Good luck with the Darmah project. I suggest keep it as standard as possible: the more it is visibly modified, the less desirable it will be.
Thanks Pete, to be fair I’m keeping all the standard parts but I’m making it my own with a lot of custom pieces. Nothing too “bike shed” or “tacky” just what I want to ride and own.
After a few months of parts collection and waiting for the engine to be rebuilt. I’ve started piecing bits together Front forks rebuilt and brembo’s rebuilt.
It only had 15k on the clock but one of the barrels was seized so there’s been a few issues. Only cleaned and pretty much everything inside replaced has come to £8500. I’m pretty pleased with that and I’ll out pics up once I’ve collected it. Looks like it just come out the factory.
We have an update. The bike will be slowly being pieced back together over the coming months. The engine has returned and is fully restored.
Great to see this. So what engine internals needed replacing? Guessing all the bearings and a barrel liner & piston, at least. Clutch plates, or it will slip. Wires to ignition pickups.
Pretty much Everything has been replaced. The crank was sent away to be rebalanced and checked. All new wiring and the pickups were in good condition. One of the bores cracked so only one was replaced. Generally it’s as good as new.
I hear both pistons were seized in the bores, had to be hammered out. Also a broken gearbox gear. Etc.
Good lord... he must have been standing in damp conditions somewhere. My Darmah was languishing in the garage for a good twenty years before I got me rs into gear and there was no sign of seizure. But it's always good to see & hear of the old 'uns being resurrected and used.
Interestingly the bike sat for nearly 40 years. I probably should have thought about a better donor bike but all the parts are there which is nice.
Perhaps you did get the better donor... because it's raison d'etre is to be stripped and completely refurbished. So you know what's in store for you and you will also be in charge of what & how it's done. It's certainly better than buying a more expensive 'rolling resto' that someone else has 'worked on' which you perhaps didn't expect, or want, to completely strip. But as you get deeper into it, it starts to reveal more and more stuff that needs to be done. And in the end you end paying for the same amount of work to be done with a lot more hassle.
So true. I’ll make sure I post the progress as it slowly starts to come together over the next few months.
And with a rear sprocket like that it probably had a top speed of 103 mph, got there in 2.5 secs and did 34 mpg.
Not always the case... Years ago I fitted a set of straight cut primary gears to my 900SS. They altered the gearing so much that it needed a rear sprocket in the high 40's or low 50's to return the overall gearing to somewhere near the standard ratio. Steve R
