groovylee

Couple of pics from Sammy Miller's museum today, an AJS/Matchless meeting was going on. 


I've got a hankering for an old 50s/60s oily-rag bike I can tinker with and slowly improve, thinking about maybe a Bantam as parts are easy to find?

Practice makes perfect. This works for both falling off with style, grace and preservation and also falling off less too. Did a nice little Kent lanes loop early this morning.


Also have a weekend in October for the second half of the South East TET planned for October with mates. Looking forward to that as a lot of not ridden. Also plan to get back to Devon for more trails soon as poss. Done a load of south Devon and North around my mum and dads place fancy going out Cornwall way next time. 

well, the GS went, bantam still here, but it has a new stablemate....

2022 Honda CRF300L.
took it down to devon to do some lanes. fell off. five times. 🤣

was great fun though. much more capable than the Bantam.  entered the Cotswold clouds at the beginning of september in preparation for the Edinburgh trial at the end of september.

Lack of updates due to lazy and it just working for the most part.
 
Finally did the gearbox service, and did the mechatronics seals and sleeve seals while it was apart so hopefully it'll stay dry under it now.  Already noted an improvement in shifts so it was worth doing.
 
I took two photos
 
One of the old oil and some old oil from my mates A6 CVT in a bucket with the filter and pan on the floor, the magnets had a bit of debris but it wasn't horrific.
The other

 
Of the diagnostics.  The fill to level procedure on these is basically fill when cold until it dribbles and then get the oil to the right temp (45-60c) and fill until it dribbles out the fill hole with the engine running, hence the diag being plugged in while filling to check the box temp.
The whole job was done on the floor, with the car at full height and stands under to make sure it didn't drop, there's enough access to get under and do it for the home mechanic and my ramp had a paid job on it.
The only special tool I used was a compressed air fluid filler and adaptor to fill the box, but it could be done with a large fluid syringe it would just take more time and be a bit more of a faff.
The only real access issue is the exhaust having the cats right near the fill plug area and the mechatronics sleeve being a bit of a pain to apply enough pressure to in order to compress the scroll seal enough to re clip it place.
 

The amount of static sag on my mates 300 is just silly . Half the travel has gone before you even sit on it .
Ive got a remote reservoir YSS fully adjustable unit ready to go on the 500

Yeah, the difference between this one with the ktech upgrades and my mates one as standard is ridiculous 😳

well, the GS went, bantam still here, but it has a new stablemate....

2022 Honda CRF300L.
took it down to devon to do some lanes. fell off. five times. 🤣

was great fun though. much more capable than the Bantam.  entered the Cotswold clouds at the beginning of september in preparation for the Edinburgh trial at the end of september.

Getting some practice in on Simms?

It was a bit funny. Just not the next morning 🤣
We did some pretty gnarly hills, and I got better as we went on. Just need to practice some more 👍

well, the GS went, bantam still here, but it has a new stablemate....

2022 Honda CRF300L.
took it down to devon to do some lanes. fell off. five times. 🤣

was great fun though. much more capable than the Bantam.  entered the Cotswold clouds at the beginning of september in preparation for the Edinburgh trial at the end of september.

well, the GS went, bantam still here, but it has a new stablemate....

2022 Honda CRF300L.
took it down to devon to do some lanes. fell off. five times. 🤣

was great fun though. much more capable than the Bantam.  entered the Cotswold clouds at the beginning of september in preparation for the Edinburgh trial at the end of september.

Pretty sure I’m legally ok, because I wrote a completely factual account of proceedings.
However, you’re right, it was a bit immature to post his picture, still seething 😡 I suppose 

Full bike license passed this morning!

Home noo! Total mileage 3343. 84 hours in the saddle and average 49.3 mph. The big Triumph was faultless, swatting away vans and dealing with streaming wet autobahns and 35 degree heat. 
 

@Cavcraft Do not paint!
Would love to see that on the road looking more or less the same

I love that little trials bike, but the motorcycle shed is full at the moment.
I do respect a GS too, but can't help but think they're almost too capable to enjoy day to day - for my use case anyway.

