Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/126030
... Bill '" ~ t 1.0 "\ r- O'l -=- 0- ...-4 0-- r...-4 >~ CIl 2 .c ~ ~ It's not the big things that stop,you, it's the dumb ones. Or - Great project bikes are made, not born... " • , I By Lane Campbell At long last, we got it on the track. Now our next goal will be to get through practice. Yup, it ate a piston third trip out on the course at Willow, another step in the learning curve as the Cycle News/Fantasy Factory crew (I got in trouble with the club for spelling it "Phantasy Phactory" last time . What a bunch of phunky old phlounders.] continues to seck truth and enlightenment while converting a TM400 motocrosser into a street-legal cafe racer. . Actually, getting from the end of Part I (half-built, no fibreglass) to "ERKI" has been a halt ing trip, punctuated by the author's still-unfinished , two steps forward , an d three ste ps backward attempts to create original bodywork Onward 'lind upward Fortunately fo r the project (w hic h was gathering cobwebs while the author screwed aro und with fibreglass) Jerry Greer at Camber Co . had a surplus tank and seat that fit. We bolted so me steel tabs just behind the steering head to provide fork stops for the GT 380 front end, and club member Paul Seyler . 24 welded up a pair of control pedals using some eutectic nickel-bronze brazing rod he had been dying to tryout. It 's reportedly the same stuff the Rickmans use; and strong enough th at you can bend the brazed part without disturbing the joint. We tested th at proposition when the shift lever didn 't quite fit. The stock rear brake ca ble was hoo ked up to the homemade lever, the cable stop placed for a straight , no-kinks shot. On the left side, a Honda CB .350 remote-shift actuator fits the Suzuki shifter shaft. A properly bent and threaded rod hooks up with the sh ift lever which , like the brake, pivots on the footpeg stub. Fred's shop (where all this has come together so fa r) is on a little side street. It takes many ·full-blast runs up and down said street to rou gh in the jetting and timing, only to discover that the real reason it w o n 't rev is because the o il in th e fo am air cleaner h as co ngealed from six months' sitting. Back in ' the shop, the tank, carb and head are off and I'm washing th e air cleaner when th e co p co m es cruising by and says " I want the one who was riding the motorcycle." All six of us manage to look st upid, shrug our. shoulders and say "Huh?" The cop leaves. Looks like we've gotten in all the testing we're m o tocro ss. As we fill and bleed th e system, he te lls me , "It only seems to de tonate in the mid-range, no w; go ahead and run it up to peak in the gears and it settles down." Something should have told both of u s to take a plug check. Instead, I went out on it and did as Steve said, noting th at the bike wa s developing a fmc tum of speed, Third lap, .gassing it down the ba ck straight, she starts to rattle again, getting downright insistent about it. As I clutch it and back off the throttle to let it , coast and cool, it seizes. As luck and stored momentum would have it, I only have to push it about a quarter mile around Willow's long, long final tum. While I'm pushing, someone goes down in a huge puff of d ust way ahead; and my wife abo ut has her own seizure in · the pits because I've been missing for awhile. Naturally, I get the t urkey pushed almost to the pit hot lan e when two buddies come pounding up to ask if I'm O K and where did I fall off. I di dn't falloff - I seized. Oh. Te ll T he Wife I'm alright. O K. Wait a min ute one of you help me push! . We 've got abo ut three wee ks b efo re the next race, ti me enough to ge t the pegs re located and the eng ine toge ther again . Thank goodness The Wife cleaned up a fte r us, she saved the head an d cylinder base nuts while we all took off in four different d irections to watch the races and/or scrounge unsuccessfully for another piston. The one we have loo ks a bit like the surface of the moo n o n top. Next time out , we got to quit screw ing arou nd . ..