Here's the shock too. It's a WP unit from a KTM something-or-other. I've used them before on the Madass, and before that on my K100. Back then it was a 'needs must' choice because my Koni Dial-a-Ride (never any good for me) had died (actually, it was killed) and I needed a cheap replacement. These WP units seem to be very cheap on Ebay. The best thing about them is the outstanding quality, plus they're rebuildable and very versatile. They take a standard 2 1/4" coilover spring (I use rates around 250 lb/in) and have adjustable comp and rebound, plus about a mile of threaded adjustment for ride height on the cylinder body. You can vary the oil weight (standard is 2.5 wt) to get the shock exactly right for your own needs. Plus, if you replace the nitrogen filler plug with a Schrader valve you can fill it to the required 10 bar or so with a mountain bike shock pump, using good old air, drawn free from the atmosphere. They seem to come in all sorts of combinations of cylinder length and piston rod length, and you can fit gazillions of spacers under the piston to give any sort of overall length and stroke length you want. The 'special' tools that you need to strip them aren't that special and can easily be made. 


The only real hurdle is that you have to make up a rod end bottom mounting to replace the clevis that they usually always have (WP list a rod end alternative on their fiches, but it's probs v. expensive)

Back brake all plumbed up. Nope, I didn't follow my own advice and use a swivel joint. Nope, the banjo fitting was nowhere near the right orientation when I tightened the nut and olive. Yep, I just carried on winding it round until it did line up, with no mechanical sympathy whatsoever.


Plenum finished. More or less the same as the Madass plenum, 'cept I've used a lot more rivets. This was because the Madass plenum underwent a major backfire and didn't look at all well afterwards.



The plenum installed, with the coils too. No reason for the coils being rotated 90 degrees, but this was how they were on the Madass (out of necessity to clear the frame) and I though they looked okay.

The coil bracket isn't really a bracket at all, just 2 pieces of 12mm nylon shaped to clear the bellhousing. The coils are mounted on M6 rubber bobbins - we'll see just how long they last before a coil ends up dangling by its wires!

interesting plenum chris

where did you hide the AFM ? or is it still external to that box ?


and did you still use the plastic  "velocity stacks " that usually fit inside the oe plenum ?

keep going , all really creative indeed

Not very hidden!


Yep there are some velocity stacks/inlet runners in there, but they came from a K1100 because they are straight, plus the K1100 rubber adaptors are a more convenient size for the elbows you can see on the outside. I shortened the velocity stacks to maintain the same runner length as the OE K75. This setup was a complete guess on the Madass, but it seems to work well. It picks up fine and revs out nicely (I've no need to get any more technical than 'fine' and 'nicely' on these daft projects!)

chris846 wrote:Back brake all plumbed up. Nope, I didn't follow my own advice and use a swivel joint. Nope, the banjo fitting was nowhere near the right orientation when I tightened the nut and olive. Yep, I just carried on winding it round until it did line up, with no mechanical sympathy.

You do realise that when you tell me to do s**t I just do it, right? Anyone need any swivels?  .
Bike looking great BTW.

chris846 wrote:Not very hidden!


Yep there are some velocity stacks/inlet runners in there, but they came from a K1100 because they are straight, plus the K1100 rubber adaptors are a more convenient size for the elbows you can see on the outside. I shortened the velocity stacks to maintain the same runner length as the OE K75. This setup was a complete guess on the Madass, but it seems to work well. It picks up fine and revs out nicely (I've no need to get any more technical than 'fine' and 'nicely' on these daft projects!)

ah ! ...that might explain it ,,,  giggles

good to see mate

Creeping progress....


The meeting of AFM and engine block doesn't seem to lend itself to a neat solution (assuming you've decided to eschew the perfectly well designed OE air filter housing, like a twit) so, this time I've made a sort of bobbin thing that screws into a nearby M6 hole. A cut down M8 rubber bobbin is screwed into another, M8 hole under the AFM, and together they hold it around 5mm above the engine block. The AFM is mainly located/supported by its outlet, which is a firm fit into an o-ringed bore in the side of the airbox.

