Swing Arm

Today I installed the swing arm back into the frame. I inserted the new bearing for the drive shaft. This one was a tight fit, so I put it in the freezer for 30 min. After that it dropped nicely into it's spot and I secured it with the lock ring. I then inserted both the new (wider and sealed) bearings into the swing arm, lined it up and screwed the bolts down into the frame and swingarm. I found an awesome deal online for some brand new progressive 418 shocks so those are the ones I will be using. I couldn't resist, so I installed one of them to see how it would look... needless to say... I am pleased! :)

Steering Assembly (Triple Tree)

A nice evening in Florida and time to do some assembling of my Ambo... I decided to put the steering column back together, at least the Triple Tree. I slid the new ballbearing (after heating it up at 300F for 5 min.) over the steering column. Put the bearing rings back into the column and packed the bearings with new grease.

I inserted the shaft in the column and screwed the top nuts back on with the same tool I use to get the chrome collars off the forks (it fits perfectly). Make sure you don't over-tighten the nuts. To prevent that I slide a big bolt into the key hole and make sure it "drops" into the key-slit in the shaft. This also serves another purpose: when aligning the triple tree plates you have to make sure that the key slit is in the "Parked" postion of the forks when you tighten them. This means that the Triple Tree needs to rest to the left stop and the slit needs to be visible/engaged through the keyhole. This way, when you park your bike and want to lock it, the slit in the shaft lines up properly.

The Frame is Back!

Today is the day! Gary called me and told me that the Frame and the major parts were painted and ready for picked! I scheduled the pickup with him and was more then estatic when I saw the paintjob and how the parts came out. The guys at GOPAA did an incredible job! They even greased the exposed (not painted) area's to prevent it from rusting. I put the frame in the shed on my stand and protected the most exposed areas with pipe insulation. Hopefully I can start putting some of the stuff together this week...

Transmission (Final)

Put all the plugs back in. Fill it up with 80W90 gear oil and voila... Here is the finshed product. I still need to put the main gear on and find a new lock-ring for the drive shaft, but I am pretty pleased with the result.

Transmission (Part 6)

Received today all the parts ordered from MG Cycle so it was a good time to go into the workshed and try to assemble the transmission. First I replaced both seals with the new Viton seals. I don;t have a special tool to insert them so I improvised. I have a bigger set of sockets (24 - 36) so I matched up the socket with the seal that would nicley fit on the seal rim. I then used a rubber hammer and tapped on top of the socket which would drive the seal in the hole nice and evenly. If you don't put these in correct, you will have leakage everywhere, so take your time with this. Next I inserted the remaining ball bearings in the cover of the transmission. Here I also used the same sockets mentioned before. Make sure you insert the bearings straight and that they are flush with the hole.

The hardest part... reassembly of the gear. The key here is that you have to get the gears and the selector in the correct possition before closing it up. If you don't do this, you will be "missing" some gears (it will only allow you to shift in 1st and 2nd or 3rd and 4th). I used a drawing from Greg Bender's website to show me how they need to be lined up. When you insert the shafts with their gears it will be a little tight in there and it will require some wiggling. Make sure you lube the seals before sliding in the shafts. I started with inserting the main shaft (the one in the center bottom). Then the Clutch shaft (the one on the left) and then the gear shaft (the one on the right). This is the hardest one. Take you time and make sure all teeth slide into eachother. I then slide the dogears on the shaft, leaving them loose (without the pin holding them). You need to do this because the selector shaft needs to be positioned correctly. I would recommend running a little string under the bottom dogear up to the top. This will help you to pull it up when you need to insert the notch in the selector shaft.

Once the selector shaft (drum) is in place you need to position it according to the drawing on the left. Failure to do so will cause you to open the transmission over and over :) After positioning it correctly, take a deep breath, drink some coffee, relax... because here is the hardest part... inserting the dogears pins into the selector shafts notches without disturbing the position of the shaft. The top dogear will go in easy, you can reach that one with your hand. Remember the string I mentioned? This is where is comes in handy. Use the string to pull up the bottom dogear and wiggle it untill it falls in the notch. Now slide the pin/shaft in the dog ears holes and, if you did it right, the pin will go through the plate of the selector shaft, the two dogears and into the hole on the bottom of the transmission. The last thing to insert is the oil pickup plate (the indented side on one of the ends goes into the transmission plate)

Insert the Neutral indicator (with a nice new gasket), the plunger pin (clean the spring), and put the new gasket on for the cover. I checked an double checked everything one more time before I slid the cover on (slowly). When you start feeling resistance, look and make sure the shafts are linening up correctly and "falling" into the bearings. The dogear pin will give you the most trouble. Just use a small screwdriver to push it in place. Tap the cover down with a rubber hammer using a cross patteren. Once down, I used brand new Stainless Steel bolts and washers to secure the plate. I inserted the pre-selector (with a new spring) and put that cover back on with a new gasket. There is an inherit problem with oil leaking around the selector shaft and there are some solutions out there on the internet. One of them is to have a O-ring machined into the shaft. This sounds like a viable solution and I might look into that one.

