The Handlebar Conundrum

When I bought the pile of Guzzi bits that is slowly morphing into a real motorbike, the original handlebars weren't with the pile, but the seller gave me a choice of a couple of pairs of Renthal bars that he had.

The pile of parts has been moved twice since then and is now in my permanent house in Anglesey. I love my house but it has just one downside. Access to the back of the house is via a passageway between my house and the neighbours. The passageway itself is vey narrow, but there is a particular bottleneck at the front gate. This makes it very difficult to get bikes in and out, which is great from a security aspect, but a right pain in the arse in every other respect.

My Royal Enfield Classic 350 was way too wide in the handlebar region to get through and I ended up selling it, as I couldn't find any sensible way to adapt it by replacing handlebars etc. After much research about what to replace it with, I spotted that the Kawasaki GPZ 500 was about the narrowest middlesized bike that I could find and bought one of those. That will indeed go down - just - but only after I have folded in the mirrors and removed the bar ends!

When I bought the Enfield Crusader here, I only managed to get that through by 2 of us manhandling it, with the handlebars at a 45 degree angle and the front wheel on a platform with casters! I have been able to cut about 1.5" off each side of the handlebars on that and it will now go through - just, again - but that was only possible because it's an old bike, so doesn't need as much space at the end of the bars for things like brake master cylinders and big control/switch blocks.

So I've been agonising over what I'm going to do with the Guzzi, as the Renthal bars are way too wide, even after I've cut them down to the minimum amount of space I need to fit everything on, and any other bars I can find that are narrow enough don't have sufficient space for levers etc.

The nearest I got to a sensible idea was to make some sort of post that I could clamp into the handlebar clamp and which I could attach cafe racer style clip ons to, but I really didn't like the idea of the riding position that was likely to generate.

Then I had a sudden flash of inspiration! The GPZ 500 goes down the passage, so why don't I reproduce that on the Guzzi?! Looking at the two bikes:

The GPZ is very compact, but loses almost no distance in the "bend" to raise the height of the handlebars - that's all dealt with in the mounting plates.

So I've bought a scrap set of the bars, actually off a ZZR600, but they appear to be the same, and I'm planning to make a plate out of suitably thick aluminium to replace the area hatched yellow below...

... and mounting that to the Guzzi top yoke, in place of the upper clamp plate, using the 4 bolts below.

I can't see why that won't work, but I'm going to mock it up in plywood first. That way, I can also test it to see whether it fits past the gate as well, before I commit to making it in aluminium.

So these are the used bar ends that I bought.

I marked out a trapezium on a piece of scrap ply that was equivalent to the bit between the bars on the GPZ, although I bought the smaller end in slightly to make the angle between the bars less "sporty" and more "touring".

Then I held each bar in position and drew around it's baseplate.

I extended the bottom end a bit to give more surrounding space for the mounting bolts and then roughly cut the shape out with a jigsaw, before smoothing the edges back to the actual shape with sandpaper. 

Then I drilled each of the holes and used some spare bolts to mount the bars to the plate.

Trying it for size on the bike, I needed to give a little clearance to one of the mounting holes but also to cut a relief for the stem nut. When I looked more closely, the original bar clamp also had a relief, so I just copied the form of that.

All bolted back up, and it looks like it will work 😀

I fitted the controls to check whether that was going to create any conflicts (as there is a mix of Kawasaki switches, Royal Enfield brake and master cylinder and the original Guzzi clutch lever). 

There is just a possible conflict in the brake line union from the master cylinder to keep an eye on.

Happily, when I measured the distance between handlebar ends, it's just around 600mm; about 100mm less than the Renthal bars. I'm taking that as a result!

Now I just need to get hold of some aluminium and reproduce the plywood plate, but I'll tap threads for the bolts holding the bars to the plate and also rebate the socket heads of the hold down bolts into the plate. I'm going to use 16mm plate, so plenty of meat to recess into.

Irresistible mock up!

I couldn't resist bringing some of the bodywork and seat down to see how everything was starting to look. The answer was "flipping gorgeous"! It's starting to look exactly like the vision I've had in my head for the last 18 months or so 😁

I added a little bling from an exhaust header as well, which livened things up a bit. 

There WAS some point to all of this. I need to sort out the handlebar arrangement pretty soon, so I wanted to mock everything up to see whether my idea is going to work or not. (It looks like it will be fine.)
 

Brakes

During the afternoon, the storm abated a bit so I ventured out into the shed. I got all the front forks and wheel finished and bolted up tight, then trimmed and refitted a couple of the frame mounting bolts that were slightly too long.

Then I fitted the reconditioned brake calipers to each side of the forks and to the swinging arm. After hunting out new bolts for the calipers, I found the original allen keys already screwed in to their lugs on the frame! (One of the perils of having a big break in the restoration process!)

I just need to fit a refurb kit to the real wheel cylinder now and that can be installed as well.

I also inflated the tyres so that it sat properly on the centre stand and side stand.
 

