Oh Woe!

Boyd arrived bright and early yesterday morning. Bringing with him such goodies as a frame, front end, pipes, cans, and our little ally fuel tank.

After I had lightly bolted down the head and cambox, we had a motor-shaped object. It will take a bit of time to get the valves sorted, but the motor is certainly getting close to Team Thumper’s exacting standards. We are professionals, after all…

In a jiffy, Boyd had assembled the front end (one nut and bolt!!) and slipped the rear spindle thru so she was on her own 2 wheels again.

First thing we noticed was that the front engine mount was fouling the XT barrel fins.

So a little judicious use of the cheap n nasty £15 Aldi Dremel-copy reduced the bottom fin to allow the ally mount to bolt onto the two front mounts.

All good so far! And without too much further ado, we soon had the engine in the frame, resting against the cylinder head mount, supported by the lower rear mount.

Interestingly, the lump is off-centre in the frame , it appears to sit closer to the left spar than the right.

After some recreational sawing…


…I put the carbs on, while Boyd tried to hide convince me that “hide-and-go-seek-seek” was more fun. Silly man!!

I found him easily! We sized up the tank against the frame

and made sure it cleared the carbs.

And although appears small, it actually holds over 5 litres.

However, whether or not this is enough remains to be seen. UK Supermono races are approx 20 miles, so maybe we’ll have to weld an extra box onto it. We also talked about the possibility of making a still air box. We’ll need to make up a support for the rear of the tank, so maybe this could somehow the tank could rest on to top of an airbox?? Despite Boyd trying to chat up the pretty 3rd member of Team Thumper and her playing all coy, we soon got back to work. However, it wasn’t too long before our dreams of victory dissolved into despair.

We couldn’t get any more engine mount bolts in. Despite giggling, pushing pulling, and modifying the front mount, we started to suspect that the engine wasn’t going to bolt up after all. To our untrained eyes, it would appear that the frame may be twisted… Which would explain why we cant get any more than 2 mounts secured at any one time. This is a definite blow to Team Thumper’s schedule to get the bike built by mid march and tested by the end of that month for the first race at snetterton . I’ll try to get it to the Maidstone Motoliner asap, and get their opinion…

The clock’s definitely ticking pretty loudly now. I thought I had my work cut out to get the head built up and bolted down. Now its become a lot more complicated for a number of reasons. Ally frames are a pain to straighten. Especially slightly fragile 17 year old ones which have housed tuned large capacity singles. And in order to straighten the frame, ideally the motor should be bolted up. But we cant do that yet. And I can’t get on with finishing the head until it (goes to and) comes back from the motoliner man.

I will give him a call on Monday, and see what he advises. Either way, this isn’t going to be cheap. Or easy. Is it ever??! Will we be racing in april? Here’s hoping.

Andy n Boyd