Well, now that the Swamp Rat has left the building, it's time to wake up this old girl again! So as you guys will remember, the Swamp Rat's engine died after only 28 miles, so I pulled the engine out of the Bitsa, and installed it in the 'Rat. My poor old Bitsa is looking a bit.......... empty?
Okay, so I was mulling over which engine to install, to get it back on the road so I can take on Frank's "20 rides in 2020" challenge. I'm lucky that I currently have several, but the only "known" engine I have is the one that came out of it after finding out that I couldn't register the bike with that engine, because the arsehat previous registered owner hadn't bothered to tell the DMV that he'd removed it from his bike, and I was told by the woman behind the counter at my DMV (called VICROADS here) that the engine I had probably had a faked engine number. Stupid b1tch wouldn't know a faked engine number from a donkeys penis, but I couldn't change her mind, so I spent another 1000 bucks and bought another engine.
This morning I rang VICROADS and spoke to a nice lady called Maddy, gave her that engine number, and she said there was no reason that she could see why I couldn't use that engine. Sweet. It'll still only be temporary until I build a mildly hotrodded engine with numbers closer to my frame number, (the engine going in is either a K6 or F0/F1 engine) but I have too many projects in the "croc park" ready to go, before I can spend too much more time on this one. To make the engine removal much easier, I cut the top rails out, so my first task today was to make up a frame kit. I made one from fork tubes on the Swamp Rat, but then had problems with clearances and cable routing due to the 5mm thick walled tube, so I made some from bored out 30mm solid alloy bar.
That worked well, but took a long time to bore out to the 25mm ID to make a nice tight fit over the rails. I got lucky and found a supplier nearby who sold me some alloy tube exactly the right size, and some 24mm alloy machinable bar, that I can turn down to 22mm, to make a nice tight fit inside the rails.
Friday Bitsa frame kit 27 Dec 2019 by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
I quickly cut the tubes.
Friday Bitsa frame kit 27 Dec 2019 1 by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
And drilled them for the 6mm screws.
Friday Bitsa frame kit 27 Dec 2019 2 by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
I then turned down the 22mm bar and drilled and tapped it, but forgot to take a pic, so I'll do that tomorrow. It's gonna be hot again for the next three days, so I think I'll get out to the garage and get as much done as I can before the heat chases me back inside. More then.