Looks a pretty good solution to me.

Seeing as how this Lithium Iron battery is smaller than an atom, and weighs less than a spider's kneecap. I thought I'd mount it somewhere creative.
Here's the bits of the seat support/battery carrier:


The rubber blocks are, well, just blocks of rubber. They are apparently called 'snubber blocks' and are sold by chandlers to people who screw them to boat trailers to, snub, I suppose.
I fitted them with bushes so's the seat unit could screw to them from the top (middle hole - M8 threaded) and the blocks themselves could screw to the frame (end holes - M6 clearance) The blocks slide inside folded stainless steel housings to make up an isolation mount, and the two pegs welded to the housings support the front and back ends of the battery tray, simples!
Here's what it looks like assembled, upside down naturally:


The assembly mounts onto the frame, here:


And it looks like this. There's a bit of room in case I need to uprate the battery to a two-atom size:


In the last photo you can see one of the the three frame numbers that this contraption has ended up with: two from the K1100 frames (Ronnie and Reggie) that started it all off, and, lurking somewhere, a gen-yew-ine K75 frame number, (ish).

Little details:

This might be a handy tip for anyone doing similar stuff (for the remaining, functional 99.999etc. percent of the world's population, this will seem stupefyingly pointless)



These started life as two normal M8 rubber bobbins/isolation mounts, as sold very cheaply by thousands of Chinese ebayers. I sawed them at an angle, rotated the halves, and glued them back together with superglue. Scientific testing by me failed to re-separate the glued join (okay, I got the angle on the first one wrong) so the end result certainly seems good and strong.

The ones in the picture were then covered with adhesive lined heatshrink to cover up the surgery - I thought they heatshrink would also help keep the two halves together, but it turned out not to be necessary.

This is all because Josef and Stefan failed to foresee the 2019 attachment of a Avon fairing to the two big holes in the side of the K1100 tank - the flanges aren't at the right angle!

 Well excuse mir!
 English pillock.

Sir, your creativity and craftsmanship is somewhat awe-inspiring.

Trainee motorcyclist..


Probs not a bad choice of machine compared to the THING in grandad's shed..

Anyway, since coming back off hols, I've been mostly intoxicating myself with fibreglass fumes in the manner of a clueless buffoon. Here's the seat unit that needed slight modification (i.e. the front sawing off and replacing) in order to fit the rear of the tank. And yep, that squidgy white stuff is plasticene.

Plasticene is a poor choice. It softens with the heat from the curing resin, loses its 'sticky', and, well, things get messy. Very messy. Very very very messy.
But, seeing as you're high as a kite on fumes, it's hard to care.
After several attempts, here's the finished article. The advantage of complete ignorance is that I can look at this hopeless piece of crap and feel quite pleased. At least my fingers weren't stuck to it - result!


The second pic shows the seat base, which had to be similarly modified. Course, I was getting pretty skillful by then. Shame, because all its unique features (several different shades of resin, bits of mat sticking out, interesting air bubbles, spectacular inconsistency in thickness, still sticky after a week etc etc) will all be covered up when it's upholstered. By an expert upholsterer of course (guess who?)

How high can a kite go?

Stan wrote:How high can a kite go?

Depends how long the piece of string is...

Nice work Chris846. GRP is interesting stuff to work with...but perhaps not in the confines of a garage, although on a cafe job, perhaps the fumes actually help with the creativity? 

Still sticky after a week...more hardener in the resin next time (for the GRP) or too much air if its gelcoat (you can buy a wax additive that forms an air tight layer if you are doing gel coat without using a mould).

Well I have some gelcoat that I haven't so far used. I was thinking of just painting it on, hopefully to get a good finish. Are you saying I need to use an additive for it to cure properly?
Cheers

chris846 wrote:Well I have some gelcoat that I haven't so far used. I was thinking of just painting it on, hopefully to get a good finish. Are you saying I need to use an additive for it to cure properly?
Cheers

Well it's been a few years since I was floating on a heady haze of GRP fumes (and that was outdoors fixing a boat), but I remember using a paraffin wax additive in the gel coat which effectively formed an air tight seal over the gel coat and allowed it to cure properly. 

