RD350 TR3 Replica

[ged]

Okay, okay..... I've been hijacking Wizz' and Waggys RD/TR replica threads with my questions on a very similar project, so I figure I had better start my own thread and stop cluttering up other people's projects with my endless bollocks.

Alright, the story so far.

I've been helping a mate out with a Yamaha SR250 he's doing the cafe racer thing on. I think that's a worthy project just because the standard SR250 is one of the ugliest motorcycles ever to come out of Japan. Anyway, in the process of trying to find a sexy tank to suit that little fella, fleabay turned up an unidentified TD, TR, TZ tank and seat unit, cheap but completely stuffed!..... Seemed like a good idea at the time.





Next thing, along comes a '75 RD350 bottom end. Free. Come and pick it up.... Apparently, it's been sitting under a tree for some time and is seized and useless, but a nice set of cases.



Hmm. it's strange how circumstances can draw you into wormholes. More fleabay searching for bits for wheels for the SR turns up a DS7 frame in solid nick for a couple of hundred bux. I resisted for as long as I could but eventually I succumbed and before you know it I'm off on another insane motorcycle restoration project of which I already have numerous cluttering up workshops, sheds and car ports. I really don't need another project, particularly a scratch build starting with nothing, but that's never stopped me embarking on such lunacy at any other point in my life, so off we go.

The vague overall plan is to turn the various bits and pieces collected so far into a TR3 or even TD3 replica. But that's as far as I've thought it through really.... Building a Period 4 race bike , (which is why I particularly wanted a DS7 frame) is obviously a very different proposition to building a good scratching road bike and I guess I need to make my mind up at some point which way this will go. I figure on starting with the RD motor and tracking down a piston port motor sometime in the future if needs be.

If I actually had any brains I would probably just go and buy this bike listed on gumtree at the moment....

http://www.gumtree.com.au/s-ad/bathurst ... 1084014855

I'll end up spending probably at least that much, and that bike comes with bunch of tasty (and expensive) TD3 race kit parts including a dry clutch! I'd have to sell something else at the moment to fund that but I'm not that inclined yet.... If anyone is looking for a nice little Ducati Pantah though, let me know!

Ok, that's the start of this particular epic and that's just the background. I'll come back soon with more info as it unwinds and post some more pics of the various bits as they turn up. There has been a little progress over the past week or so but I'm on the Photobucket poverty pack and it takes ages to upload pics, but I'll get around to it soon.

Oh, there's no real timeline in mind either. This might take years.....

Heres a slice of what I have in mind to whet your appetite for where I'm going. With lights, please.



Cheers,

Ged

[ged]

The frame and front end have turned up now and look pretty promising. Nice and straight and well useable.





And just to see how it fits.



The rough kinda plan is to blast clean the frame over the next few days and etch prime it until I go over it and chop out all the excess bracketry etc, which is a little tricky at this stage, not knowing entirely what stays and what goes.

I want to put a full fairing on it, so the frame will need welding and modification for mounts and brackets for that, so it won't be being painted until all of those issues are sorted, which is likely to be a while away. Plenty of work to be done in the meantime though.

I've stripped out the seized motor I have and as expected, it's a bit of a pig..... Crank is cactus. It was well and truely siezed, ( thanks goodness for horizontally split cases) but more troubling is the extent of the corrosion in bottom of the crankcase where the crank runs. It may or may not be crucial?





I'll post up some more progress as I get to it.

Cheers,

Ged

[OzzyElsie]

Looking good .

I found ya a front wheel........

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Yamaha-TZ350 ... 35f220a7e5

[ged]

Hey Ozzy. Yeah, I did see that. And had a little cry.

It's actually a really good price for what it is, but I don't really have the 3 grand hanging out of my wallet at the moment. Sniff......

Your post in Wizz's thread on my rims question was really helpful. I'm making progress but slowly, so when I've worked out what I'm doing I'll post up what I've uncovered.

Cheers.


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[JonW]

you can polish the bottom crank case up if you wanted, there is usually quite a bit of meat down there. Some machine shops can cut it for you if you prefer, and then you could fit a +7mm stroker... I'll get me coat

[hybrid]

Only issue with machining the cases is the increase in crankcase volume, which is normally not ideal.
You could also try some JB Weld or something similar in there to block the holes, or just leave it alone. Some might say the rough surface will help mix up the air/fuel/oil

[JonW]

They would indeed... You could also glass bead blast it and that would seal it and get out any nasty bits n bobs in there, would need a good clean after.

[ged]

Thanks fellas. Yeah, that's pretty much where my thinking had taken me. I'm inclined to think that as long as the area is cleaned up sufficiently, it shouldn't have too much an effect on performance or longevity.

