The 100% Biker Project Bike.
Part The Second.

Last update you may recall we managed to put together the basic frame of our project bike. Now for the power plant. The original plan was to use Gez's GS850 as a donor bike for the project, but the shaft drive would have restricted our choice of back wheels. As we already had an enormous rear wheel earmarked for the project, and we'd been offered a free GS750 motor with "light accident damage" it all seemed to be coming together nicely. My plan was to strip Gez's 850 then build a hybrid engine with the 850 top end and internals transplanted onto the GS750 crankcases, giving us a chain drive 850. A fairly straightforward job which would also give us opportunity to play around with ignition and carburation systems to get the radical look we were after.

	It's too late to stop now. Gez reduces his perfectly good GS850 down to a million bits, needlessly it turns out. Oh well, better chop it then.
	Disaster. If this is "light accident damage" I'm the King of the Zorgan Empire from the Planet Tharg.

And so it was one brisk, chilly morning high on Sally's farm overlooking the Yorkshire Dales that me and Gez, with some assistance from George the Goat, wheeled the sad neglected GS850 out blinking into the sunlight. It was at this point, as I'd feared, that Gez had a mild attack of the wobbles. "Good bike this, I've toured all over Scotland on it, seems such a shame" etc. etc. To make matters worse he pressed the starter button and the bike fired up first time. Barging my way through, ratchet set in hand, I managed to put a stop to all this sentimental nonsense and delivered a quick lecture on the necessity of breaking eggs to make omelettes before mercilessly starting to dismember his pride and joy.

	Seat Bases R Us. No messing with bits of bendy tin here folks. A bit of card taped onto the frame rails covered in Bacofoil gives a perfect surface to lay up a fibreglass seat base which actually fits. And it will never go rusty either.
	Dr.Rod chops out the basic slab yokes from billet. Tony's bandsaw is rumoured to have only one blade. Gently, gently. As we had a metre length of billet we decided to use it all and make big monster yokes with 15" centres.

Within a couple of hours the poor GS had been reduced to a pile of bits and we'd got the motor bundled into the boot of my car. Pausing only to drop it off at Dr. Rod's Shed of Destiny, it was off to Huddersfield to collect the other engine and I could get stuck in to building the motor while Tony at B&I put the finishing touches to the frame build. It was all going a wee bit too well really wasn't it? I should have known fate had a card up it's sleeve....

	Tony drills the pilot holes before machining the yokes. Get this bit right and the rest is easy.
	After drilling, the yokes are bored to size. The radial arm drill we use for this, incidentally, was manufactured in 1911. Who needs CNC, this is the technology that won us two world wars.

The GS750 engine we had been promised turned out to have been cut from the wreckage of a totally trashed bike. Turning it over revealed two great holes in the bottom of the crankcase, which was completely fucked beyond repair. "Light accident damage" my arse. Me and Gez retired to the pub to take stock. So now we had a GS850 needlessly reduced to a million bits, a lovely custom frame built to take a chain drive motor, a borrowed GS750 engine we'd used to make the frame and a pile of scrap metal. After two pints of Stella I called Stu at Brand X Breakers, who when he stopped laughing was surprisingly sympathetic. However he didn't have either a GS750 engine or a pair of crankcases we could use. After another two pints of Stella we'd forgotten all about the project bike and begun to plan a cut-down street custom look for Gez's GS850 rebuild. Ah well, it'll keep me off the streets for a week or two.

	The final step in yoke manufacture, more or less, is drilling the pinch bolt holes and milling in the slots that allow the yokes to clamp up the fork legs.
	And finally, the completed yokes. Well OK, we still have to polish them up and turn up some stem and top nuts, but you get the idea, no? In true 100% Biker spirit Tony has turned the stem from an old Reliant half shaft.

Just when things couldn't look any blacker light appeared on the horizon in the shape of Dirty Nick, builder and rider of the world's toughest FJ1200 streetfighter (check it out in our featurebikes section here). The borrowed engine we'd used for the frame build was Nicks, and after a little tactful coercion he generously offered to loan his engine to us for the rest of the year, or until we could find another one. What a diamond geezer, as we say in Yorkshire. Apparently he was going to use the engine to power his wife Jenny's bike, but confidently proclaimed she'd be quite happy to ride pillion for another year. Our apologies to Jenny, and to Nick for any resulting domestic disruption. But hey, the project bike was back on track...

	Isn't that gorgeous? The Oil Cooler kit from Earls Performance comes complete with hoses and fittings, and includes a beautifully machined adaptor block for the GS engine.
	The front end slotted in, just to see how it all looks. Well, erm, not too much different from last month, actually. Next update it'll be on its wheels. Promise.

Time to get moving on the other bits then. A phone call to Earls produced a gorgeous oil cooler kit complete with coloured anodised fittings and yards of sexy looking braided steel oil line. Huddersfield Bearings let us raid their stock for a set of head bearings after being promised a free copy of the magazine, and I picked up a cheap fibreglass repair kit from Halfords and threw a seat base together. But we still had no front end on the bike, and I was getting keen to see it sitting on it's wheels. Tony at B&I was up to his elbows in customers trike projects but kindly let me have access to his collection of antique machine tools to make up the yokes. Making the hybrid front wheel is a highly skilled job though, so I'm going to have to wait for Tony before attempting that one. Next update the bike will be on it's wheels, and we should be getting seriously involved in exhaust systems, pegs and controls and handlebars. Oh, and the total spend so far is now up to £39.50.

This month's Heroes list:
B&I Engineering (01484) 511534
Huddersfield Bearings (01484) 515054
Brand X Breakers (01384) 637265
Earls Performance (01803) 869850
Gez
Dirty Nick

Dr.Rod.