pic of the GS - 

pic of the GS - 

anyone fancy a 2014 R1200GS? i appreciate its not really autoshite fodder, but im getting bored of timewasters and idiots.
ad here - https://www.autotrader.co.uk/bike-details/202307049254789 based in shefford, bedfordshire.
also, possibly more autoshite - my 1971 Gollner Bantam Trials. converted to 12V negative earth. great little bike, still plenty of potential for fettling and making your own. not perfect, but just managed almost 50 miles of the TET from newton abbott a couple of weekends ago.
looking for £2500, and making a decent loss at that, but im in need of clearing the decks so i can buy a more modern CRF250/300 for doing long distance trials.
happy to answer questions  

pic of the GS - 

anyone fancy a 2014 R1200GS? i appreciate its not really autoshite fodder, but im getting bored of timewasters and idiots.
ad here - https://www.autotrader.co.uk/bike-details/202307049254789 based in shefford, bedfordshire.
also, possibly more autoshite - my 1971 Gollner Bantam Trials. converted to 12V negative earth. great little bike, still plenty of potential for fettling and making your own. not perfect, but just managed almost 50 miles of the TET from newton abbott a couple of weekends ago.
looking for £2500, and making a decent loss at that, but im in need of clearing the decks so i can buy a more modern CRF250/300 for doing long distance trials.
happy to answer questions  

More metal.

Basic shape of the footwell in.

The problem with the 240's wipers is that they're so slow they don't really help much in moderate rain, and in a really heavy downpour you may as well pull over and stop.   The technology probably hasn't changed much from the late 60s and the 140 series, so if you buy another original wiper motor it doesn't really improve much.  That's if you can find one, you can see the dollar signs in the eyes of a breaker when you ask if they've still got any left.   RHD ones aren't available new any more and even when they were they cost in the region of £300.  I've known of 240s being scrapped for a failed motor and not being able to pass an MOT without it.
I've dismantled the original motor several times and it just never worked right.  Firstly the bearing died and I replaced it. Then the board holding the brushes in place snapped and I had to epoxy it back together.  Finally it seems the motor shaft has now worn down to the point that it oscillates inside the bushings at either end of the case.  The result is that the motor grinds and rattles, this being transmitted through the linkages and to the wiper arms, to the point where the blades would just bounce across the screen.  On top of that you could hear the motor labouring away even through the road noise at 70mph. I was absolutely convinced I'd see a puff of smoke from under the passenger footwell and that would be me fucked.
So, I bought a motor from a 2001 Volvo S40 for £15, thinking that I could adapt it, and if I couldn't, well it's only £15.

The main differences are:
- The electrical connector is different.
- The spindle shaft is too short to reach all the way down through the bulkhead to the wiper linkages.
- The mounting bolt holes are on the opposite side of the motor.
The electrical part is easy, it's just a case of making a small wiring harness to connect the right pins to the 240 plug. With a quick test, it worked first time on low and high speeds, intermittent wipe, and would park itself when you turned the ignition on and the wipers weren't parked.
To extend the spindle shaft I attached a nut connector, with one side marked using a centre punch.

Drilled a 3mm hole.

Screwed the nut connector onto the motor, then continued the 3mm hole into the spindle.

Tapped the hole to M4.

Then an M4 machine screw was added, with some threadlocker for good measure.

This was then cut off, filed flat and epoxied over the top.  This should lock it in place and stop it ever unwinding.


I guess it would have been much quicker to tack it in place with a welder, but I was worried about damaging the nylon gear inside the motor.
To solve the mounting problem I made an adapter plate, starting by taking an offcut of 2mm steel and marking out the holes from the original motor. The orange line marks the centreline of the original motor which is quite important.

The S40 motor is then lined up and holes drilled for that.

The holes in place.

And the cleaned up adapter plate.

On the S40 motor.


This was then bolted to the car.  Amazingly it all lined up, and the extended spindle was exactly the right length.

The last job is to attach the wiper crank in the right orientation , with the motor in the park position.   Looking up inside the passenger footwell, it's easy enough to attach the crank to the wiper linkages and bolt it in place. 
Thankfully once aligned, it's possible to lift the complete unit out of the car without taking the crank off, given a bit of wiggling.

 
On the original motor the crank is keyed to the right orientation so that it doesn't spin on the shaft.  I'm sure there's plenty of ways to replicate this, but I decided to be lazy and just do a couple of tack welds to hold it on.   It's far enough away from the nylon gear at this point.

With that done I tidied up the wiring by soldering it directly to the motor pins.

I also 'potted' the top connector using some hot glue to stop water ingress and any potential shorts.

 
Finished unit.

 
And finally, on the car.  The wiring was finished off with some heatshrink to make it look a bit less shit.

 
And the moment of truth.
 
I didn't intend for this to be an upgrade, I just wanted reliable wipers. But what a difference it makes to have wipers from a modern car. It just takes away all that grim uncertainty when you're ploughing through downpours at night.  They are silent, and at least twice as quick as the old unit. The high speed mode is probably about 300% faster than the old one.
I should really have done a before and after video to show how bad they were, but I really had lost the rag with it by that point.
Edit:  I found a video I took while the car was in bits, showing how loud and slow they were from inside.  No windscreen, but you can see the linkages plod along.
 

He's even got the awning up!