9 posts tagged “ducati”
When a motorcycle sits in a barn for a double digit number of years, it will tend to accumulate some reminders of that time in the shade-- dust, mud, surfast rust, the odd weed, and more spiders (and their webs) than one really wants to contemplate when reaching under the fender. Add to this the accumulated grease and grime from being the road before the extended barn hiatus, and the end result is quite messy.
Living in a loft has some tremendous advantages when it comes to motorcycle restoration. You can have the bike int he middle of the room, and if it decides to drip its precious bodily fluids onto the polished cement floor, you only have to wipe them up and you're done. No muss, no fuss, no bother. However, the loft lifestyle comes with a downside as well. When something has accumulated a decade's worth of barn and road grime, you can't just take it out into the driveway and hose it down, as there's no hose and no driveway to speak of. But you aren't helpless against the evil grungemonster.
Tonight's project: take the frame plus the rear wheel and fender to the local coin-op hose-it-yourself carwash and give it a good dose of high-pressure soapy water. If I was a proper Bud-swilling football-watching republican-voting red-blooded American, this wouldn't present much of a challenge at all, as I could just throw the parts into the back of my petroleum-swizzling pedestrian-crushing road-hogging SUV and be done with it. But no, I'm oneof those California namby-pamby liberals, and I drive a small car. Lucky for me, it's a convertible.
The service of getting the rather heavy frame to the car was provided by one of the shopping carts that lives in the garage. It would have been slightly easier to wrestle the frame into the car if I'd removed the forks first, but c'est la vie.
I'm sure I looked plenty hilarious driving down the road with a motorcycle frame sitting in the passenger seat, but if that's the worst thing that happens to me during this project I'll be in great shape.
The absurdity of wheeling a motorcycle around in a shopping cart was not lost on me. Or my camera.
This would be a good answer to "what are your plans for the three-day weekend?", but I missed that QOTD. Oh well.
My goal this weekend was to rid my loft of the motorcycle that was sitting there, and instead turn it into a motor plus a cycle, or to be more precise, a motor plus a bunch of other random parts.
After an epic battle between woman and machine, I have triumphed over the troops of the evil mounting bolt empire. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't elegant, and it sure as hell wasn't a professional attempt, but it's done. Save for the retaining clip on the chain, not one single piece of the bike was damaged during the attempt. Oh, and I was unscathed too, except save for a couple of broken fingernails (oh noooooo!) and a tiny little scratch where I slipped while doing something egregiously stupid with a screwdriver.
I wasn't going to post this photo, since it highlights the bumbling idiocy nature of my amateurish endeavors, but then I thought better of it. If you can't laugh at yourself, other people will do it for you and you won't enjoy it nearly as much. [1]
At this point, the forks are the only part of the disassembly that scare me at all-- the rest of it is incredibly simple and straightforward. I think that tomorrow I shall finish taking everything apart, and then haul the remaining bits to a car wash for a good pressure washing. After that, I don't know... "take it apart and clean it" has been the whole of my plan thus far, so I really have no idea what comes next. I guess it's triage, repair what I need to repair, figure out what I need to replace, get all the parts I need, polish, paint, and reassemble. Sounds easy, doesn't it?
I have to admit that it's been a really interesting learning experience. A few weeks ago, "take the motor out of a motorcycle" sounded like a huge, mysterious, and scary ordeal. Now I know that it's really, "disconnect everything, unbolt the motor, and take it out."
[1] Rivendell house rule #2.
No, but the Ducati project bike lived in one for the last decade or so, and this weekend I had ample evidence of that.
My goal for the weekend was to take the motor out, and I didn't quite get that far. However, I did spend a few minutes puttering with it in preparation for doing so. I removed the carburetor. Removed the ignition. Disconnected and removed all of the cables. Mostly removed the wiring harness.
Oh, and I spent an hour or two sanding rust off of spokes while I watched a movie. I'm now thoroughly convinced that spokes are the work of a particularly sadistic devil.
