My Wife's RD125

[sav0r]

A little better shot of the frame. I think I'm offically done painting it. The paint I used sure took a while to let go of the tack, but it's pretty good now.



I honed the cylinders yesterday. They came out quite nice, very straight, though they are both a tad loser than I wanted. I'm sure they will run just fine though. To get my hone to fit I had to find some short stones, to find short stone I decided to just mill them short. My face mill took a beating, it will be okay though.

[sav0r]

I'm thinking I am going to wet sand the tank, side covers, and head light with some 1000 grit or something fairly light and then clear coat them. Anybody know what type of clear coat will be friendly with the stock paint?

[NoRiders]

I'm thinking I am going to wet sand the tank, side covers, and head light with some 1000 grit or something fairly light and then clear coat them. Anybody know what type of clear coat will be friendly with the stock paint?

Not sure on compatibility with your existing paint (one problem with using adhoc rattle-cans) but a petrol resistant clear coat is essential and a 2pack is that.
An auto paint supplers will offer a rattle can option which has a shelf life, but will set like a gun applied 2pack. 

[sav0r]

I have access to a paint booth and can apply automotive grade if need be. I'll just have to move my sister's MGC GT out of the way. Obviously if easier options are available I'd go that route. It's also a 45 mile drive to access the booth which is rather impractical.

[sav0r]

I got my wife's car repaired and I'm back to making progress. I plan to get it up on its wheels so I can at least move it out of the way when I need to. I hope to finish up the crank tools this week and do the crank over the weekend. I'm still waiting on the gasket kit, but I will run the various engine parts through the ultrasonic tank this week and finish cleaning up gasket surfaces.

[NoRiders]

Bike build yeah yeah....what's in the foil topped jars?  ;D

[sav0r]

That's sterilized grain spawn used for cultivating gourmet mushrooms, which is another hobby of mine.

[85RZwade]

I Googled "sterilized grain spawn" just now... sometimes you don't see the rabbit hole until you've stepped all the way into it.

[NoRiders]

That's sterilized grain spawn used for cultivating gourmet mushrooms, which is another hobby of mine.

haha "sterilized grain spawn", well blow me, I didn't know that was a thing...every day's a school day :)

Frame looks good BTW. I plan to handpaint mine after blasting and etch...proper tractor grey enamel, with the tin sat in a bucket of hot water and a good brush and roller.

[sav0r]

I Googled "sterilized grain spawn" just now... sometimes you don't see the rabbit hole until you've stepped all the way into it.

haha "sterilized grain spawn", well blow me, I didn't know that was a thing...every day's a school day :)

Frame looks good BTW. I plan to handpaint mine after blasting and etch...proper tractor grey enamel, with the tin sat in a bucket of hot water and a good brush and roller.

Hahaha. Well, yeah... Having gone down the rabbit hole myself I'm now on year three and wondering what I got myself into. The last mushrooms I grew were Lions Mane and those turned out incredible, but the spawn in the photo is good for Oyster mushrooms. If you look closely you can also see some agar plates in the plastic tub to the right of the jars, these have "clean" colonized mycelium that will be transferred to the grain spawn. The grain spawn is left to be colonized by the mycelium and mature to that point that it stable, the spawn is then moved to fruiting conditions where hopefully you get mature edible gourmet mushrooms. Done right you can get pounds of mushrooms for very little money. The upfront investment is in a pressure cooker to sterilize, jars, and spores of whatever strains you want to grow. The rest is patience and hard work. I'm actually taking a break from growing currently, which is why those jars are just sitting there. Gourmet mushrooms such as Lions Mane or Oysters are quite expensive, both of which are going for like $10-$12 per pound. It's literally cents worth of material to grow them at home, but it requires a lot of experience and technique to consistently get good grows.


Anyways, yes, motorcycles. The frame turned out pretty nice. I could have sanded some more, painted some more, and gotten a better job yet. But it was getting to the point where I've got this really nice looking frame and the tank, side covers, head light all look like they've seen 45 years of use. So I decided to stop.

I've seen lots of nice looking hand painted stuff over the years. I don't see any problem with doing it that way. It certainly is nice to avoid over spray if possible.

[NoRiders]

Thanks for the comprehensive reply.

A friend with a 30+ classic bike collection brush paints in warm enamel all this restored frames.

[sav0r]

The bike now features a front wheel and some assembly of the controls. Most of the work I have done in the last few days is split between washing the bike (a feature of having two wheels and being bale to roll it outside) and thinking about this crank project. More than anything, I was just tired of it looking dusty and covered in shop crud. I had spent some time working over the chrome in the past, and a wash was needed to restore my previous progress. Of course my 350 suffered the same fate, so I washed it too. The crank tools are close. The model and CAM are finished. I'll be machining those today I think. Once I get those done I'll make the journey to my fathers to use his press, it's convenient timing as I have a Water Buffalo gear to press while im there.

[sav0r]

Long time, no post...

I finished the crank up yesterday. Covid gave me a nice vacation in the spring, but being in health and safety for my job Covid brought me back basically double time. I spend way less time in the shop than I'd like as a result, hospital work isn't much fun. Hopefully these circumstances will change soon.

For the crank, my 10 ton press wasn't quite up to the task (i thought it was going to break when trying to split the two cranks), so I ended up having to use my fathers 20 ton press. The tools I machined were in most cases marginal. It was my first time making crank pressing tools, that said, the results were really good. I got less than .0005" runout on the bearing surfaces, that's less than half the recommended runout from Yamaha. Honestly, building cranks has to be cake for those experienced in it. That experience I am sure takes practice though. For me, it took a little more work than it should have (aka a lot more work), but the experience was worth it.

Since I have the engine bits ready, I am going to start reassembling. I will need to find some junk to pull/press the crank into the bearing in the case. That should be a fun project... Otherwise the engine assembly looks easy peasy at this point. Hopefully I am not missing any critical parts.

[sav0r]

Yep, that's a crank.

I got the cases all cleaned up last night.I am going to start assembly today. I have to come up with some junk to pull the crank into the one half of the case. That will be exciting.

[sav0r]

I made this little puller setup. It work out very nice.

Now I am tasked with remembering how the rest of this stuff goes together.