I have decided to cronicle my journey using words & pictures on the off chance some one will be interested.
These photos taken late Nov 2012
As I mentioned earlier I have had Mal Pitman's assistance in getting my bike back on the road, he serviced the carby's, the brakes front & rear, front fork seals along with head stem bearings, while I did a lot of clean up work. As you can see from the photos it's not too bad. However in the nineties I bent 5 valves when the throttle jammed one day and I was living in northern NSW at the time so I got the head sorted out and in late 1995 I moved back to Adelaide. The problem was, there has since been an annoying vibration throughout the engine at all rev ranges. I sought the best advice I could at the time and had the motor out a couple of times and replaced many components without success, (Mal Pitman wasn't around Adl in those days). I eventually ran out of spare cash and had to park it for what has turned out to be 7 years, (child maintenance is a bugger that's for sure).
The long and the short of this story is that I now have his expertise to call on and once we got the old girl back on the road it only took one ride for him to agree the problem is bad and he offerred to fix it if I took out the motor, TODAY was that day and he now has the engine. As soon as he put Christian's bike back together, mine will be next.
I am still hoping to get to Bourke next year and if so the old girl will look great as I will clean & paint the frame and hopefully the tank side covers and fairing etc.
I'm going to miss riding it now as I've just had a taste, however the end result will hopefully be worth it.
20-3-13
I will now start adding photos and text as I go along, bear with me as I endeavour to get it all together.
As you can see the motor is out and the condition of the underlying frame and associated bits becomes evident, 34 yrs of rust and grime is all too clear.
One thing I will say at this point is it's quite easy to pull things off the frame and I was taking several photos as I went along, however I didn't take ENOUGH. The older one gets the less you should rely on your memory, as the rebuild was taking place I would have loved to refer to more photos to remind me of where everything went.
This is the frame I made to enable to me mount the La Parisienne Fairing as the universal kit was useless.
That's the last of the pre-sandblasting photos, so I will post these and continue the story soon.
Cheers
