17 minute read
Therapy for the Disease
Large expenditures of cash were obviously out of the question so I decided to remove the motor and put it in the garden shed for another day and concentrate on the frame, starting on the easy bits first. This became Plan A. The most obvious thing was to get rid of the paint as the total expense of this would be minimal. Accordingly Plan A was swung into action and the frame and wheels were completely dismantled. The Disease frame is of pressed sheet steel construction with large double skinned boxed sections from the rear suspension mounts to the frame centre and frame centre to the steering head. These are extremely heavy and were obviously constructed from offcuts from the Bismarck. Various single ply pieces such as the headlight, fuel tank, oil tank, air cleaner and rear mudguard extension are bolted to these. The two main sections are clamped together with four long studs which look flimsy but the bike hasn't broken in half yet. An enormous Roman Helmet styled sprung front mudguard completes the assembly and the bikes appearance when complete make one want to find another meaning to life somewhere else. But what you've got is what you've got. Sandpaper and scrapers along with paint stripper now entered the scene and the gruesome task of paint removal began. Then Fortune smiled on me.
Enter fiend Don. You'll have noticed the use of the word “Fiend” and are thinking “typo he means
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friend” but you would be wrong. Don was an absolute fiend on a motorbike and could make the things talk especially at extremely illegal speeds and amongst other things he taught me to ride a bike with reasonable competence on gravel for which I thank him. He also had an endearing habit of giving a little spit before he spoke to rid himself of the bit of baccy that was permanently stuck to his lip from the roll -your-own durry that was part of his normal daytime attire. Another acquaintance also told me recently that he wasn't averse to dragging one down to the Grove Tavern on a Saturday for thirty or forty eights but this never happened to me. Maybe it was something to do with Nurse Mariann’s steely eye. Don was an automotive machinist who worked at Andrews and Beaven, a fine little company that was swallowed up and consumed in the money pit that was Renouf Corporation. Thanks Sir Frank.
Spit“What are you doing?” said Don. I informed him I was removing paint and would be for some considerable time. Then he made the suggestion of a lifetime. Spit“Bring it up to A & B on Saturday and we'll put it in the hot tank.” I duly turned up on Saturday morning and the whole conglomeration of parts, rims and all, were put in baskets and dunked in the huge tank. Spit“Pick me up tomorrow and we'll get them out.” said Don. Sunday was a revelation. The baskets were hauled out and hosed down and tipped out. It was like a Nuremburg Rally, a vast expanse of grey-blue tinged German steel on display, ranked up and gleaming with a
wet shine in the sunlight. Not a speck of paint bog or other unspeakables remained and it was all accomplished effortlessly. All that remained was to get it back to the bedroom. Now that everything was stripped all the damaged parts were immediately obvious and put aside and I got out my trusty Wagner Airless Spray gun (did I see you cringe there?) and put a coat of Dulux Preparacoat on the rest to keep the rust at bay. I had bought the Wagner from Weymss and Crook against all advice to paint my Triumph Tigress and it had turned out quite presentably One just had just to be aware that the gun would shoot straight paint for an instant on trigger pull and once again on trigger release and to time your passes accordingly. The main frame part was undamaged so Plan A demanded I assemble this and hang the rest of the bits on it as they were finished. I had saved up a few shekels from my second job and I sent the rims off for rechroming and the spokes went to Safe Air for cad plating. These didn't take long and were soon back at home. I had polished up the full width hubs and with the aid of my homemade wooden wheel jig had assembled a set of shiny wheels, buckles and all Bodge jobs have never worried me. The inevitable fly in the ointment came when I went to fit the forks to the frame. The pivot bushes in the leading links had been made of Bakelite and the hot tank had turned them to the consistency of crumbling rubber. The swing arm bushes had suffered the same fate. Spit“Not a problem” said Don and a Saturday morning later at A & B new bronze bushes had replaced the Bakelite and I was back in business. I made a large tube spanner out of twoinch steam pipe and managed to extract the hydraulic units out of the forks for repair. Someone was still smiling on me as they turned out to be rebuildable. Two cheap oil seals later the units were filled and back in their places, wheels were rapidly fitted along with the main stand to the frame and Presto! (Not you Earl!) the bike was erect. Plan A now dictated that the damaged parts should be repaired and fitted to the frame. The remaining bits were all damaged, the worst being the tank. The tank badges had been fixed with screws to small tapped plates spot welded to the tank proper and the captain, having somehow lost the badges, had hammered in the mounting plates with a ball peen hammer to make large dents which he filled with bog to provide a smooth surface for his hand lettered badges. As the tank had been chromed this was not really a recommended procedure. With the bog now at the bottom of the hot tank a nightmare had been revealed and education for me to cope with it was required so I got a book from the library titled “How to Work Sheet Metal” which I naughtily copied. A visit to Weymss and Crook secured me a panel beating hammer and a universal dolly and after reading the book ten times I was ready to panel beat. With my newfound learning I decided the hammer and file method would be the thing required so I added a body file to my kit and with a little trepidation approached my subject. The location of the dents suggested lateral thinking was required and I laterally cut the tank
