Powder Prep

I’ve been spending a few days preparing several items for the Calgary CVMG club ‘powder coating day’ this coming Saturday.  Should be interesting as I haven’t actually seen this done before – other than on television of course ! I hope to have two motorcycle frames ready to go – both are Suzuki’s, one being a 1973 GT750 and the other being a 1977 GT500. I’ve spent the past few days disassembling and getting them stripped down, taken lots of photos and bagged and tagged many of the smaller bits and pieces, nuts and bolts.

Today I spent some time washing off the accumulated dirt and  oil from 30+ years of use.  I had briefly thought of  doing this in my driveway using my pressure washer, but very quickly rejected the idea as it would flush small amounts of oil and grease down the storm drain. Instead, I took everything over to a local Shell car wash as they (supposedly) are set up to keep this sort of debris out of the storm water system.

I’ve touched on Shell’s marketing folks and what an odd lot they are previously. Some time ago (before I retired !) I had suggested to the same brilliant marketing folks at Shell that keep closing filling stations so you can’t find one when you need one, that they start to consider the value of putting Shell’s name on the roofs of our buildings. When you consider the number of people using the various free mapping services offering satellite photos that show tons of detail, you would think it would be a no-brainer. A few companies have actually done this in the USA, and Microsoft offers this capability in a virtual fashion with Tim  Horton’s coffee shops and Petro-Canada filling stations in some parts of Canada using their Bing mapping service. In the photo to the right, you can see the Shell station and car wash I used – or at least you can now that I’ve pinned a label on it with an arrow !  Imagine how it would look with a big Shell pecten on the roof – this of course hasn’t happened. As I may have mentioned previously, our marketing folks border on genius in much the same way that hammers do – not very much at all actually, but I digress ……

The parts are now all freshly washed, and tomorrow I go over to the good folks at Consolidated Compressor here in Calgary to sand blast all the bits and pieces. I wrote about them previously here , and this time I will be using their indoor glass bead blasting cabinet for the smaller items and the outside sand blasting stations for the two frames. I have to admit, for someone like myself who doesn’t have to do this sort of thing for a living, there is a certain fascination about watching the old paint, rust and anything else that happens to get in the way and isn’t firmly attached get blasted into oblivion – it promises to be fun ! If all goes well, I’ll have Friday to blow out any bits of grit and make sure everything is ready to go for the main powder coating event Saturday morning.

I’ll let you know how it goes !

An Hour in Paris on Father’s Day

As this past Sunday was Father’s Day I grabbed the opportunity to pamper myself and headed down to Paris, Ontario for the annual CVMG vintage motorcycle show and flea market. Before leaving Calgary, I had printed off a copy of the poster advertising the event, and shown to the right, from the CVMG web site and I thought that I had all the information required – Friday through Sunday and day passes cost $5. Sounded easy.

I picked up my older son early Sunday morning and trekked down to Paris which is about 90 minutes from where we were staying in Toronto. It was a pleasant drive as most of the nut cases were not on the road yet, and in addition it was not raining. The sun was out, the grass was green and touring down through Cambridge brought back lots of good memories. Our first house was in Cambridge – Preston actually – back in the early ’70’s and I’ve always liked the area.

I hadn’t been to Paris before – it is much smaller than its namesake !  It is a very nice little town in a small valley through which the Grand River flows and is notable for having been on the receiving end of the first long distance phone call in 1876 by Alexander Bell, the inventor of the telephone.

The CVMG show was in the Paris fairgrounds on the west side of town and there were lots of folks on motorcycles all heading in the same direction so it was easy to find. You can possibly imagine my surprise then when, on arrival, there was almost nothing there to be seen ! Although the poster did say the show ran till Sunday, as it turned out they’d left off the fact that it was only till noon on Sunday ! As a result, most of the sellers had already packed up their sodden tents and booths (as it had rained most of the Friday and Saturday) before we arrived, and had gone home to get dried off !  I have no idea how busy it was over the three days as most folks don’t ride their vintage bikes in poor weather, but at least there was a handful still about, and I did see one Suzuki GT750 which was nice. And as a small bonus, as we had showed up at closing, they waved us in and didn’t charge me admission or parking !!

All in all, while disappointing that there was not much to be seen, it was a pleasant Father’s Day with my son, followed by a very nice dinner with both boys and SWMBO’d in the evening – and if I’m in Ontario next year, I’ll just have to make sure I ignore the $%^#@ poster and get there a day earlier !

The Buff Has New Shoes !

The 1975 GT750 Water Buffalo is starting to take shape. One of the things I had to attend to first of all was to replace the right rear upper shock mount which had been damaged beyond simple repair by the previous owner. To do this I had to grind out the welded plug, and substitute a replacement from a donor frame. This took a couple of hours, but it can now be welded up and should be as good as new.

The other item I wanted to look after, was to update the rear wheel to be a disc brake rather than the stock drum brake as you see to the left. What I’m looking to create is an approximation of what a 1978 GT750 might have looked like, had one actually been built. Adding a rear disc brake is a logical assumption as Suzuki did introduce this with the four strokes that replaced the GT series. The donor bike frame I have is a 1977 GS750, and it shares many of the same components with the 1977 GT750 frame, although the actual frame itself is quite a different design due to the engine differences. As it turns out, the swing arm, with the disc brake fittings just drop into the GT750 frame. The lower shock mounts are different, as they are a clevis mount on the lower fitting, but otherwise just bolt on. The front forks, triple tree and brakes likewise are just a bolt-on fitting, with the GS750 calliper under slung behind the fork, rather than in front of the fork as on the GT. At this point I haven’t decided whether to go with a single front disc, or dual front discs.

So far so good – the interesting bit it where to put the master cylinder for the rear brake. With the GT frame, the oil tank is in the way as of course these were not required with the GS750 engines, and so space is at a premium. To check the clearances, I ‘dry mounted’ a scrap engine I keep for parts in the frame, with the Gibson expansion pipes mounted as well as the air box, oil reservoir tank and side covers. I want to use the round fluid reservoir, rather than go with a newer square style as those weren’t common in 1977/1978, as again I’m going for a look that is a natural progression from the last real GT750 model, made in 1977. The mockup can be seen to the right.

I realize that a lot of people remove the stock GT750 air box and just go with individual filters on each carburetter, but that isn’t the look I like, plus I already have a few new foam air filters that are available from either Twin Air or Moto Air - interestingly, both are Dutch companies, but the Moto Air prices are better. Both companies offer replacement filters that are exact matches for the original factory foam filter elements, for less than what you pay at your friendly local Suzuki dealer as filters by themselves are not readily available. From a dealer, you have to buy the filter mounted on the wire support frame which adds cost. Just changing the filter element and recycling the old wire frame makes more sense to me.

This evening I checked with a few colleagues at the Calgary Loyal Order of Water Buffalo sub-group of the Rocky Mountain Section of the Canadian Vintage Motorcycle Group (CVMG), to see what John and Fred thought about mounting options for the master cylinder. That was a very useful discussion, and I’m glad I waited to get some additional input before finalizing the design. Now that I have a better idea of how it should look, I can move on and modify the rear brake lever and stop switch assembly, grind off a few redundant tabs, scout around for a couple of parts – possibly off a Suzuki GS1100, or perhaps a Kawasaki or Honda of similar vintage, and also have some additional welding done.

At the moment, I do like the look – with the new pipes on, the recycled rear wheel and disc, swing arm etc., it looks ‘right’. Of course there is still lots of work still to be done…

The ‘home’ site for the project is here.