Forking Hostile

Right then – time for an update, and rather than apologising this time for how long it’s taken, I’m just going to get on with it. There may be a lot of words in this one. And quite a few pictures. And I’m pretty sure that at least one of the activities may lead to a fairly intense use of four-letter language if I’m accurately to record what happened in the garage. (At which point, I’d probably best apologise to my neighbours just in case they happened to be enjoying some early autumn sunshine in the garden while I was enjoying possibly the most intense use of foul language in the history of human communication. What makes it even more excruciatingly embarrassing is that I was talking to myself).

Right then. Let’s start with what’s gone well. Forks. I love a good fork, me, and once the decision was made to stick with 16″ wheels and the original forks, things became very easy indeed. I phoned the rather super Philpots in Luton, and explained that I needed some obscure old Ducati forks looking at, and they really couldn’t have been more helpful. I’d already stripped the forks, so all I needed to do was send away the pitted stanchions (they even provide a courier service to pick them up and deliver the finished article) and they would do the rest.

And so, a few weeks later, I got a call saying that the forks were ready, and would it be OK if I paid now? Well yes, absolutely, it would – and we got chatting about the best time to deliver the newly finished stanchions and had a bloody good chat about the Manx GP, and the plans for the rebuild. The stanchions turned up a few days later, immaculately packaged in individual cardboard tubes, and wrapped exquisitely in brown paper. It was like Christmas. I kind of wish that I’d made one of those dreadful unboxing videos, purely as it was *so* satisfying. And of course, the quality of the chroming is exceptional. Really, it’s so nice to have such good service that it’s worth making a bit of a fuss over. Philpots, in Luton. Even if you don’t need your forks rechroming, send them away for the pleasure of unwrapping them and a good chat. It’s the best money I’ve spent this year. As well as the stanchions, I also replaced the seals and retaining circlips as a matter of course. The bushes, I’ve left, as they are in reasonable condition. Besides, the external bushes are no longer available anyway so that kind of made the decision for me. Once all the bits arrived back at the garage, rebuilding was pretty straightforward. The Marzocchi M1R forks are unusual by modern standards, in that rebound damping is controlled in one fork leg, and compression damping in the other. But the more I thought about this, the more it made sense to me. I mean, once everything is bolted together with a spindle and a set of yokes, it’s a single system anyway. So why not keep the two functions separate, and that way it’s possible to have different grades of oil for rebound and compression – as indeed, I now do. 5wt in the left fork leg, and 10wt in the right – the manual states to use some kind of weird ATF or something, but the wisdom from people using these forks in the real world is to use different grades.

As can be seen, I didn’t repaint the lowers. Dans son jus.

While I was waiting for the forks, I decided to take a look at the bodywork. I’m not going to restore anything – but I did want to make sure that what I have is solid, and usable. First thing on the bench was the top fairing.

Oh dear. Someone has, at some point, just attacked this with some Halford rattle can action, and applied rather more jus than I was willing to accept. Still, a few hours with some wet&dry, elbow grease, and cellulose thinners had it looking like this:

Not desperately unhappy with that, but a quick look at the bottom of the unit showed that the lower mounting points had snapped off at some point – I’ll spare you photos of both of them, but this should give you an idea:

So, how to approach something like this? What I’m about to describe may not get the seal of approval from master rebuilders of shite old bikes, but it works for me. Well, so far it has anyway, on a few rebuilds. First thing is to scuff up the back of the panel with a Dremel to get down to bare plastic. Then, cut a bit of aluminium mesh slightly too large, clamp it in place, and just run a few drops of cyanoacrylate adhesive to tack it in place:

After a nice cup of tea, attempt to remove the clamps. You will, of course, have glued at least two of them to the repair. Every time. However, with a bit of swearing, and with your chakras rebalanced due to the tea, eventually the clamps can be removed. At this point, I slather the back of the area in epoxy. I normally use Araldite just because it’s what I’m used to, but any kind of epoxy will work here. I’ve also used a stupidly strong acrylic resin from East Coast Fibreglass in the past, but that’s properly nasty stuff that I wouldn’t like to make a mistake with – it’s absolutely fearsomely strong.

Once the epoxy has set (I normally use 24hr epoxy, as I’m quite likely to make several mistakes and need to reposition things a few times…) the creative bit begins. Basically, you need to fold up the edges of the mesh to kind of make something almost like the shape of the missing bit.