Normally, the gel coat is painted on as the first few layers in the mould, with the GRP matting and resin built up on top to provide strength. So normally the gel coat is on the inside and cures to a hard crisp shell, which is exposed infall its wonderful glossy smoothness when the GRP creation is removed from the mould. Obviously, when making something like your seat, without a mould to form it in, or when repairing an existing gel coat surface you don't have the benefit of the mould to keep the air away from the gel coat and it will remain perpetually tacky unless you add the wax additive to form a protective surface layer. I learnt this the hard way.

Try this link for details of what I'm talking about (obviously you don't need this quantity, but it'll give you an idea of what to look for):
https://grpukltd.com/product/wax-solution-mw-5kg/

chris846 wrote:Well I have some gelcoat that I haven't so far used. I was thinking of just painting it on, hopefully to get a good finish. Are you saying I need to use an additive for it to cure properly?
Cheers

Normal gel-coat, as previously stated, is designed to be the first layer applied to a prepared and polished mould to get the ultra smooth finish of the desired colour. It is pretty much solely cosmetic, the strength being in the fibreglass (technically, GRP - glass reinforced plastic). While it may work being painted on after the event, some years ago when I used to play with the stuff a bit more there was a product called flow-coat which was designed to be painted on after construction, or more commonly in a repair situation. It was never as good a result as gel-coat in the mould, but the next best thing.

I'm happy to be corrected, but I think it has been largely replaced by two part epoxy spray finishes in many situations. Like any outer finish, it depends on good product applied by a skilled operator with good equipment. I usually manage 1 or 2 out of 3.

Bill

 "I usually manage 1 or 2 out of 3. "

Lol, that's life in the shed!

Thanks for the help guys, I've never done any fibreglassing before - except dodgy car repairs before the MOT inspection. It's pretty satisfying though - and I'm amazed how strong it can be.

Well the frame is off for painting, so I've been making boring bits. Here's how fed up I am with dissolving petrol pump mounts and expensive OE pumps.




 I think the pump came from a ford sierra a long time ago. It did service in my K100 for a while until it was wrongly replaced when I was looking for a culprit for low fuel pressure (the fuel filter turned out to be the villain, actually no, the real villain was the idiot who'd not cleaned out an old tank properly prior to fitting a new fuel filter that did its job very well thankyou and hung onto all the crap that got pumped into it, even to the point of its own death)

And, by mounting the much smaller pump in a solid nylon ring, I've kind of ignored the benefits of vibration-free running. Mind you, I would argue that the nice new modern pump is probs less vibey than the OE six horsepower* Bosch item.

*That's an exaggeration, but not by much**

**Okay, still an exaggeration.

I've been running a Chicom pump bought off Aliexpress for $37.00 Au since July 2017 and it hasn't missed a beat. it seems to be an exact copy of the OEM. I bought mine off Global Auto parts. I have my cleaned and lubed OEM pump stored in the tail as a so far unneeded backup.
Regards Martin.

This thing is the logo that will be on the tank after it's painted. There's a bit of a story behind it - I haven't just dreamed it up (it is pretty ugly). Any guesses? - a clue: it helps if you're fifty-plus and were hero-worshipping in the sixties.

Hi Martin, I'd seen your previous posts about this. Any deviation from the ridiculously expensive Bosch OE stuff (new AND secondhand) is okay in my book. And carrying a spare is just so, well, competent!

March 2016 Chinese GPS fitted power supply failed pretty much straight away I ended up using a spare I had. Still working well but it's now time for a map update, but it is nearly as cheap to replace the entire unit.
March 2017 fitted Chinese rear master cylinder $13.33 Au easy conversion and works better than the OEM. The only real failure of the Chicom parts was a temperature sensor that fits the 16v but not the 2v. They did however send me another 16v one.
Regards Martin.

