La Macchina - Elektronik Sachse Ignition swap (part 4)

 On the front of my Guzzi's engine sits a (mildly corroded) Saprisa alternator. Unfortunately as I found out when getting the Guzzi road legal, under the tank sits a well broken points ignition, which didn't hesitate to slowly fry one of the new coils in the course of about 80km. 

Admittedly the kit comes with a bunch of really good instructions and whilst I am admittedly not fully a fan of the plug that goes into the new ignition box, I have to admit, so far (like almost 5 months later), it works ok.  

Wired up the box and then finally removed the original distributor.

Old girl fired right up and did her thing. With the fried coil, unfortunately, it would only do this for a rather limited period of time. So a set of GPZ500 coils came to the rescue. 

In order to install them, I quickly fabricated a nice and compact coil holder. 

 ... and now with this unholy union, the old girl does what she is supposed to do: Fire up on the button and an idle when hot, that is simply unbelievable.

La Macchina - a sidecar wheel (part 3)

 When it comes to engineering decisions, I am mostly a very sensible person. Some would even go as far as to consider to call me a stereotypical engineer. But even I have feelings. 

Two-tone 2CV wheels? Yes, Smart car wheels would have only cost marginally more are hub-centered and don't need special paperwork to be run with a 135/70R15 tyre. So we're making an adapter for a bolt-centered wheel. As you'll find out this is only the prototype to see, if it's the right size etc. Thus it will be made from steel. 

Base plate is 200x200mmx40mm, the tube is some thick-wall seamless 100x60mm that I chose so it would fit over a pair of 6204-2RS ball bearings.

Marked out a 160mm bolt hole circle and inscribed the 3 mounting holes with a caliper.

Bored the tube for the bearings to go in with a nice satisfying press-fit.

Quick test fit on the axle - will need a little spacer, but other than that...

Drilling a 60mm hole (with a press-fit) turned out to be quite the task and kept me busy for at least two or three hours, especially as my biggest drill bit is 20mm and I had some serious deflection issus, i.e. the hole became an odd shaped taper, because I got a bit greedy with the boring bar.

Then it was back to the lathe to make sure I could turn it into something round. 

Parts of an old Lada Niva brake piston found its way onto the axle to act as a spacer.

Call me a chicken, but in the end I laid down a few weld beads, just to be sure.

When classic engineering and trigonometry works:

As you can tell by the following two pictures: 

This looks pretty cool and the order of events as presented in this build is completely broken, which is mainly due to the fact that I often worked on multiple things at the same time, because I had to wait on parts, etc. After a few short testrides it became apparent that the basic design is sound and that a second version made from aluminium is definitely the way forward.

As I bought an offcut, I ended up with a slightly beefier wheel flange than initially planned. 

 

The rest of the work was pretty much the same, except everything goes a lot quicker in aluminium.

 Quick test-fit on the wheel:

Press the center tube with the bearings in and install it. (Once more with a cheeky little weld on the back-side just for good measure.)

La Macchina - making her rideable (part 2.1)

 It's time to catch up a bit - not only is the old Guzzi registered by now (as a solo), but is actually almost ready to get re-registered as a sidecar. 

Somewhere along the way the red tank turned black...

 

... and then it was time to rejet the carbs - those floorboards are actually really, really handy.

Jetting, which works rather well with cheap pod filters and the stock exhaust:

Mainjet: 130
Pilot: 50
Needle: K18/3
Starter jet: 70
Atomiser: AR268 

Next stop was an oil-change.

 A bit of oil on the choke cable (only to burn through the sheath a little later, because I routed it too close to the exhaust).

And afterwards do the most racing thing I know - turn an old oil bottle into a catch can. (If you ever get the chance to look under the hood or work on an older F1 car... you'll find them everywhere.)

I also got me a set of reasonably priced cast wheels - guess what the seller forgot to mention in the advertisement.

 ... and lastly there was the task of converting a Cagiva Elefant right-side handlebar control, so I could get rid of the enormous throttle cable assembly on the Guzzi. (Which in my case was broken and wouldn't stay put on the bars.)

Turns out, they are identical internally and are just using different plugs at the end. 

Throw in a bit of the usual maintenance and the old girl passed her inspection without the slightest problem. The fact that I was rather lucky to make it back home... well that was something I didn't know about.