Some wins in other areas though so I’ll go through those.
First up was to repair the petrol tank paint where the fuel tap leaked a while back. 2pack clear is fuel resistant, but the fuel got underneath and blistered this whole area. I found it more difficult to do paint repair than a whole new piece, particularly so that it is unnoticeable.
The damage with the paint edges feathered

Etch primed bare steel.

Blue base coat.

Effect applied.

Cleared in 2pack again. Good result I think.

Next, oil filter mount fittings. I had straight fittings before but the bends were a bit extreme for the oil lines, here they are replaced with 45 degree fittings.

Onto the carburettor. About 4 years ago the plastic housing on my choke cable broke, and I glued it back together with epoxy. Crude but it worked for that long, until the choke would no longer hold itself on. Note that on a CV carb it’s not actually a choke, its an enricher circuit.

Old cable broken off, plate cleaned up, and a new cable ready to go on. Cheap part, should have done it ages ago!
Plastic knob on the end is standard, but this is a chopper so we can do better than that...

Between wheeled & house projects, I tend to spend a lot of time looking around bunnings, and often surprise myself what one can find and improvise with. Like these solid polished brass knobs, $2.50 each. I ground off original plastic knob, and drilled out the new brass one to fit over the cable shaft.

Next is to do the same type of knob for my idle speed adjuster, but I needed to extend the shaft out to be easily accessible. I don’t have a lathe, but that just means ya gotta be more creative...
6mm round bar with the end centre punched by eye.

Now mount the round bar IN the chuck of the pedestal drill. Once it’s chucked up, clamp the other end of the work piece tightly in the vice and loosen the chuck.

Now chuck up the intended drill bit, and gently have at it. It’s not going to win awards for accuracy, but way better than you’ll ever do by hand.


Tapped onto the end of the shaft and welded on.

Onto lathe substitute #2.
Chuck the piece up in the cordless. Could do this in the pedestal drill too but I just tend to use the cordless for everything these days. Drill on with one hand, angle grinder with flap disc in the other hand...

To fit the balls on to the shafts, I used a two step approach. First of all, I flattened the shafts a bit with a hammer so they would be a really tight fit. I also used epoxy inside the hole to really make sure they don’t come loose.



Rightio. Next job. A shift lever that I’ve been thinking of for a while, finally got the right part to make it from. Starting with a piece of stainless plate with the pattern traced on and clocked correctly.

Edges Veed and clamped up ready to weld. Might look familiar to some.

All welded and now ready to blend.


Taken down with a 60grit flapdisc.

Then on with the fine 240g disc. These are expensive but I don’t often polish stuff fully. Work very well though.

Smoothed out and polished on my little buffing wheel. Starting to become obvious now.

Boom, there ya go. Stoked with this piece.

Final shot of it fitted up, just one of those details that most people will never notice, but a few will love. Oil tank looks terrible. Hope to resolve it somehow this week.

Solved an issue where my kickstart shaft had become really stiff too. Prof and I had put new bushes in the kicker cover and honed them to size. Worked great for quite a while, then for some reason started to bind up. Took it all apart, bushes looked fine but I took the opportunity to clean up the kick shaft a bit. I mounted the shaft in the drill and took a bit off with some emery cloth. I hadn’t put enough preload into the return spring either so I fixed that at the same time.
That’s it for now. More oil tank work in the week, then a whole lot of cleaning and polishing Ready for the show on Saturday.
I now have all of the raw materials in stock for my springer build. Once the bike is out of the shed and less likely to have little bits of work done, I’ll dedicate time it the springer.