"it helps if you're fifty-plus and were hero-worshipping in the sixties."


fifty-plus - check
hero-worshipping in the sixties - check



But I still don't see the connection to Bobby Orr 




Looking good Chris - can't wait to see this build come together!

Noooo.
I guess Bobby Orr was fast, but not this fast...

But the ice thing is right (sort of)

Another clue
The K is a classification from the Lloyds Register. The 7 refers to the the 7th registration in that classification...

(the '5k' is just my addition - y'know, it's a K75k. Well it made sense to me...)

chris846 wrote:
This thing is the logo that will be on the tank after it's painted. There's a bit of a story behind it - I haven't just dreamed it up (it is pretty ugly). Any guesses? - a clue: it helps if you're fifty-plus and were hero-worshipping in the sixties.

interesting stuff Chris
you sure are an innovator of sorts ..... carry on  , let that mind run free ....grin

And there's a big argument going on too. Idiots.

?

Bluebird.

Oooh, very very good.

Very good.

And they seem like idiots to me too.

Just for you Dai, here's some pictures of a silver frame that just happens to fit a 3 cylinder lump..

Ooohhhh that ^^^^^ is art!

Blame K75cster - he first mentioned how the frame tubes somehow looked thicker, and better for it. I went for silver to advance this effect.

If you look closely you can see the weld where 10mm is missing from the front downtubes - another K75cster suggestion to line things up and maintain the frame geometry after taking 78mm out of the frame top rails.

 Das idot hat gone und named it after ein boot!........ein sodding TUB!

 Ein Englisher tub!

  Guys guys, at least the colour will be German...

chris846 wrote:
This thing is the logo that will be on the tank after it's painted. There's a bit of a story behind it - I haven't just dreamed it up (it is pretty ugly). Any guesses? - a clue: it helps if you're fifty-plus and were hero-worshipping in the sixties.

Oh No Rocky and Bullwinkle's secret 7 formula

chris846 wrote:Blame K75cster - he first mentioned how the frame tubes somehow looked thicker, and better for it. I went for silver to advance this effect.

If you look closely you can see the weld where 10mm is missing from the front downtubes - another K75cster suggestion to line things up and maintain the frame geometry after taking 78mm out of the frame top rails.

And Looking Fantastico I must say

Catweasle would be impressed

hmmm looks fantastic chris   well done !


that silver frame is giving me ideas for when old Gerty is logged in for a revamp

giggles madly !!!!!!!

Ah well, I did ask the painters what the colour was.

Apparently it's called 'charlie99silver'...

  omg   fell off ma chair

Slowly building the thing up, sorting out the little details as I go:


A few weeks agon there was a thread on this forum about some sort of undertray beneath the tank. I thought that sounded a good idea - somewhere to mount and hide the electrics. Trying to get away with just 2 relays, plus the starter relay, and the black box thing in this picture.....


Which is a K tradition - an externally accessible fusebox!

Wow that silver frame is stunning, not usually a fan of anything other than black but that is going to really suit your bike!! Good choice!

Cheers. The silver frame thing is a nod back to the eighties, when ally frames were appearing on road bikes and some manufacturers started painting their steel-framed bikes' frames silver, to try and keep up with fashion I suppose.

I'm going for the eighties look 'cos that's the last time I had hair, and could think clearly, and could drink without consequences (at least that I cared about), etc etc

Just getting ready to start the wiring loom now. Need to say I've been hammering this forum looking for info about the alternator/charging light wiring & function. Some useful info from some guy called Dai, whoever he is...?

Oh dear... what about it?

Nope, seems I've lived all my life not knowing that the warning light also functions as a source of current to excite the stator.
How can that be? (living all my life etc.) Why don't they teach us this stuff in school? Oh hang on, they probably did and i was probs flicking rubber bands at girls.

as one does ...lol

Oh - so I can go back to sleep then?



Good.

Things'd have to be serious before I disturbed anyone's sleep. Get studying those eyelids!

Ref. the alternator - nope, it was all perfectly clear after I read your posts. Cheers.