Slow Monster Rebuild

The KTM looks great, the finish on the engine and the exhaust and the swinging arm is really good. I will trouble you with details of the process when I get near to doing that stuff.

 

Blind alley
I thought about the positioning of the battery/coils/electrics generally. On a Monster, as standard, they sit on/or above the battery above the rear cylinder, so quite high in the scheme of things. The wiring is all over the place. Ignition is at the headstock, fuse box is under the seat, coils and relays under the tank. You obviously need the rear light wiring to be near the rear light but everything else could be centralised, thereby reducing weight and complexity.
You read all this stuff about mass centralisation and its importance to making the bike "flickable". My objective was always mass minimisation, but if I could centralise the mass, as well as reduce its overall impact then that would have to be a good thing - surely.
I always intended to fit a LiOn battery to reduce the overall mass by about 3Kg. The dimensions of most of the LiOn batteries are considerably smaller so it could be moved to a lower position, nearer the centre of mass.
Others have been happy to put the battery in the seat hump, but I have always felt that this location compromised the balance of the bike being high and a long way beyond the wheelbase and also suffered because the battery leads would be excessively long and unnecessarily exposed. In my view the battery had to be as close to the starter motor as possible and preferably as low as possible.
With this in mind I thought about putting every single bit of the wiring behind the steering head bearing. The battery could sit behind the cross frame brace and the coils could could sit above an alloy plate that sat below the lower frame rails.
Immediately behind the steering head would obviously be subject to severe water ingress from the front and from the periphery of the front mudguard. My original design was to make an aluminium plate to attach to the lower frame rails.
Some months ago the council left a road sign propped against my front fence. The angle iron frame for the sign was missing so it was basically a 3' x 3' x 4mm aluminium shee (slightly buckled)t. Absolutely perfect for a battery box / waterproof electrical container. Removing the plastic/reflective front label proved very time consuming. I also found that bending 4mm aluminium accurately was quite difficult without ending up with big dents from the 2Kg hammer and vice used to do so. A bending device was needed so I built this from some 3"" x 2" scrap box section, some 1.5" x 3/8" scrap and some old dexion. The hardest part was working out the position of the pivot point and ensuring the

 

I spent a disproportionate number of hours removing the plastic reflective stuff from the dishonestly acquired road sign and even more hours shaping it to fit the lower frame rails and then to bend over the lower head stock frame cross brace. Satisfied that it fitted without huge water ingress issues I bent it up on my recently fabricated sheet bender. The shape required a specific bend profile. When I came to test fit it I realised I had bent it absolutely the wrong way round. Basically upside down. Bollox!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Not in the least discouraged by this I started on the single seat base. I decided I would build a carbon fibre seat. I had watched the videos posted on the Easy Composites website and thought" How difficult can that be?"

 

The seat base was formed of 9mm plywood, as was the "skeleton" for the hump. The infill between the ribs was made from polyester foam cut (similar to the sort of foam used to stick flowers in) into 2" wide slats and glued in with wood glue. The profile for the seat was determined by eye, I wanted something that looked like the 1967 Honda 500 4 ridden by Mike Hailwood from the side view but was wider at the rear end to accommodate an LED rear light/indicator assembly sitting almost unnoticed underneath the base of the hump.

 

Whilst working on the seat hump I thought that at some point I would have to spray it. It was never my intention to have any CF parts I made as bare CF with the weave showing through an immaculate clear gel coat.. This would not be in keeping with the age of the bike and anyway for CF to look really good it has to be 100% absolutely perfect and I was not confident of achieving that. If I painted it I could mold it/cast it and subsequently prime and fill it and then paint it to get a reasonably good finish in a solid colour (to be determined). With this requirement in mind I made a revolving table from two sheets of ply (formerly doors on a bedroom cupboard) and a belt pulley with an internal bearing from a derelict ride on lawn mower.

 

Cream Revenge just spotted your post
"Ensuring the axis of the two hinge points were parallel with the edge against which the material would be bent across the whole width of the sheet bender" is probably what I should have said.
Needless to say they were not quite square after I finished welding but not more than 0.039" (1mm) out over 30" width

 

Realising that I would spend an awful lot of time making an aluminium battery box that fitted behind the headstock and it would probably in the end only fit where it touched, I had a re-think. If the battery box was going there why couldn't the coils and relays and fuse box go there as well. The wiring harness would be half the weight if I could do that (but I would have to remake the loom completely and I would also have to protect all the electrical components from water ingress).
This thinking also fitted with my view of what to do with the petrol tank. I had originally envisaged trying to make an aluminium tank (because I had never made one before) but I was not confident of welding 2mm sheet aluminium without it all going into holes or weeping from every seam. Also getting a good finish on the surface of the tank would challenge my panel beating skills beyond what was likely to be possible.
I came up with a design that placed the coils and relays into an enclosure that fitted in the triangle behind the headstock and projected through the lower frame rails. I would then make a lid covering this enclosure upon which I would mount the fuse box. The coil enclosure would project down towards the front wheel spindle about 80mm. The fuse box would be protected by 2 infill panels either side of the head stock. The coil enclosure and the infill panels would be made from carbon fibre. I will post pictures at some future date because all the ones I have seem to be upside down.

