I’d always wanted to restore a motorcycle and with the years since I last owned one ticking by, I started looking round. My last machine was a PE 175 full floater. It was magically transformed into a lovely wood burner stoveto keep our new babies warm after I trashed my knee in an enduro accident and it was deemed undesirable to the future health of the household. It probably stretched to a few packets of disposable nappies too. You know what happens when you start looking for things? Invariably you find them. So even though I wasn’t looking that hard, I found a bloke selling a Honda SL 125 and a Honda SL 100. Package deal. The SL 125 seemed pretty complete, a runner, but the seller admitted it blew smoke. The 100 was a basket case, although he said it had compression and a spark. Whoopee doo. These are both bikes with which I have some history, so the compulsion gland began twitching. My very first experience on a dirt bike came from a friend’s SL 100. He got it brand new when they first came out and the pair of us comprised about one-third of the sixth form class at Orewa District High School. Young and bulletproof - what a time. It was a terrific bike and he kept it pristine. However when riding it off road this meant feeding the bike a never-ending supply of front indicators and brake-or-clutch levers. They were very exposed in any tumble. The SL 125 was my own. I thrashed it for a year or so, including a North Shore Motorcycle Club three-hour Hare & Hounds Race in the Woodhill Forest. I just wound the throttle open and pointed the 21 inch front wheel in various directions until I came home second in the 125 class. I even got a two Cups coz the team me and my mate Stimpo entered did good as well! I sold the 125 to my younger brother and brought him back a Hooker Header megaphone exhaust from Australia which was a fantastic piece of kit – it sounded great. The original Honda exhaust was starting to rot out –as they all did in those days. He thrashed the little Honda too and when he discovered enduro riding he even did some races on the Honda before moving on to DT 175 Yamahas. Again he sold it to a friend who continued to wring the Honda’s neck. And through this whole time, I can’t recall any of us doing more than routine maintenance on it – although I put a pair of CR250 shocks on it – with the sexy fins at the bottom and they worked very well. What provenance. In part I wanted the bike as a project to help me through a long convalescent period after spinal surgery, but I knew I was really committed when my son professed to be extremely interested in both ends of the project – the mechanical as well as the riding. He soon got the younger one enthused, which should be a big help because he has solid mechanical ability. I decided to go for it. The plan of attack is to start with the 100 as an off roader. It’s not really worth making road worthy again, I think. Having something that will keep my sons busy while I get on with returning the 125 to original will also be useful. Returning the 125 to original will not mean a concourse restoration. I want to be able to use the bike – and I plan a sexy megaphone for it rather than the Honda original, so concourse is not possible for that reason alone. This is what we got. The homecoming DAY 1 We pulled the SL100 out into the garage and stared at it for a long time. At some stage, it was clear, it had been owned by someone with a bent for bad welding. There were gobs of it everywhere. The kickstarter was welded on (that didn’t really worry me so long as it stayed put.) The footpegs were a solid mass of welded poop with extra bits tacked on where they had broken. To the rear frame loop a big high balls-collector had been added. It had to go before it turned the lot of us into sopranos. The final drive sprocket cover had been replaced by a hunk of plastic cut from a 20 gallon drench container. Very rural. After an hour or two of staring at it, we put it away again. Daunted. There was a lot to be done. We decided to start with the spare frame the seller had thrown in with the whole lot. It was all complete so we decided we would strip and paint it first – then pull down the complete bike and rebuild that as necessary. With compression hovering around 70, it was clear there was a shortage of robust metal things in there somewhere. Then we could transfer things from one frame to the other, avoiding the amateur trap of getting to something in a month’s time and not remembering where it goes. At least that was the plan. The next time I saw the bike my sons had reduced it to its constituent parts! The dismantling The side cover was a piece cut out of a drench container. Very rural! Note the top triple clamp. More to come....
Oops sorry about the font size - and I can't find how to edit it.
great write up and photos...keep them coming...looks like a fun project
Whats the bike under the veranda of the house mate?
Sorry I don't remember - that was the place in Hamilton where we picked up the bikes.