In order to remove the chain (which I didn't do) and one of the cables (which I did), I opened up the motor just a bit-- it was full of grass and weeds. I even had a pet spider.
Peeking inside makes me feel particularly incompetent-- it's full of thingies and whatchamacallits and whoozimawhatzits
unicycle: noun
A one-wheeled human-powered vehicle
I purchased something today that will come in handy-- a pneumatic mechanic's stool. This is terribly useful, since it will let me roll around the bike at its level, holds tools right at my feet, and will let me return my dining room chair to its rightful location. It was only $25. And when I'm done, I'll probably use it as a piano stool... who cares if it has Craftsman emblazoned across the top?
I've started trying various tricks for removing rust from shiny bits. The most interesting one is soaking the rusted part in molasses-- five parts molasses to one part water. I've heard that a model T restorer swears by it. Steve, I haven't tried Coke yet, since I don't have any.
Is it insane to wash your motorcycle fender in the kitchen sink? Most of my LiveJournal friends say no. Feel free to weigh in.
And because Paul has been nagging me about it, I opened up the bevel cover and took a look. The Ducati bevel drive is truly a work of beauty!
I've been running around a fair bit this week, so I haven't spent much time working on the bike. I did decide that it was time to remove the exhaust, though, because it's something that I can sit and polish while I watch movies, and I was in the mood to watch movies.
Everything else on the bike has just come off quickly, so this should too, right? Nope, no try on the first shot. I soaked the joint in WD-40 and tried again the next day. Still no joy, so I tossed more WD-40 on the problem. WD-40 solves everything, right?
The next morning, I was about to get in the shower, but as I was headed that way the bike caught my eye. "Well, I'll just try again." This time, a couple of taps with a rubber mallet was all it took to loosen things up. I pulled the exhaust, then jumped in the shower. If you want TMI about this, read my LiveJournal entry.
Like the rest of the bike, the pipe is really dirty. I love living in a loft, but one of the difficult things is that I can't just go outside and hose something off-- no hose, no faucet. How to clean the exhaust? I know! I'll just put it in the shower and use the handheld shower head to hose it down. I left it there overnight to dry.
The next morning, I was rather surprised when I started to get into the shower and I discovered it was already occupied, but I had a good laugh at myself. Having a great big piece of rusty metal in my tub already seems perfectly normal to me.
Next up: the wheels come off. I also need to find an outdoor place that I can stash the tank for a couple weeks and let it air out. The gas has been drained out of it, but the stench of decade-old gas is still horrible. My friends at the bike shop recommended leaving it out in the sun for a couple of weeks to get rid of the fumes.
Oh! And I found a really awesome site: Dan's Online Motorcycle Repair Course. I'm impressed with the richness and clarity of his instructions. I'm basically a smart person, but I've intentionally remained ignorant of wrenching for 40-odd years, so I don't really have the basics of, "What is this?" "How do I get this apart?" I can usually figure out what I need to know, but often two minutes of reading will save me fifteen of head-scratching.
It's been eighteen bejillion degrees in my loft all weekend, so I wasn't terribly motivated to work on the bike. However, I did spend some low-energy time on it today.
First up: remove the seat. This required removing two bolts and then lifting it off. Much to my surprise, I had no problem whatsoever getting the bolts out, and the seat just popped right off with no force at all. That puppy is surprisingly heavy! None of the other bikes I've owned have had 11-pound seats, but none of them have had heavy steel seat pans either.
Next task: remove the bars. The U-bolts that hold the bars on were quite rusty, so I doused them with WD-40 and then went erranding for a couple of hours. Once again, they came off with very little effort on my part. I'd psyched myself up for having everything rusted in place and spending a ton of time arguing with every part, but so far that's not been the case. I did wind up cutting one of the grips to get it off. It was still in very good shape, but a new pair is about eight bucks so it wasn't worth the effort of trying to salvage it.