Transmission (Part 5)

So this weekend I was able to head up to Gary's work again and use their great facility to glass blast so more stuff. I dismanteled the carbs and some other small stuff, but the main part was the transmission casing and covers. You all saw what they looked like in the pictures below. See and be amazed what a little glass blasting can do...

This is the (clean) inside with the new bearings in place. One of the old bearings was a real pain to get out. I used a old shop trick by heating the part in a oven to 350F. Since aluminum expands at a higher rate then the bearings metal, removing it was now a breeze. While the case was hot, I also inserted the new ones. The needle bearing that was in there was still in very good condition so I left it in there (this one is a pain to find anyway).

Transmission (Part 4)

I spend the last 2 weeks spending :) I ordered all new ball bearings for the transmission. After trying to find them online for the cheapest price, I endend ordering them from Maryland Metrics. They might not be the cheapest but they had them all in stock. The total came about $50. I promptly recieved them this Friday and they look nice and clean. I also ordered a bunch of stuff from MG Cycle (gaskets, new seals, new selector spring, etc.). While I was filling my shopping basket with them I also threw in the tool I needed for the fork collars. I wasn't done yet... I went to BoltDepot.com and ordered a complete new set of Stainless Steel bolts, allens and nuts for the Ambo. I had to do this sometime and I have to say that the service and quality of BoltDepo.com really blew me out of the water. The speediness of the shipping and the individual packaging really surprised me. Top notch!

Last but not least, I found a local guy named Tom (Clermont) that was closing shop on his racing business and was selling a bunch of 80W90 Klotz gear oil. Exactly what I needed for the transmission on the gearbox. Top syntetic oil for a bargain price ($8 a quart).

Transmission (Part 3)

Ok, now the good stuff... The heart of the transmission.

Make sure you have removed the neutral indicator and the gear engagement pin (little srew on the left of the neutral indicator). It has a spring and a pin in it, DON'T lose these!

Unscrew all the bolts holding the plate down and put the transmission on it's 'butt'. This way your gears won't slam on the floor when you remove the plate. Take your time here, I actually had to tap the driveshaft a little to get the plate to slide up. Some parts might fall down and clunck against each other... don't worry, it is a metal... :)

What you DO want to be carefull with is the two little pins in the gear on the left top (see picture) They are held down with... uhhh nothing... BUT they are springloaded... You loose these and your SOL... so when pulling this shaft out make sure you keep it all together.

I removed all drives (the driveshaft requires you to unclip a clip on the outside) and got a good look inside the transmission housing. Wow... what a mess! Again, definitly needs a cleaning and rebuild.

Transmission (Part 2)

Next step is to take the selector cover off. Just take the screws out and remove the cover. Don't worry about the spring jumping out, there isn't that much pressure on it. I was amazed on how much gunk (technical term for crap) was in it. It looks like all the wear of the gears and bearings collected in this little space. Definitly something that needs to be cleaned.

Transmission (Part 1)

Alright... it was a nice Florida evening, 8:00pm, both kids in bed and wife watching a show on TV I didn't want to watch... this meant I had 3 to 4 hours of Guzzi time :) So I decided to start on the rebuild of the transmission. I know this is not the easiest part but a necesarry one. Transmission detached from the engine, on the workbench, first thing I need to do was remove the lock nut from the driveshaft. Without the special Guzzi tool, this is not easy so I had to improvise. The nut is held in place with a special tabbed washer with one of the tabs bend down to hold the nut in place. I used a small srewdriver to bend the tab back. The nut is a 4 notch kind that requires a special tool to turn. I use a $2.99 tool tha I bought for my anglegrinder (to remove the disks). It is adjustable and has two pins in it that fit perfectly in the nut. The problem was, how do I hold down the driveshaft from turning while I try to remove the nut? The solution was to use the coupling that connects the shaft to the rear and clamp a wrench on it. Remarkably, the nut came right off.

How sad....

Today I decided to start entering my Guzzi story in the blog again and I noticed that my last entry was May 31st... It has been a busy, busy last 4 months for me but not all without progress on the bike. First I moved to a different location in Orlando (Winter Park to be precise). Just that took up 2 months of my Guzzi time. The good thing is that I gained a nice workshed out of the move with my own private and airconditioned workspace! :)

Like I said, there has been progress on the bike. Unfortunately, I don't have pictures. But here is where I am...

