"X" marks the spot.

"American eXpress" strange bike, but i love the effort and details!

found it on the interwebs.
if you know more about the bike shoot me a message.

fricking Honda V4's!

i should have kept my word, in October 2011 i said never to touch a V4 honda engine again, but i forgot all about it when my neighbor asked me to fix his SuperMagna.
it ran like shit, wouldn't hardly start and some one had looked at it and couldn't find a problem..
"ah well" i thought, let's be a good neighbor and help him out..
so once in his shed i saw a magna with lot's of stuff taken of it.
i cleaned the carbs, replaced a broken fueltransfer tube and started the big fight with the V configuration carbs.

but behold, the Magna is a cali import, so it has all the environmental hoses and BS on it.

and there were a lot of hoses. so first i tried to discover what should go where and once i thought i had it allright i started the fight to place the carbs. after a few hours fighting them i thought it would be more easy to use ratchet bands (those to tie down your bike or other heavy stuff to a trailer) and a crowbar.
brute and blunt force was the answer! within 10 minutes the carbs were placed! woot!

crab! the hose sticking out in to the air is the main fuel line. and i couldn't find a place to stick it on the carbs..
off with the whole shabang and start my search again.. damn cali rules! i used the wrong hose on the wrong plug. as soon as i found the culprit it was time to put the carbs back with the aid of my blunt force tools!
and replace all those hoses and crap again..

once it was all in place i rebuild all the missing stuff on the bike rolled it outside and started it.
BAM! it fired right up! woehoe!

fun was of a short time.. as i opened up the throttle there didn't happen much, the engine reved up to 2000RPM and that's it.. at wot??
damn, i told you i hated this kind of engines! so my guess is i fucked up a vacuum direction in the california environmental bullshit and the slides in the carbs can't get a descent vacuum to lift..
or the timing advance is all wrong. 

fuck it! next week i'll tear all that hoses from that bike and see what happens! 

occupied..

alright, i'm a bit in a pickle here..
all of this:

still has to become a complete bike before the BigTwin bike show next Thursday.
and i only have the Wednesday right before that Thursday to make that pile of parts into Daddy Cool again.
ow shit.. that will be an all nighter to finish the damn machine.
i had planned to do the job last week but i got occupied. the FrankenPan (European) gave some grief again.
an coolant manifold leaked and later on broke. and just to give me some more pleasure it was the one the was the hardest to get to.
things to remove: fairing (a shitload of plastic), fake fueltank, air filter box, air box, carbs,the actual fuel tank, cables, some rubber covers and after all that work..

the whole shabang had to go back again.. and i'll be damned, it wouldn't go easy. carbs in double "V" will not cooperate into the manifolds. and the airbox thought the same. so i ended up taking the carbs apart to fit the airbox to the carbs and after that fighting the whole setup as one part back on the manifolds.
needless to say... it took the whole day... the day that was planned for Daddy Cool.
a well.. one built day remaining!

frankenpipe (aka Peters Pan)

today my colleague Peter came by to have me check his bike, he had some problems with his water temp gouge.

it's a Honda Pan European and he uses it as daily, any weather driver, so it is somewhat important that he could keep an eye on the engine temps.
before he arrived at the Garage i could hear him coming from far.. not a sound you'd expect of Pan European..
ah well, i would check that out later..
first up: the water temp sender. as i screwed the thing out the radiator no water came with it.. ouch.. the sender is in the lower parts of the radiator, so there has to be water surrounding it! and it has to pour out when you remove the sender...
that's an easy fix for the sender... fill the engine with some water again, so it's surrounded with water, and hope there was enough in it before to save the bike from serious damage. it seems no serious damage had been done.

now let's check out that loud exhaust sound!
after a short "finger feel" i could sink my whole finger in several holes.. wtf?
so off with the rightside pipes!
now that's odd.. it's a Honda so it's build to perfection right? wrong! the headers are stainless steel but the collector (which is a integrate part of the headers) is of plain steel. so that part was rusted to oblivion!

and trust me.. the other side was even worse!
but as long as the headers were of the bike i could always do some patching up, bastard style!! (my colleague is also a poor fucker like me and a new exhaust system is just to expensive)
so i took some scrap sheet metal, a hammer fired up the welder and started forming and welding..

so after a little while the Franken pipe was ready!

at first i thought i could patch up the holes with small patches, but the collector was to worn out, the metal was way to thin to weld something tight. so on the side where i started it looked like Frankenstein..

for the other side i started making a brand new side of the collector and welded it to the last thick parts of the collector.
also the outlet pipe was rotting away on the welds so i tackled that with some metal sheets to.

the Frankenpipe is air tight again and the Pan is a little more quit!
i used 0,8 MM (MiliMeters) sheet, so i think the collector will survive the bike!