It doesn’t need to be exact. Just kind of the right sort of shape. Preferably a bit on the generous side, as it’s way easier to remove material than add little bits. Now for the creative bit. <cue a potters wheel interlude>. I use P40 for this bit, as it’s reasonably easy to work with, easy to find, and it smells good. So, mix up a dollop, and push it into the mesh. You actually want to push it in quite hard, so some of it pushes though the mesh to make sure there’s a really good bond. You need to work fast here, as it does go off quite quickly.

Also, ensure that you get a thin layer over the existing panel – most of this will be sanded off anyway, but it makes sure that you don’t leave a gap. Flushed with success, now is normally a good time to get another cuppa while the P40 goes off. It doesn’t take long, so 30 mins to make a pot and drink the first cup is about right. Once you’re feeling calm and prepared, it’s time to get the trusty Dremel out again, cut off the excess mesh, and roughly shape things:

Re-drill the hole. If you don’t know how to drill a hole, I’m afraid you need more help than I can offer here:

Finally, give it all a good sanding with wet wet&dry – I normally start at 240 grit and work down to something like 800 for this kind of work. Once everything feels smooth and just tickety-boo, if there are any small divots to fill in, something like P38 or Dinitrol 6030 can be used, again, finishing up with some wet&dry to smooth everything out. Once you’re happy that it’s good enough, slap some primer on it.

And that’s good enough for now. I will, I’m sure give this a coat of Ducati red at some point, but that point isn’t in my immediate future. There was a similar bit of damage on the left hand panel, which was fixed in a similar manner. I’ll save you the photos.

At this point, I pulled the screen out of the box of bits.

Yeah, at some point, one of the previous idiots who owned this bike sprayed it silver. And attempted to fair it into the upper fairing with massive blobs of bodyfiller randomly splatted around the place. Now, given that the screen is the only piece of bodywork that is still available to buy (and not at great expense) the obvious thing to do would be to gently place this in the dustbin, and forget that I’d ever seen it. But no, of course, the thesis here is ‘good enough’ and so I decided to see if I could, somehow recover this unholy mess and at least make it see-through again. So, in the same way that you’d treat clouded headlights on a car, I set about sanding through the paint and filler, just to see if this was a viable project.

Holy carp! Although it took a bloody long time, and quite a lot of elbow grease, it was apparent that yes, I *could* remove the layers of primer and paint, and get this back to the bare plastic. At which point, going through the grades of paper to 2000 grit would bring it back to life, and a final polish would make it while not as good as new, certainly usable. So, with a fresh cup of tea, and a spring in my step, I spent a happy few hours in the garage with a bowl of soapy water and a pile of wet&dry. And after a good four hours of slogging away, things were looking very much on the up:

At this point, I had the first dawning of realisation. The reason this was redrilled, bodged into place with body filler, and then just sprayed silver was because it was completely the wrong screen for the bike. A very quick check revealed that yes, indeed, I’d just spent five hours and a not-inconsiderable amount of elbow grease trying to restore something that shouldn’t have been there in the first place. In a state of zen calm and the true inner peace that comes from understanding that the joy comes from the process, and not the result, I carefully placed the screen back on the bench.

I then spent a good fifteen minutes swearing in at least three languages, and added a screen to my shopping list.

Time then, to fit the newly refurbished forks and bolt the wheel back in:

And that’s where we currently are. Next stages are hydraulics, and electrics. I’m going to tackle the brakes and clutch first I think, because, well, I’ve got to start somewhere. Plus, I already know that the electrics work well enough to get the bike running, so other than sending the stator away for rewiring, it’s going to be reasonably straightforward and relaxing stuff. The brakes should be, for the most part, reasonably easy to put back together. The rear brake master cylinder is utterly humped, but I’m confident that I’ll be able to either find a replacement, or fabricobble something to fit something suitable. The clutch, however, looks like it could be a total nightmare. None of the parts are available any more, and because of the way it’s designed (the slave cylinder is cast into the engine case) there’s no way just to bolt on something more modern without a huge amount of work and redesigning. Expect a lot more swearing in the next exciting episode then.

If all this sounds like a gratuitous amount of whinging, let me make one thing absolutely clear. I wouldn’t change a thing. I am exceptionally happy and content when attempting to fix things, even if that process goes nowhere and I end up throwing away a few hours work. Yes, like anyone else, I will probably have a bit of a grumble at that point, but I will look back on it and realise that firstly, I enjoyed the process of trying, and secondly if I’d engaged my brain before my hands I’d have soon realised that I was heading in the wrong direction. But that’s how we learn, and I’m very much still enjoying the process.

And even more finally, before anyone says “bloody hell! Your garage looks bigger than last time I was there!” I’d like to thank James for giving me space in his workshop and a ramp to work on. It’s made my old back 100 times happier.