Rear mudguard

I painted a coat of blue Hammerite onto the underside of the fuel tank and rear mudguard, to give a bit of extra corrosion resistance. (The rest of the bodywork is plastic or fibreglass.)

Once that had dried, I fitted the rear light and numberplate holder. It doesn't come across very well in the photographs, but I really like this whole contrast between the black parts and the blue graphite paintwork.

 

Recovering seat

Storm Eowyn came today so, discretion being the better part of valour, I worked on bits in the house rather than venturing out into the shed in a gale.

The seat has been sat waiting to be recovered for ages so that was first out of the box. I got the room nice and warm and wrapped the new cover around a hot water bottle to get it nice and soft and stretchy.

Ages ago, I glued some thin foam to the outside and front of the seat foam to cover some damaged bits of the original.

First things first I glued the front of the cover to the base, using UniBond contact adhesive. This meant that I could refit the rubber seat buffers on top of the vinyl, but still get access to the underside to pull the rubber lugs through that hold them in place.

Then I pulled the cover tight and used these little spring clamps to temporarily hold things in place and check alignment etc, before glueing up the back end.

After that it was a case of systematically doing about a 4 - 5" strip on each side, while the rest was still clamped up, until it was all glued. There is one small crease at the point where two "glue zones" met. It's hardly noticeable but I'm hoping that will ease out with use. Otherwise I'm really pleased with the end result.

Back on 2 Wheels Again

With the engine, transmission and cradle complete, I moved on to preparing the top part of the frame. I ran a thread renovator through all of the threads to clean them up and remove any stray powdercoating and cleaned up the top suspension unit mounts.

I then reinstalled the steering head bearing cups and the top and bottom fork clamps.

While I had good access, I fitted the battery tray and the lower part of the rear mudguard, which also forms a little tool store.

Moving down to the shed, it was time to unite the top and bottom parts of the frame.

And in quick succession, I reinstalled the fork legs and the front wheel. I temporarily installed one of the rear shocks to hold the back end up (I'm waiting for some new bushes to arrive so I can mount them properly) and I could then get her back on her own two wheels again for the first time in several years.

I've temporarily fitted some handlebars so I can move the bike around more easily, but these won't be the ones I use permanently. I can't find any standard type handlebars that are narrow enough to fit down the side of my house and still give me enough "real estate" to mount all of the required levers and controls. So I've had to be quite inventive in how I set the handlebars up. Watch this space! 

She's looking very black and stealthy - I'm looking forward to getting the carbs, exhausts, crash bars and grab rail fitted to give a bit of bling!

 

Drivetrain

Hot on the heels of finishing the bodywork, I now need something to hang it all on! 

First I built up the engine cradle rails; cleaning out all the threads and holes after the powder coating. This is a great system - the rails carry the centre stand, side stand, footrests, gear lever and brake pedal.

I decided that the engine was too heavy to lug up and down stairs into the temporary assembly workshop (bedroom!) so now moved out into the shed to start the main assembly. First I propped the engine on some blocks and secured a rope around the tail of the gearbox, suspended from the roof to steady it.

The cradle was then bolted up to the engine and I could use the centre stand to provide a bit more stability.

Then the shaft drive/swinging arm attaches to the back of the gearbox, using 2 pivot pins and locknuts to secure everything in place. Gratifyingly, turning the hub with the spark plugs out meant that the engine still turned 😀

Now for the hard bit! Fitting the wheel is actually pretty straightforward, but was really awkward to organise the cush drive rubbers so that everything slotted together nicely. I needed an extra hand basically! We got there eventually though. Starting to look a bit like a powered unicycle now 😀.

 

Reassembly commences!

With the paintwork completed, I couldn't resist giving everything a polish, fitting out the fairing and adding all of the badges. Everything is looking immense - so pleased with it.

 

More paintwork

So all of the parts have now been brought back from Whitchurch and safely stored in my shed, ready for reassembly to commence. The poor Kawasaki 500 workhorse  has been relegated to living under a cover outside.

Now that the base coat has had a week or so to cure, I flatted it all back with 2500 wet and dry paper and then gave it a good rinse down (in the shower again!) Then I applied some very subtle 3mm silver pinstripes to the side of the tank and to the nose fairing.

Finally time for lacquer. I decided this time that I couldn't stand the cost of the 2-pack clearcoat (almost £40 a can once P&P added!!), so I've gone with Hycote Petrol Resistant lacquer, which seems to get good reviews. I applied 3 coats, 20 mins apart and initial reaction is that it's a beautiful finish straight from the can. 

I'm loving the colour, now that it has clearcoat on - a really deep inky blue/grey. It will be interesting to see what it looks like with the satin black accents on the bottom of the tank and the fairing. Once the lacquer has had time to cure, I'll mask up and spray the satin black and then give it a polish back with cutting compound, but it certainly looks like it's going to meet the "good enough" criteria.

My son has described it as starting to look like a "stealth" bike. There's certainly a dark theme going on with the black painted engine, gearbox and wheels. I think it's going to look subtly different from a standard v50, especially if I get around to spraying up the panniers to match and fitting those.