Things I'm very happy I've thought of early: every small part that comes off gets put into a plastic bag and labeled with what it's for, e.g. "seat bolts". Also, I'm photographing every step of the way, so that I have a clear reference for what things looked like as they came apart, where cables were routed, etc.
Since it's such a low-energy sort of day, I spent some time curled up on the couch watching a movie and cleaning the seat and bars. There was a small amount of rust on the underside of the seat pan, but not much, and the vinyl is in amazing if somewhat grungy condition. Steel wool got all the rust off the bars, but I did it mostly for practice-- they're BMW bars, and I'll probably try to find something a little closer to the original equipment. Still, it was good to learn about how much rust I can get off with fine steel wool.
I'm less intimidated now that I know my strategy is "take it apart a little bit at a time, clean it as you go, document your work, and label everything non-obvious."
I stopped at Home Depot on the way home from work today to pick up supplies-- shop towels, a bunch of WD-40, gloves, what should be a lifetime supply of extra super mondo fine steel wool but will likely only last a few weeks, and a container to keep all the crap in. Total outlay: $40. I bought expensive gloves, OK?
I jumped a little bit when I got home: "Holy (@#*$, there's a motorcycle in my loft!"
My plan was to start cleaning her up, but the more I contemplated the problem, the more intimidated I got. Where to start? What to do? Should I get a bucket and start scrubbing? Take her outside and hose some of the grunge off of her? (Do I even own a hose?)
Eventually, I unfroze my brain enough to go get a dustpan and brush and start knocking off some of the mud, grass, cobwebs, and spiders that had accumulated over the last decade. I followed it with a wet, soapy cloth on the seat and some of the painted bits. The tank is surprisingly shiny!
The enormity of the task I've taken on has just hit me, and it's paired with the realization that I have no idea in hell what I'm doing. I have no plan, nor even any clue how to set about making one. For now, I think I'll just spend ten minutes a day attacking whatever bit strikes my fancy at that moment, until such time as my brain can actually wrap itself around the idea of chopping this into bite-sized pieces.
She is well and truly an old bike-- she leaks oil. Almost all of the it has been drained, but there was still a tiny puddle when I got home.
I concluded this evening's festivities by sitting on her and making vroom-vroom noises.
I think it's time to go to bed with a book.
What's one thing that you hope to do or accomplish before the end of this year?
Funny you should mention it!
My new motorcycle came home yesterday. New is a relative term-- she's a mid-60s Ducati Sebring 350 that's been living in the back of someone's barn for the last ten or more years. My plan is to do a full cosmetic restoration and put her in my loft as an art piece.
By the end of the year, I'd like to have her looking pretty good. It's going to be quite the challenge, since I can't go down to the local Ducatis-R-Us and pick up parts when I need them, and I really haven't the foggiest idea how to restore a motorcycle.
I've been looking for a bike for a long time-- an old bike, not to
ride, but to put in my loft as an art piece. The ideal bike would be an
old non-runnng Triumph that's beautiful (or could be made beautiful)
but not roadworthy. My friends who own a local bike shop have been keeping an
eye out for one for a while.
Saturday I was running errands, and stopped by the shop (which has a cafe attached) to pick up a sandwich. I wandered over to the shop side, and the guys weren't in there. I went out front, and found them crawling all over a little red bike. It'd just been towed there, after having been abandoned in a barn several years ago. The woman whose barn it was called them and said she had two bikes to give them, if they'd tow them away.
All indications are that it's a 1965 or 66 Ducati Sebring 350, and it's in surprisingly good condition. The paint is cherry, the seat is in good shape, and the tires even hold air though they may not be roadworthy. It's missing a few parts, and there's plenty of rust, but that's OK-- I don't mind spending some time cleaning and polishing.
I talked to Joe today, and after he works out a price with Paul (his business partner), it's mine. I'll have it towed to the loft and then start working on it.
I took lots of photos of it at lunch today.
