Yes, it's been awhile and you could be excused for thinking I've given up, but things have been progressing slowly but surely and I've had some time to throw at it over the last few weeks to push it on a bit.
Building a motorcycle from scratch over the Internet would once upon a time, seemed a ridiculous idea, but I gotta say, it's not working out too bad. In the back of my mind the whole time has been the experience of my 1954 Beeza that I've owned for 23 odd years.I did start that with a 95% complete carcass, but by the time I'd replaced all the worn out bits,q I was really only left with the tinware, cases, barrel and head off the original bike! Everything else needed replacing......
In contrast to the LC/RZ market at the moment, Aircooled RD parts seem to be still plentiful and affordable. I've not really been tallying costs, but it hasn't spiralled out of (completely) out of control as these things tend to do..... I've had some great help and offers from some of the good people here as well.
You'll probably remember that this project pretty much started with a very stuffed TZ tank that I brought back from the dead? I was happy enough with the structural integrity of the repairs, but the downpside was that it ended up incredibly heavy! Like, it's not gonna split, but gee..... So, I decided to take a mold and make up another tank and fit the heavy tank to the SR250 project I'm also working on.
I tracked down some 350 barrels and heads in Adelaide which should give me a reasonable set to work with. One of the 3 barrels is scored and it will be a challenge to rebore within the 2mm oversize.... The replacement barrel should be ok, but it already measures out to 65mm, so a new rebore will be pushing that close to its limit as well. I'll probably use an engineer up the way a bit who used to race TZs back in the 80s and has done some great work for me before on the Beeza.
I love my glass bead blaster....
I mounted my 'free' cases up into the frame a few weeks ago and noticed this.....
Could probably be repaired, but sort of thing someone might want to consider in another 20 years when the parts supply has dried up. No real reason to go that far really when I found another set of nice cases from my old mate in Adelaide for a reasonable price. Their on their way up now, with a reasonable crank in them as well. Should have that here later in the week.
Q
Frame took a loooong time to prep, modify and paint. I initially cleaned, blasted and undercoated, but then I needed to wait until I had tracked down and sourced the fairing brackets which all need to be welded to the frame. I eventually sourced the fairing, screen and upper and rear mount brackets all the way from Finland!
If your after any of this stuff, I can recommend Seppo Ahonen from Shop97 Finland, ( look him up on the net or eBay). This stuff is super light race glass, so it may struggle to hold up to road use, but it's still pretty nicely done. It's going to take a little work to clean up some of the surfaces prior to paint as the mold he's used still has race number plate and old mount points visable, but no biggie. The brackets are the Meadspeed replicas (which were cheaper through Seppoq than Meadspeed) and I got him to ship me the screen, skimpy TZ inner rear guard and a Dunstall front fender, all landed for under 700bux! Pretty good value.
So, frame mods and footrests finally completed, I managed to finally get some paint on the frame a couple of weeks ago.
I found my front flanged rim out of an eBay seller in Italy (Marcello from PRicambi) and again, I'm well pleased with the quality. I had ordered a pair of non flanged ally rims out a local eBay seller a couple of months ago for the other project I've been working on, and really....they were pretty ordinary quality. The join on the rim was terrible visually as well as having significant runout in the area. Pita. Mar cellos rims are much nicer, reasonably priced and delivered in 10 days by tracked shipping.
So, I've put all that together over the past few days and I'm pretty much out of spare time for a while, so things might slow down again for a bit. There are a few more bits and pieces in the post, but I'm arranging a few pick ups on my way to BazzaFest in a couple if weeks so hopefully, I'll tick a few more boxes after that.
Still a loooong way to go, but getting there.
You've made some solid progress. In my little racer build i found extra motivation, once i started installing all the aquired parts. I think you could use the rd header pipes and make a shallow taper,tuned chamber to fit under your fairing. How's your fuel tank going? Fuel tap? filler? keep up the good work Jed. 