Ah, glass bead blasting! Glad you mentioned it..... That case has been blasted already in my DIY glass bead blaster! I don't know if anyone else has built one, but I ran across a thread on a Triumph forum a few months ago where a guy in South Africa built his own bead blaster from a pickle barrel and a pool pump. Sounded alright, so I've collected bits for a couple of months and hooked it up this week to try it out, and I gotta say, I'm pretty impressed so far.





That's a CS3 2LS hub btw, that's going on the SR, not on this thing.

I can't find the original thread I nicked the idea from, but if you google "DIY glass bead blaster" you'll come to another link that someone has loaded with the same device and that'll give you the general idea.

When I get around to cleaning my workshop up again, I'll post more some pics. I'm sure another genius out there will be able to develop the concept a little further and come up with an even better version. Pretty handy device and it's probably only cost me a bit over a hundred bux or so including the $67 worth of glass beads. I've only run it for a few hours so far, so early days but promising concept.



Cheers.

[JonW]

Thats a bargain and a looks like a good starter system. I have a small unit from HaFCo, ive outgrown it a bit, but a friend of mine has a larger unit and ive been eyeing his... hes on here, he will see this

[OzzyElsie]

Surely, the key to successful bead blasting, at home or anywhere else, is the compressor and tank and not cabinet (as funky and as innovative as your cabinet is).

What would be considered minimal compressor PSI and Storage tank CFU to allow long periods of blasting on items we are likely to blast (up to a frame).

[Wizz]

Nice work Ged ur off to a flying start. Love the bead blaster.
I thought about getting that crank when i was up in Byron last wk hahaha

[JonW]

Surely, the key to successful bead blasting, at home or anywhere else, is the compressor and tank and not cabinet (as funky and as innovative as your cabinet is).

What would be considered minimal compressor PSI and Storage tank CFU to allow long periods of blasting on items we are likely to blast (up to a frame).

You are right, the direct drive hobby units from supercheap et al wont be useful for long, DA sanding and blasting killed mine in the end and I upgraded. The bigger better belt drive units are never cheap, but decent pumps and circa 15A motor are what you need as a minimum for tools like this. Go as big as you can afford is the plan really, treat it well and it will last you forever, just sit down when you look at the prices.

back to your question, its not about psi and only a little about storage, its about CFM (Liters min in the modern world) and duration you can use it before it gets too hot and unhappy. you should pause at times and let the compressor cool and catch up in a home system, no matter what unit you have you will have to. Its different in a pro setup of course.

[ged]

Spot on JonW.

My compressor has got to be getting close to 20 years old now, and as expensive as it was, has been a great investment that's paid for itself many times over.

It's a 3HP, 12 cfm unit that is as big as you can go on a 10amp outlet. I've started building an outside enclosed area for it at the back of my shed (it's insanely noisy) but I can't run it out there until I upgrade the power supply through the whole shed because it doesn't want to start up if I run it on the extra 15 meter lead! And I'm using 15A leads to try and keep the voltage losses down. It's obviously pulling all of those 10 amps at startup.

I've got a smaller 2HP direct drive unit as well which I bought a few years ago for airbrushing and it's fine for that sort of stuff, but put an air tool near it and it's out of breath pretty quickly.

I've had the regulator turned right up for the blasting I've done so far, and I haven't noticed the pressure dropping off significantly but the gauge tells me it's struggling to keep up. Pressure settings will be one of the issues to experiment with as I go along I think.

I've managed to clean my workshop up a bit and fit some castors to the blaster so I can wheel the bloody thing out of the way, so I'll get some photos up over the next couple of days and some basic instructions for getting one up and running.






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[OzzyElsie]

so I'll get some photos up over the next couple of days and some basic instructions for getting one up and running.

Thanks, I'll be interested. Looking around I have a fair few items I could blast. To have it all done would be expensive and probably not economical, so I thought I would get a set up, do them all and then sell the blast set up (I haven't got the space etc etc etc.)

[JonW]

Blasting is a function of pressure and grit, but the pressure isnt always the biggest factor. I use glass beads at about 80psi, Ive seen guys use them at lower psi and get much the same results and I probably could run less psi but have never bothered to spin the regulator, maybe i should... some go as low as 40psi!

These days a compressor like a few of us have and what ged suggests would set you back about $1200, you might gte something on special for $1k, but they dont discount em much, if at all really. They are large and heavy and my Peerless P17 is pretty quiet as its a slow runner. I do wear ear muffs and a mask when blasting though, and if you have a shop vac you should hook it up to help with the dust.

The 2hp direct drives are great, for air brushing, pumping up tyres and occasional tool use, mine didnt have enough juice to run anything that consumed a lot of ar. What saved it was its 50L tank I think, so most small jobs never had it running flat out, big jobs (DA and blaster etc did) with no duty cycle were its death. Its tank lives on, plumbed into my system of copper drop legs in my garage to reduce water... but we're getting ahead of ourselves i reckon, Im loving the ingenuity of ged's cabinet, I reckon it would make a good soda setup. hmm...

ged, do you have an outlet on that unit? I dont see one.