 

I took the bike down to MADASL to get the exhaust headers made. The original exhaust had a large dent in the front down pipe as a consequence of me riding over a 300mm kerb and grounding/flattening it.
The rear header had to be cut off with a Dremel as the bolts at the first pipe junction were seized and I managed to completely strip the hex on the first clamp. Hammered in Torx bits did not shift it and the only way the Dremel cutter would fit meant the stream of sparks was coming directly at my face - not pleasant.
Mark at MADASL is brilliant he also machined the flywheel and lightened the main drive pinion and the clutch drive gear and the jack shaft gear for the cam drive. It is not possible to machine massive amounts off the early Monster flywheel because of the need to maintain the ignition pick up positions on the flywheel. I think about 2kg became swarf.

 

The above pictures do not really show the headers and I will post more /better pictures at some later date. The tailpipe is stainless and Chinese and cost the princely sum of £55 from Banggood.com.
I was very pleased with the way Mark made the tail pipe sit to look just right. He also said that the distance from the ports to the junction piece was within 5mm. He also accommodated my wish to have a parallelogram rear brake hanger. With the lightening of the various gears, the manufacture of the headers, and the supply and fitting of rear ride height adjusters the total bill was c£700 but I needed to hire two vans to drop it to him and back home again , another £60 plus another £70 fuel. I will need to weld a bracket to the rear frame to make a steady for the tailpipe and make a bracket with rubber isolation mounts.

 

More progress on the seat, the process is very long and very arduous. First make the skeleton, rub it down and skim with body filler, rub that down and you break through to the foam so at least another skim and rub down is required. Then paint with primer resin and rub down again, find you have broken through again re-skim with body filler and re paint with primer resin and rub down again. paint with high gloss mould resin and rub down again with 240, 400, 600, 800, 1000 and 1500 wet and dry paper and see if the surface will take a high polish. If not repeat the previous processes. Then polish with rubbing compound and polish to a high gloss. That gets you a male mold from which you can make a female mold that will be the basis of the finished article. 5 coats of release agent are then applied and the female mold can be defined. It has however to be made in such a way that it can be separated from the male mold. This involves cutting a sheet of clear polyester to match the profile of the male mold along a line where the mold will be split about 50mm bigger than the profile of the male mold. Using the polyester foam blocks glue gunned to the male mold attach the clear polyester sheet and seal the edges with wax so that there is no casting line in the female mold. Use the wax to form pyramids on the clear polyester sheet about every 75 mm to form registers so that the mold will always go back in exactly the same place. Apply 5 coats of release agent to the polyester sheet and then apply I gel coat resin to one half of the mold and the polyester sheet mold divider then 3 or 4 layers of glass fibre matt and let it cure. When cured strip off the polyester sheet mold divider and apply release agent to the face exposed by removal of the divider, then gel coat and 3/4 layers of fibreglass to the other side of the mold. That gets you a repeatable female mold. Apply another 5 coats of release agent followed by high gloss resin, followed by the CF sheet and resin 3 or four layers as required for strength.
So far I have made the male mold and cut the polyester sheet for the mold divider. However every time I look at the male mold I think I could do better so a further round of primer and top coat resin and filling takes place.

 

I have no idea why I keep getting multiple images??????????????

 

I also started to think about the petrol tank. The seat can be made in 2 halves, the tank however depending upon its design will have to be made in at least a 3 part mold, two halves for the top surface and at least one for the bottom. The top and the bottom will then have to be bonded together. The inner bonding layer would need to be a resin impervious to attack by ethanol. The body of the tank would be Kevlar reinforced carbon fibre.
I wanted about a 4 gallon tank to give enough range and I also wanted the fuel carried as close to the centre of gravity as possible. Moving the battery and coils from above the rear cylinder would help with both these objectives. I also felt it would be better to try and restrict the extent to which the tank over-reached the top frame rails.
The first problem was where to start, defining the side view or defining the underside of the tank, consideration also had to be made as to how it would be secured to the frame, the position of the tap(s) and the filler and breather pipes and the extent to which baffles may be required within the tank to prevent sloshing.

 

Clutch cover off and now the first steps in lightening by use of a drill and file. I do not possess a milling machine nor do I know of anyone who has one

 

Cracked alternator cover prepared for welding with the use of a D remel