22 February 2015 - The Return of the Engine (Cape Town Cafe Racer)

My best mate, Shea, fell off a balcony last Sunday and spent the week in ICU. It was touch and go for a while and scary as hell, so it's been a pretty shit week. He's been discharged now, though, and is under house arrest at his folks which is awesome. The bike has been a great distraction.

Oscar wasn't overreacting about the engine, it looks pretty epic:

Engine after vapour blasting. Note the newly serviced inside-out carbs.

The engine cover also arrived this week - it will be sprayed to match the engine. As you can see the old air filter box has been removed and replaced with cone filters. We opened up and cleaned the transmission which was a bit dirty and rusted. The little air filter coming out of the side of the cover is connected to a breather hole that went into the old air filter. Next step engine-wise is to take off and service the heads. We've also got some peanut covers to put on there. Oh yes - and the search for the missing washer continues! Unfortunately it wasn't sitting in the timing chain/sprocket chamber which means it's probably fallen into the sump which means we'll have to remove that as well.

Freddie popped by and helped Oz dismantle the transmission

Clutch looking a helluva lot better after cleaning

I spent 3 hours unsuccessfully trying to hand drill a hole into the disk-brake to counter sink the new Acewell speedo magnet into. That was a bit of a kak jol. In the end we took it to some engineers to get it done properly. 

I did have quite a lot of fun making the bracket for the speedo sensor though. We've got a bit of a holey theme going which I carried through to the bracket. It was frustrating spending so much time making something so small, but in the end it was worth it. 

 

It's attention to detail that's going to set this bike apart from the rest!
Speaking of which, the paint on that disk is going to need some touching up

The wiring is all done! Besides crimping a couple of wires I had nothing to do with this! The wiring diagram looks like something John Nash came up with and the harness looked like something out of Alien Vs Predator to me. I was disappointed to not have been more involved in the wiring but at least it was something to keep Oscar busy while I was away. Without it he might have been tempted to finish the bike without me!

The cockpit is looking very sleek/minimalist with most of the wiring having been jammed into the headlight and the switches replaced with micro switches which are almost done. 

We made some more holey plates to replace the reflectors on the front fork which were a bit of an eyesore. New Ultrabatt lithium batteries have been ordered. 

Oscar wants to take the bike to Killarney race track as soon as she's done to see who can record the fastest lap. I said that sounds like a terrible idea.

Sneaky look at the bike so far

Please drop us a line if you have any questions, comments, advice, or just to say howzit!

Cape Town Cafe Racer Conversion.