Crazy - amateur racing?!

[Slaninar]

After the first club meeting, I asked the director for a smaller bike - wouldn't want to start on a 1000 cc machine. So they said, they have an old, crashed, 125 cc 2 stroke. Can it be made to work? Yes, sure. OK.



It's an old Yamaha RD.

Here's the original:

http://www.bikez.com/motorcycles/yamaha_rd_125_1974.php


This is what it looks like froma a garbage can:



What did we have to fix?

- Bent forks - fucked up
- footpegs - rubish
- engine not working
- fairing carriers bent/broken
- cracked fairings
- bad carburators


Looked like a bad joke.

Day 1: washing old grease and dust, to see what we actualy have. Tank looked like a hardened elephant shit.



Fairings washed, glued, fixed:




Day 2 - epic story on getting 2nd hand forks. A fight flee market smuglers and wanabee racers who want to race on a tight budget.

Needed Tomos CTX forks, 30 mm diameter. Nowhere to be found. Eventualy, after some 70 km driven, 2 hours on the phone, several mates asked for favours, we found out that a flee market smugler can be the kindest, the most proffesional salesman in the whole northern hemisphere: the man brought 4 pairs of forks directly to my mate's shop to choose. All for 50 euros. Where he found the forks we didn't want to check ("got a cheap bike, just don't ride it around Peckham").



Day 3: footpegs

Footpegs were bad in bad places. Needed to fix it. 120x10 mm screws, some rubber around them and it's done. Carriers needed to be cut from some old sprockets, welded on.



Fairing carriers were also welded (wrongly as it turned out later).

CTX forks were cleaned and dissasembled.


Day 4: local shops


Rear wheel could be spun easily when in gear. Small compression. THe engine head (not sure about English term) needed to be filled a bit with some more metal, then drilled in shape. Also, spark plugs needed to go in a bit deeper. Done by some local people with correct tools - for 30 euros.

Forks also needed to be shortened, some threads cut in. 15 euros.



"They told me it can be fixed."



"Whoever told you that, let THEM fix it!"


Compression is good now, but on high revs the left piston doesn't work. Probably carbs... or electricity.

About 100 hours of work, the same amount of beer drunk and the machine is still not working and looks like shit.