The search began for parts suitable for the restoration – I scoured the sources of parts looking for a donor bike or anything else that might work. This search continues on a daily basis. These were very scarce – either completely useless (as in, worse than the thing I had) or very expensive. These bikes are now rare and things like sidecovers, seat bases, exhausts, guards and particularly, the final drive sprocket cover, are hard to get. For the 100 I decided to buy what thought would fit because the original parts were too expensive. Then began a game of “guess whether this will work” as I studied the offerings of the internet. Where possible I decided to save my money for the 125. First up I bought a bright red plastic XR200 tank. The original was very rusty inside so I went for something that was plastic (unbreakable) and a good looking tank to boot. It would not fit the original mountings but I figured I could easily use something like the old 3-strap arrangement used on the early YZ Yamahas. I once had a Honda MT250 to which I fitted an XL175 tank. It was mounted by way of a belt from a pair of trousers, stuck under the tank with araldite epoxy. I tightened it down onto a piece of foam – it saved the original tank from damage as I gave that bike a serious thrashing on the trails and motocross tracks around my home. The original tank looked like new when I sold it on the bike and the belt mounting system had worked perfectly. If all else failed I’d use it again. I also had an idea for mufflers for both the bikes. A pair of exquisite mufflers came up on auction website Trademe – they had been on a Harley, ridden once around the block and the owner didn’t like the noise. They were in perfect condition and should hopefully sound excellent. After five nervous days I paid just over $40 for the pair. I continued to buy things on the auction websites. A package of XL100 and later model 125 parts came up - a front guard (with just a couple of repairs), pair of longer shocks, forks and an exhaust system. I figured the old SL100 could use a few inches of extra travel and I promised to be more historically accurate when it came to the 125. I figured I could fit the header pipe and use the ex-Harley muffler for a pretty neat result. At least, that’s what I thought – time would tell. Yay, lots of poop welding. My favourite. The purchases were all bought on guesswork and it would not be until I got a bit further down the track that I would find out if they were useful or not. The old SL100 could use a bit more travel. I'm pressed for space in the garage - it's a real issue.
Reading a description of restoring plastics encouraged me to do the same with the tank and front guard. More work, but it could improve the looks of the bike ten-fold. I realised that I have been sucked in ... what started as a quick and dirty get-the-thing-going, rattle can paint job resto has changed. Having gone to the trouble of pulling it all apart, it seems wrong to do half a job. And with the frame looking snazzy, the grotty old tank will most definitely spoil the look. It started as clever little purchase for five bucks in the days when I didn'y care what the bike looked like. Now it's not flash enough. Is this a normal process to go through in a resto? Do they always creep up on you and run you over?
I've never, and will never, do a resto, but I've sure heard LOTS of stories about blokes buying something to flash up a bit or similar, but end up taking it totally apart, redoing everything and ending up with a very nice machine! Mostly it takes a very long time though, lol. Unless you're name is Dodgy, then it's usually only about 48-72 hours!
Heh heh heh. Yeah if I farmed out everything then that is about right but I prefer to do everything myself. I like to put crazy deadlines on rebuilds so they don't stall. Like a month before a rally or a big ride. Had a giggle at your belt tank mount Bender, good idea!
STRIPPING AND OTHER THINGS... Patrick ripped into the frame with paint stripper (next to useless)followed by an orbital sander and finally hand sanding. He now knows that to hand sand a frame takes weeks. So do I – I thought it would take a couple of days at most. He ended up being pleased with the result but strongly indicated that it would be a one-off. We started with a spare frame that the seller had thrown in. There was a lot of this.. And in the end, the frame looked like this... Sam pulled the engine from the frame and I stripped it down. It was in an “interesting condition.” Some parts were excellent, others were rubbish. The top of the piston was thick with carbon, as was the combustion chamber, but my inexperienced eye could see no sign of where the missing compression might have gone. The last time I looked inside one of these motors was over 35 years ago. Progress on the engine continued. New (second hand but within spec) valves were fitted and a camchain tensioner was bought to replace the existing one, which was stuffed. The chain itself was OK, having been replaced not that long ago. Its predecessor hadbecome slack enough to wear right through the camchain tunnel up the barrel, snapped and created quite a bit of internal mayhem. Removing the carbon from the combustion dome revealed gouges in the head that bore witness to major internal trauma. I consulted a mate who has been a bike mechanic for many years (the same one whose SL100 provided my first ever trail bike experience). He said that while it was ugly, none of these issues would prevent the engine from running – it wasn’t exactly highly stressed, after all. The piston looked like it was new - note the repair to the camchain tunnel. My deconstruction was stalled by the lack of a rotor puller. The factory puller was very expensive, and various friends I got hold of did not have anything that might fit. I recalled something from way way back, a mere thread of recollection, that an axle bolt on this bike could be used as a rotor puller. I gave it a go. The rear axle bolt screwed in and with a few taps from a hammer on the axle bolt the rotor popped off. But we were at a decision point, the first of many. Do we continue to rip the whole engine down and replace the kick starter (which at this point is welded to the shaft). My preference was to do that, but studying the manual showed another special tool would be necessary –one that could be “faked.” After splitting the cases, the whole gearbox would need to come out before the kick start shaft could be replaced. I had hoped we could lift out the kickstart shaft without pulling the rest out. Gearboxes scare me. They look like trouble. In the end the amount of work to get the welded kickstart off the shaft and replaced was too great. I started to put the engine back together, prepared to trust that the bottom end and kickstarter would be OK but also wondering how badly this decision would bite me on the arse and how soon it might happen. The cleaned up head shows the unmistakable signs of major trauma.