front to rear from top to bottom. I cut the sod in half. Now I had hammer and dolly access to both sides of the metal. From then on, I followed the book except the amount of metal the file removed made me nervous so I switched to a piece of board with sand paper glued on which removed little metal but still showed the high spots well. For a couple of months this occupied all of my spare time and the resultant tap tap tap drove the household mad. Eventually I reached a stage where I felt I could not improve on my work and decided enough was enough. Back to Don who joined the two halves of the tank together with a magnificent fusion weld right round the tank with little to no filling rod and no distortion. It was marvellous to watch a craftsman at work and I took him to the
Grove that afternoon to reward him for his efforts. Not quite forty eights though. The rest of the damaged parts had mainly sustained dents and cracks and presented no major problems. I cut and shut an old Triumph headlight rim to replace the captain’s effort and a few evenings at Bruce’s place got all the cracked pieces welded up and ready for my hammer and dolly. A speedometer rim and glass procured from a short-lived local motorcycle wrecker cosmetically improved the speedo even though the works were pulped underneath. A visit to the Suzuki Centre got me a couple of handlebar lever blades which I cut and shut to fit. As I have said I don't mind a bodge job. Things were now reaching the stage where a bit of paint would be nice.
Disease quietly festers in back yard.
All the remaining bits got a coat of Dulux Preparacote and then it was down to Weymss and Crook for two litres of black Duco nitrocellulose lacquer and a little bit of gold for the tank pinstriping. The painting went well with only a few hiccups from the Wagner. These were easily repaired, the wonderful thing about lacquer. After cutting and polishing the parts were reassembled to the frame and to my uncritical eye looked really good. Painting ground to a halt here as I needed to get the chroming done to finish the job. As a new garage was to be built in the near future chroming didn't fit into the financial picture so I decided to tackle the missing battery box. Fibreglass seemed to be the obvious solution and the first job was to make wooden patterns for the body and the lid. I sawed out the body pattern from an offcut of 2 x 6 wood and the lid from a piece of pallet scrounged from work. The beading in the lid and shut line on the body I simulated with No 8 wire bent to shape and half buried in a groove cut into the wood then faired in with bog. It worked a treat, I love a good bodge job. With everything sanded down I painted them with a two pot marine paint then sanded and polished them to a glassy finish. The tricky bit now was to make a two piece mold for the body as a single piece one would have made the molded box irremovable without destoying the mold. This finished the molds were complete and manufacture could commence.
Two piece toolbox mould and wooden lid pattern So who's a clever boy then
Lots of little jobs filled in much time until at last funds were available to get some shiny bits on the naked frame to show off my lacquer job. Finally the time came and Nurse Mariann, baby, tank, and headlight rim were piled in the car and we motored off to Christchurch to see friends and more importantly, the Electroplater. It was with some trepidation that I walked into the electroplaters with my armful of bits, after all I had spent weeks working on the tank and its dents. I explained to him what I'd done and all he said was “that'll be good” and so I left
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for home and waited for the job to be done. Three weeks later I made a day trip to Christchurch, there was a rustle of crispy notes changing hands and I went home with my trophies. And the tank was good. I got home and wasted no time getting the tank masked and primed and ready for the final coats. I sprayed gold paint around where the pinstripes were to go then laid out ¼ inch plastic tape in the required pattern. After masking the chrome I sprayed about six coats of black over everything else, waited about 15 minutes then lifted the masking paper and tape. I surprised myself and it still looks good forty years later. I hung the tank on the frame and I had a rolling shiny chassis. The only major part missing was somewhere to sit. The standard seat was a sprung rubber saddle which looked suitably germanic so I bought a rubber cover from a newly discovered acquaintance I had discovered in Wellington and my sister who was living in Germany got me a genuine parts book from the old NSU factory in Neckarsulm which now functions as the Audi Museum. Using the parts book for a guide I fabricated a saddle frame over several nights at Bruces gas plant and ended up with a good replica saddle which really looked the part. I made the suspension unit out of an old Triumph strut and it worked well, probably better than on the Triumph. Basically I now had everything major finished apart from the million and a half little things like brake cables, wiring, and all the little things I had forgotten to fix along the way and it was time to think of the Elephant In The Room, or more accurately that lump in the garden shed.
Saddle prepared for Germanic posterior
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