After I inspected the fram more closely I just didn't feel comfortable with the welds and the bend center bar. I found a good frame online for $100 and had it shipped to be via Greyhound. This frame is in very good shape and I feel good about the choice.

After I unpacked everything I moved, I started to sort the parts that needed to be blasted, painted and chromed. I have a good friend of mine that is a VP for an aircraft parts restoration company in Titusville that is allowing me to use their blasting equipment. This is a tremendous help and a must (blasting) when you restore a old bike. So I brought over the frame and some other parts last week and glass blasted them. I will be bringing by some more parts next Friday (hopefully including the transmission which I will disasemble this week).

Blind Bearing Puller Tool

I recieved my Blind Bearing puller tool yesterday from Pitpose. I can tell you that this tool is worth it's money in gold. With the right plug and a few pulls with the hammerweight, the bearings came out very easily. The only problem I have is the one bearing inside the swing arm. It is held in there with a latch ring but I can tell you that there was no way that one was coming out by itself! It is really stuck in there. I sprayed it with silicone and I will let it sit overnight. That bad part is that I have to get this one out and replaced. It is in real bad shape with several bearing balls damaged. I have also decided to not do powdercoating. I have the availiblity of a (free) paint resource and it will save me a lot of money to skip the powdercoating. Heck, the original frame was painted too and it lasted 35 years :)

Fork and Triple Tree removal

Only one thing left on the 'old' frame before I can toss it and that is the removal of the fork, triple tree and the official frame tag.

I removed the bottom center fork nut (after I went to Sears and bought myself a set of sockets that had a 32mm socket in it :) and unscrewed the top left and right fork cylinder caps. You need to keep those on losely because these hold the damper oil in the fork. Without them on, you'll have a mess in no time.

I gave the top triple tree a couple of good taps with a rubber hammer and it came right off. I then tapped on the bottom triple tree and the forks dropped nicely a couple of millimeters. Enough for me to remove the rubber caps/seals that are in the top of the forks. Don't lose these!! They are hard to come by and mine seem to be in good shape. I then removed the forks collars and set them aside for powder coating later.

Before I removed the two forks I took a picture so I would remember which side goes where (yes, they are different). I then slid them out and set them aside. Restoring these will be a complete seperate project for later. To remove the lock rings on the steering column I still need a special tool called a Hook Wrench. Last time I used the dremel to cut them off but I can't use that 'technology' this time since I need to preserve them for later use. These Hook Wrenches are hard to get but I found a place online that acually sells these. (link here). The nuts are actually 38mm but they don't make that size so I bought the 40mm ones. They are $9 dollars each and you need two. Shipping is free.

Swing Arm bearing removal

It's been a while but I finally got to work on my Ambo again. I actually tinkered with it here and there a couple of evenings but nothing major. I sorted out the junk box I got with the bike and actually found the Oil Breather in pretty good shape (needs blasting and powercoating though).

Since I haven't bought the 32mm socket that I need to remove the fork of the old frame, I decided to finalize the stripping of the swing arm. I bought a clip removal tool and soon would find out that I need to invest in a blind bearing removal tool... When looking at the side of the swing arm, where the pivot is, I noticed that there was a seal with a ring on each side. The ring came out pretty easy but the seal was in there pretty tight. Since I am going to use sealed bearings as a replacement anyway, I could remove the seals with a screwdriver and not worry about damaging them. After I removed the seal, the bearing pretty much fell out... at least the cone part of the bearing. The bearing cup stayed firmly in the pivot and, like mentioned before, it looks like I need a blind bearing removal tool to get get it out. These run about $120 and can be found on ebay or I ordered mine at http://www.pitposse.com/poblbebrpuse.html for $139. I like this one because it also gives me a bridge which might come in handy later. Once I took a closer look at the removed bearing, I realized how badly damaged they are and I definitly need to replace them. The problem was that I want to replace them with sealed ones and I want a better quality bearing then stock. I found a nice replacement at http://www.vxb.com (5203ZZ). They are wider then the originals (17x40x17.5), metal sealed and double row. They cost me $9.95 a piece (need 2) and while I was on the site, I also ordered the new stearing column bearings (25x5216.25) at $9.95 a piece (need 2). To remove the cup out of the shaft I need to wait untill I recieve the blind bearing puller...

Last night I got to spend another couple of hours in the garage. The weather is actually nice right now in Orlando which makes being in the garage with the door closed doable. The task at hand was to remove the rear wheel and swing arm assembly of the 'old' frame. Following the instructions from the shop manual, the rear wheel came out actually pretty easy. This gave me a chance to inspect the teeth of the gears connecting the gearbox with the wheel. They seem in good shape. Just need some cleaning and re-greasing.