Reassembly... About now it was time for a real good teeth grit in case rude words came out. OK, rude words did come out in utter frustration. There is a fifth head bolt on the 100 engine, just under the points cover. When I got to putting the top end together, the nut was missing. It was the only nut missing out of all the other bits and pieces that go together to make the Honda 100 top end. I searched through my collection of nuts and bolts and realized immediately that it had been utterly decimated by the rebuild of a Toyota Corolla car by my youngest a while back. I also realised that the original Honda bolt had been replaced by a stud and it was not one with a metric thread. Is that bloody frustrating or what? I only do metric. Whitworth and all that other pommy crap is anathema to me. I gave it up many years agocast iron when the head of an Austin A55 fell off the pushrod on which it was stuck above the engine block and squashed the tip of my thumb. That thing weighed nearly as much as the moon and is weight descending just a few inches onto my thumb caused pain that kept me away from work and awake for two whole days and nights. Somewhere, sometime in this bike’s history, the metric bolt had been replaced with a nasty stud with a strange thread. And this nut, unmatched by anything in my depleted collection, was the only one missing. Shit. I thought back through time, to a place when someone in a farm shed, surrounded by the myriad smells of fertilizer, feed, hay, sheep shit and old machinery, had run out of options and decided to whack in a bastard thread on the little Japanese bike. You utter bastard, I telepathed back through the ages. This state of mind continued for several days. I moaned so much about it that my wife even conducted a search of the under-bench area looking for lost nuts! What a girl. It remained elusive and worse, nobody could recognize the thread. It looked like I would have to cart the engine around the various nut and bolt sellers trying out their wares in the search of the elusive nut. With the engine bolted up I was concerned about damaging gaskets if I pulled it apart to get the stud out. I got on with other things, which is my way of dealing with a roadblock. I assembled the advance retard mechanism and points, chopping the last half inch of the points power feed to refresh the wire, which was looking decidedly dodgy. Then I had an inspiration. Under the bench there was an ice cream container of bits the boys had removed from the frame. I wondered …. and was rewarded with the right answer. The missing nuts. I installed them but the happiness was dampened by the look of the bits that control spark timing. This bastard thread nearly gave me a bloody heart attack... It just didn’t seem to line up right. But I would have to wait a while before I had a chance to static time the engine, not the least because my two 10mm ring/open ended spanners had vanished into the ether, the joys of having teenage sons. You need at least one 10mm ring spanner to do the tappets, so a trip to the local tool seller would be in order
A way to go but..... I couldn't resist posting a before and after shot. I painted the frame today - a signficiant and very satisfying milestone.
Wow, what a difference eh.
I hauled the manky-looking front wheel out of the tin shed. The rim was quite rusty and the hub was a vile glue of brake and corrosion dust and grease. I pulled it all apart and cleaned up the backing plate outside and innards with brake cleaner. It was pretty nice on the outside, with the alloy having been protected by a clear coat at some stage. I tidied up the inside, checked the bearings which were OK, ran rough emery paper over the brake shoes and the brake drum. It looked a lot better and I ordered a new set anyways. Starting on the front hub was my first ever go at polishing aluminium. I knew this was coming and had studied how others do it on various websites. If you want to, you can get it like a mirror. Various methods seemed to be used by others but the words “lots of elbow grease” were commonly mentioned. I had some buffing pads for the battery drill. Wet and dry sandpaper and some nylon scotch pads. They all worked to some degree but I liked the finish offered by the scotch pads and metal polish best. They removed the years of trailbike grime gently but did not take away the patina. I could see that I would use various methods on different areas of the bike. Nasty http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...nthubunpol.jpg
awesome write up....that is some work to get those spoked wheels looking like that...excellent wrok
