Manky Monkey Motors

Most of you won't know Tom, but he's a forum member, (tom_prs), & drops by for a read once in a while. He's part of the collective at Loony's rural workshop here in Hampshire. Loon repairs & resprays car bodywork as well as fabricating/repairing anything else he deems interesting & the rest of us either keep our own projects there or arrive with them in bits saying Can you fix this mister?
Tom's building his first chop &, like my Pop, it's a bit of a joint project -Loon does the welding & painting while Tom does the rest.  :)
Yesterday afternoon saw it's first taste of fresh air when they propped the freshly rebuilt back wheel in place & rolled it outside for a bit of looking at. The wheels have been powder coated, then re-laced with black spokes & brass nipples by my big brother Brock.
Yamaha frame, hardtailed by Loon & Tom.
Standard forks, lowered by 2".
Triangular headlight.
Heavily modified Sportster tank, using Jerry can filler neck & fuel sight tube on the right side.
Repro '59 Cadillac rear light with spiral LED conversion by Nathan, (Galaxie 500).

They're planning a gloss black frame with lime green metalflake tank & rear guard.
There's a spikey, twisted rod sissy bar to go with it, but general consensus yesterday seemed to be that it looked better without it.

Much quirkier than my own build, but an interesting take on the XS theme. Much more New York skater punk, "brat" styled.
Tom's hoping to have it ready for the "Bike Shed" bike show in that there London in May.

Young Thomas on his steed.

The Gentlemen of the Workshop.
Loony, (Marcus), Tom & Chris, ("fORGOTTEN" here on the forum).

Co builders trying to look mean n moody, or just staring vacantly into space. I'm not sure which.  :P

Marcus looks like he's dropped his fishing rod ? ;)

 :D

Can't see that with a sissy bar - it would interfere with the general lines

Heres a photo with the sissy bar and mudguard propped in place.

I do really like the sissy bar, and it acts as a mudguard mount so I will end up using it. Perhaps I will make a separate loop/mudguard support that I can change over as I please!

Yes that's not quite how I imagined it, and it does look as if it echoes the angle of the forks.   I like the bike better without, but then it's not my bike!

Tom bought the rear mudguard from Ebay. A while later PantherShaun came up from Kent to visit, saw it in Loon's workshop & said That used to be mine! I sold it on Ebay. :)

Nice to see some young blood taking up the challenge of customs. There doesn't seem to be any interest by youngsters in mechanical stuff these days. This is showing up not only in our 'hobby' but also in my industry (public transport/ hgv repairs). There is a huge shortage of qualified fitters etc. and nobody is willing to train up in the trades. The majority of staff in our workshop are all 50years + and with no newbies coming up to fill the spaces the industry is going to die! So keep it up Tom and get more of yer mates involved and learn as much as you cant from us old gits cos when we're gone the skills go as well!!!!!

My nearly 10 year old grandson is really into landrovers, and fixing them with his dad!

what part of the country are you in BB,

Youngsters! they appear to mostly want to be famous!.....for being...well,famous ;D and "as seen on TV on a Saturday night", dirty nails, I don't think so...............

Tom working on the bike this afternoon.
He's fitted a battery-less ignition system, which mounts in place of the alternator & produces a direct charge for the coil, but we couldn't get a spark at the plugs. It's all "plug n play", just a single multi pin plug from the main unit to the CDI unit & another from there to the coil, so nothing to adjust or refit. Appears to only be producing 2 volts, but we really weren't sure, so he's consulting the manufacturer tomorrow.
He's got a fuel leak from the base of the tank, but other than that, it's ready for a test fire before it all comes apart for final welding & paint. He may well be up & running before me! 

I bought the complete ignition kit just over 2 years ago and have only just got around to fitting it. Electrex World are usually very helpful, but at the moment they seem to be very unwilling to help now that they know the system has been sat in a workshop for the past 2 years.

I ran a few checks yesterday and the resistance across the source coil read 160 ohm - the manufacturers information says this should be in the region of 390 ohm. I also took the voltage of the power going to the coil; mine read between 1.5-2v which I very much doubt would be enough to create a decent spark.

I've just e-mailed the company manager/technical guy and asked if I'm able to post him the parts so he could run some more detailed checks on the coils/rotor to see if they are within the required tolerances. If they find a fault within the coil they can supply these individually (which would be best case scenario!). If not, it looks as though I'll need to re-buy the ignition parts (much, much worse scenario!).

Poo.

While trying to fire his bike up, we found Tom's tank was leaking. So I took it over to BKI Welding in Newbury, Berkshire, owned & run by the lovely Leia -a lady with her own welding business *sigh*
Picked it up again this afternoon. They fixed the original leak by silver soldering over the original brazed joint, but then found 2 more leaks underneath. So they welded those as well. Cost- £17.50

Sounds like the perfect woman.

Now if she owns a Pub as well. :D :D

A few snaps from Tom of his XS finally coming together at Loony's workshop this week.

.

(https://preview.ibb.co/fVZKhx/C8_AE074_E_E7_BC_4_C70_90_E8_F727842_A5_E24.jpg) (https://ibb.co/i5tZFH)
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Running Archie? :)
Tom messaged me a couple of nights ago to say it had run briefly for the first time. :)

Who are those tramps sleeping behind the bike? Did the noise wake them up?

 ;D
That's Mr Lunatic's new workshop.