I kept the shocks in place during this process, so the swing arm wouldn't fall down and potentially damage the gears.

Next was the swing arm. The nuts holding the swing arm in place were pretty rusted and I destroyed one of them in the process of getting it removed. Add that to the cost of replacement. Once the nuts were removed, I removed the shocks and (while keeping the assembly braced) I unscrewed the gearbox from the driveshaft. The arm came out also pretty easy and again (besides some need cleaning and re-greasing) looked in good shape.

Upon further inspection of the shocks, I came to the conclusion that they were pretty much done and need to be replaced. I know they can be rebuild but I'll leave that up to the 'experts' and buy myself some new Progressive shocks. Last I loosened the oil gasket and removed the drive shaft. All parts will need to be cleaned, blasted and powder coated. In the process I also had to remove the rear brake assembly. Which is a crossbar with a lever on it. A side note on the joint that comes out of the shaft (connects the engine with the drive shaft): it actually has a front and a back to it. Make sure you note which side slides onto the engine. You have to put it back on the same way :)

All that is left now is the front fork and the removal of the engine. I will try to get at least the fork done before the weekend.

I took a PLD on Monday so I had some time to continue working on the lock rings on the steering tube of the 'new' frame. The night before I spread some WD40 on it and let it sit but I was still unable to remove it after trying for 30 minutes. I finally gave up and whipped out the dremmel with the cutting wheel again. After 30 seconds and two firm taps with a hammer and a screwdriver, the ring finally gave up. Unfrotunuatly I can't use this method on the fork that I am going to use from the 'old' frame. I have to find those darn hook wrenches online somewhere... The rest went smooth. The fork came out and even the bearings looked good. The next thing was to remove the old streering lock. Since I didn't have the key, I had to drill the lock and pry it out. The final thing was to remove the serial number plate from the steering column. This couldn't be done gently so, although I tried to save it, it got damaged. Did a final check of the straightness of the frame and agreed with myself that it was ready to be blasted and coated. I will this do at my neighbors job which I have to schedule in the next couple of weeks. I will use this time to gather as many parts that I want blasted and coated so I can do them all at once.

As mentioned before, I had some welding spot in the frame that I was going to smooth out. I used my angle grinder with 100 grid paper and sanded it pretty well down. There will be some marks but hopefully after the blasting and powdercoat it won't be as noticable.

I removed the two swing arm bolts and inspected the frame for straightness. It's in pretty good shape for 35 years old.

It's Sunday and both the kids are taking a nice afternoon nap. Time for me to start doing some work on the bike. My plan is to strip the extra frame totally bare and get it ready for sand blasting and powdercoating. The frame itself is already pretty bare but it still needs the front fork removed, the swing fork bolts removed and a weld grinded down (somebody welded something to the right front of the frame and I have no idea what). My first job was to remove the nut that holds the top linking plate down. Sounds like an easy task, but here is where I encountered my first challenge. The nut was stripped and not coming off. I grabed the dremmel and used a cutting blade to make two incisions in the nut. With a screwdriver in the nut slices and a couple of firm pounds on the screwdriver with a hammer and the nut broke in half. Not the preferred method but I have another one on the other frame that I can use. With the plate removed I was immidiatly faced with the next challenge. The steering tube lockring. These are actually two rings that are screwed in top of each other. After looking at them more closely I noticed that there was no way I could get these removed without a special tool. This means I will have to do some research and call some shops around Orlando to see if they can help me.

The Beginning of the End :)

So Thursday I made the big leap... I bought my first 'project' bike... A 1974 Moto Guzzi Eldorado. I found it on Craigslist and after visiting the guy locally twice, I decided the spend the $700 and purchase it. As you can see from the pictures, it looks like a pile of junk. Don't feel bad, that was might first thought too. But on the second visit to view the bike, I brought Mike Asher with me. Mike is an expert when it comes to picking up and restoring old bikes. He gave it a close look and agreed with me that it is worth the money. All parts are there (mostly) and the guy even threw in a 2nd frame (which turns out I will have to use since the original is shot).

Bying an old bike and restoring it from the ground up has always been one of my dreams. I have been looking for a good Honda CB750, Beemer or Moto Guzzi for a long time and this one actually stood out enough for me to go with it. It will be a long project (due to time and money) but I am going to try to restore the bike as original as possible and post my progress and all my findings on this Blog. Hopefully it will help some fellow restoration geeks and I am open for any suggestions and input I might recieve.