorry a wobbly picture again seat plug.jpg
     
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  5. Tank progress, I was particularly worried that I had overdone it with lowering the tank and that the cruciform shape immediately over the rear head would act as a petrol boiler, I understand that the rear heads run hot anyway so I modified the housing to provide better airflow but I lost about a litre of tank capacity in doing so. For the carbs I intend to run foam pod filters and with my front mounted coil box and battery box I was concerned that the airflow to the carburettors would be restricted so I knocked up these 4 scoops scoops, tank and coil box behind headstock.JPG to be made in carbon fibre. The top scoop will feed the carburettors and the lower scoop will feed the rear cylinder head Scoops from front.JPG
     
  6. Further progress on the tank showing piece cut out from base to improve air flow to rear cylinder Tank underside improved.JPG
     
  7. All the work on the tank could not have been done without these - only about £7 a pair from Screwfix Clamps.JPG
     
  8. Further progress on tank - probably still about 10 fill and rub down cycles before it is ready for the primer resin

    Tank RH side.JPG

    Tank LH side.JPG

    Tank from front un rubbed down key access.JPG
     
  9. Excellent work and very interesting to read. Keep it coming.

    Have you thought of using Balsa wood for making male original parts for moulds?(The Plug). Easy to sand, wet it and you can bend and shape it. Easy to cut with a scalpel. Enough strength for this purpose. Then coat and rub down of course.

    Thought it might help for other parts.
     
    #49 Sam1199, Nov 29, 2016
    Last edited: Nov 29, 2016
  10. Never thought of balsa wood, it is a very good suggestion I wish I had earlier.
    All the wood used so far has been offcuts from building my house so has cost nothing in fact using it up has been useful so I can stop either tripping over it in the garage or having to move it get to something else, plus the offcuts get to be kindling for the wood burner. Plywood is good for where you want rigidity but laminating multiple thicknesses of it to form shapes is not easy. Cutting multiple shapes exactly the same is difficult to achieve and you always get a raggedy edge which is difficult to file and has to be filled. Also for molds you cannot have two parallel edges unless the mold is split multiple ways as they all need to be slightly tapered otherwise you get a mechanical lock. If anyone else is contemplating making stuff like this I would not recommend plywood - it makes the job about 3 times longer
     
  11. This is the repaired alternator case after spending an hour with a small file and a sanding block restoring the gasket face. I tried my blast cabinet for the first time and was quite pleased with the finish. I used kiln dried bedding sand instead of the sand blasting medium sold by Machine Mart as at £4.75 for 25kg it is 20% of the price of the proper stuff. I tried masking tape on the bearings but the sand gets everywhere and the bearing (which I would have replaced anyway) is now completely clogged. The lower clutch slave cylinder threaded hole had to be re-tapped following the welding. alternator case.JPG

    sand blasted repaired alternator case.JPG
     
  12. I also treated the clutch casing which has now been lightened to 20 minutes in the sand blaster. The black stains inside where the drum fits did not come out with the first pass with the blaster. This case and the alternator case will be treated to 2 cycles in the dishwasher when SWMBO is next out of the house. I intend to paint the whole engine and the sand blasted finish should give a good key for the first coat of etch primer. The painting will have to wait until the weather is warmer and there is less moisture in the atmosphere. Also with all the sanding and rubbing down of molds the garage has a 0.010" film of filler over every single surface so this will have to be vacuumed up before I go near the paint gun.

    sandblasted clutch casing.JPG
     
  13. Continuing the lightening theme, I decided to make a CF instrument nacelle and headlight support bracket. The speedo and rev counter will fit into the wells formed in the mold with a rubber liner and with a clear ABS sheet fixed to the top surface. The headlight support bracket will fix by 2 x 6mm mush head cap screws to the top yoke where the indicator mounts are currently and will support the instrument nacelle and will be attached by the same 5mm mush head socket cap screws that fix the ABS sheet to the nacelle. at the lower fork yoke the two bolt holes used to secure the current headlight U bracket will attach to a cross piece between the two CF headlight supports. I have not yet decided whether to make a CF headlight shell, the attachment of the rim looks tricky to mold successfully.

    instrument nacelle.JPG

    RH headlight support.JPG
     
  14. More progress with the tank - still about 8 fill and rub down cycles before the top surface is ready for primer resin. The tank bottom will then have to be filled to ensure no mechanical locking when I make the female mold (basically with the tank inverted every vertical surface has to slope towards the outside of the tank). The mold weighs about 15kg now and I will have to be careful not to damage the top surface when working on the underside. I hope these words do not come back to bite me.
    The LH side air scoops are nearly ready for primer resin and are resting in their allotted places, when fixed properly they will be better aligned although I haven't yet decided how they should be fixed in position. By far the lightest way would be with 2 zip ties per air scoop but aesthetically it would just look cheap and nasty. welding or brazing some small lugs onto the frame would be better and I might be able to make them so no fasteners show but this will need thinking about because the area where the fasteners would be will be very crowded with carburettors and cables etc. Sorry image is sideways it is not saved that way in my computer

    Rear LH tank view with resting scoops.JPG
     
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  15. Progress has stalled in the last month, the garage is too cold and the atmosphere is too damp just now to consider applying resin to the moulds already made.
    I could continue with the strip down of the bike as a whole but I really want to dry build it first with all the new components before I think about painting frames and rebuilding and re-painting engines which means that it is better to be patient and get the new components finished first. This is not in my nature at all.
    I have been thinking a lot about the production process of producing the carbon fibre parts. When the resin and hardener are mixed you have about 20 to 30 minutes working time before the resin becomes gloopy and unusable which usually means mixing lots of small batches of resin.
    If you apply the resin by brush it can take a good 10 minutes to cover an item the size of the rear hugger and you always get a striated finish from the brush which requires rubbing down. The rub down is usually quite extensive and frequently causes a breakthrough to the layer beneath. So about 50% of the resin applied ends up being converted to dust.
    Also it is virtually impossible to accurately estimate the volume of resin mix required to cover the mould (although experience helps in guesstimating). Too much and you watch the quite expensive materials go jelly like in the mixing jar and worse is if you mix too little and try to spread it really thinly and it goes jelly like whilst on the job.
    The answer, I think, is to prepare lots of components to cover and mix a reasonable quantity and then spray the resin. This should cut down considerably on the rubbing down. If I mix too much a second wet coat can be applied to those items already covered with a first spray. You should also never mix too little as you will only get to cover what the spray gun will deliver the resin to.
    There are a number of problems with spraying though:
    ELF and SAFETY - I will need a very good quality face mask to prevent my lungs becoming inelastic and to prevent my eyes glazing over completely. Now on order
    Ventilation - I will need a means of removing the poisonous/carcinogenic fumes from the spray area. An old Dyson vacuum cleaner is being lined up but no design for the extractor hood or ductwork has yet been thought about
    Temperature and moisture control - to ensure consistent curing time and to eliminate the possibility of the resin "blooming" if ambient humidity is high. A fan heater is obviously no good as it will just distribute dust, a paraffin heater will just distribute oily smuts not consistent with good resin or paint finishes, so electric convection heating is required. As you probably know by now I never, ever throw anything away and at the top of the loft in the garage are some old (very old, equipped with 3 pin round plugs, remember them?) convection heaters taken from the house refurbishment I will see if I can press them into service.
    Dust control - my garage door faces North and even though I have lots of fluorescents and the walls are painted white I can only see well if the front garage door is open, I live near a wood and a large number of leaves blow in every time I open the garage door. Also, the past months efforts at producing moulds have left a 0.010" layer of filler dust on every surface. - The solution is to provide a tent within the garage, large enough to spray multiple components, demountable so I can have my floor space back when I have finished spraying, fed by my compressor air main and sealed relatively well against ingress of dust/leaves and self contained enough so that I am not heating the whole of west Kent.
    Getting the right viscosity for spraying and cleaning the spray equipment after use - I do not know the answer to this, it will be a case of bulk deliveries of acetone to both thin the resin for spraying and for cleaning the spray gun before the resin solidifies it useless - just suck it and see?

    I will post pictures of spray facility next week, once the relations visits are over and I am allowed back in the garage
     
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  16. Well done ...i do like to see a good winter project,keep the posts coming
     
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  17. Pictures fairly self explanatory.
    I found some old convector heaters that were taken out of the house and stored in the top of the garage and set them up as in picture 1.

    To try to limit the noxious fumes I have built a fume hood from some scrap 9mm plywood and the galvanised steel 24swg sides of an old dishwasher re-folded to form squares and attached to angle taken from the dishwasher chassis. The suction power is provided by a Dyson which had a couple of broken plastic issues. An old exterior halogen security light is installed inside the hood to provide light and heat to help cure/bake the finished components. The hood can be lowered as it is hung from 2 x 700mm lengths x 4mm chain looped over salvaged hooks originally used for hanging a fluorescent light fitting.


    I had originally intended to use an old table saw table as the place to put the components when spraying. The table saw I bought second hand for £40 but the soft start mechanism/gismo stopped working on about the fourth time I used it so the saw was parked in the garage. Anyway I was about to start dismantling the saw bit so that I could have a flat base to paint on when I thought I’ll give it one last try to see if it works and it did work, not just the once but every time I tried it so clearly it was/will be more use as a table saw. So a new(?) table was knocked up from offcuts of old joists taken from the house refurbishment, about an hour and a half’s work and 50 x 3.5” x 12 woodscrews.

    Other pictures are of the curtain for the spray booth, I had to buy some 1000 gauge polythene (about £30) his was cut into 4 separate curtains cut to length (floor to ceiling height + 6”) and folded 3” either end. Brass eyelets + hole punch stapler tool purchased off fleabay for about £7 and eyelets set every 4”. The bottom edge was stapled with an office stapler and old 8mm nuts put in the bottom fold to weight it down. The curtain rail was some galvanised steel tubing that came from a netting frame that originally went around some raspberry bushes but which collapsed under the weight of snow we had the first year we came here. The curtain hooks are zip ties. Attachment to the garage ceiling joists is by means of blocks of 2” x 2” bored with a ¾” hole and sawn horizontally through the middle of the bored hole with 2 x 60mm x 6mm coach bolts and wing nuts to form a clamp. It took some working out to clear all the existing light fittings, the air main pipework and two of the “curtains” have to be passed over the intermediate clamps but it only takes about 5 minutes to set up my internal painting booth tent in the garage. The footprint of the booth is 2.3m x 2.7 m so big enough to accommodate painting the frame.

    Convector heaters for spray booth.jpg

    spray hood WIP.jpg

    IMG_1449.JPG spray booth curtain LH.JPG

    IMG_1450.JPG spray booth curtain RH.JPG

    Spray hood and table.jpg
     
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  18. Since I will be spraying resin I have gone for one with inclusive eye protection so more of a hood than a mask, when it eventually arrives I'll post a picture
     
  19. Some progress this week. The starter motor cable was completely corroded on, the nut holding the cable was almost unrecognisable as a nut. I think the boot acts as a reservoir for salt water and dissimilar metals does the rest.

    I will make up a heavy duty replacement with a new boot when it goes back and fill the boot with water pump grease.

    starter connector.JPG
     
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