Ms. Braaaaaap - the (re-)awakening

So recently I had dug out the ol' Ms. Braaaaaap, flooded the carb, gave her two rather manly kicks and there she was. Roaring into life and terrorizing the neighbourhood as a good girl with a difficult past would.

A couple of days later she wouldn't. I tried offering her coffee, but that didn't exactly help as such I concluded it must be an electrical fault. Now luckily these old girls aren't exactly equipped with a wiring loom that would make a Saturn rocket proud, but these do have their moments (see below).

To start things off, I had gotten a new coil and plug-cap, mainly because I used them on another bike (without success) and I had my doubts, whether it would work.

Remove the seat and fuel tank, undo two bolts and unplug a cable and you're there.  But still nothing.

Now as you can "clearly" see, the white cable is supposed to be yellow and as it is well bleached, I mixed it up with the white and black cable. Plugged it in...

... brrRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAPpppp. (It's what she does.) Also blindingly obvious in the picture, why you should convert to 12V and LED instrument lighting.  😉

And because I was working on it anyway, I tweaked an old Sebring Enduro 2 to fit onto the old  Ms. Braaaaaap, to cut noise-emissions back a bit and finally get my MOT sorted. 

Ms. Braaaaaap - dressing up

Ever since I resurrected Ms. Braaaaaap, I decided that contrary to my normal belief, I'd also do some cosmetic work on the old girl.

One of the things I completely stopped noticing was that the cylinder head was a bit cosmetically challenged.

Which was quite easily remedied with a bit of heat resistant paint and a file to clean up the cooling fins on the engine.

The pictures don't really do it justice, but I do have to admit it looks nicer and the bike looks a lot more tidy than before. But Ms. Braaaaaap is a cruel mistress, was she greatful for me taking care about her looks? Nope. The rear tube is flat (probably damaged during the tyre install) and she now sports an odd misfire and then she invariably cuts out, which is either the coil or some blockage in one of the carbs air-passages. Well, I was planning to spend a bit more time wrenching on her, so I guess she'll get her will...

Ms. Braaaaaap - gets a new exhaust

To (incorrectly) quote Mark Twain: Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. Or in the case of Ms. Braaaaaap, I did toy with the idea of selling her, but as there were no (serious) takers, I guess she'll stay around a bit longer.

She suffered from a few (smaller) issues like the tail-light not working correctly, which by now all have been remedied (more or less, but more on that in another post). Except for a very, very, very noisy exhaust. And those who know me, are aware that I am not exactly very girlish in such matters.

So here we have the (old) offender, which was the very first exhaust I made, back then with a stainless steel electrode.

As I normally don't have the sidecover off the next two photos show my homegrown airbox-lid and a modified MZ TS250 inlet rubber (no pre-silencer on this one anymore) to make getting the carb in and out much easier!

As it was MOT-time, I though, well I still have that old beaten up Sebring, which I could "just" slap on and that's it. So I took the old exhaust and wanted to fit the Sebring, but nope... won't go over the seal on the stainless downpipe.

While I was at it, it seemed rude not to extract the broke bolt that was stuck in there.

So as that clearly didn't work, I decided to say f*ck it, I'll build a new exhaust straight away. These universal 1.75" silencers are a sort of personal favourite and I had an old waterjet cut mounting plate left over.

Test fitting a 90 degree bend behind the rear shock, following the idea, that some sharper bends would slow down the exhaust gas and thereby reduce the exhaust-crackle notably. 

The bracket was only partially useful and needed some tweaking with the bandsaw. 

After a bit of drilling I welded the cut-off-part onto the silencer...

... and there you go. Might be a bit long for the taste of some, but it's quiet (enough) and doesn't hamper performance, which means I can use the bike regularly again. 

That's what the exhaust looks like, when taken off the bike.

And after a nicely spirited ride to the MOT man, who failed me again, as he thinks no exhausts without "E"-markings are allowed anymore. (Which is wrong, but no amount of arguing with him could convince him. So I guess, I'll do a few more modifications, including re-installing the diskbrake-frontend and then get all those mods added to the paperwork, so I can enjoy the XT without remorse.)

Before you ask, there's nothing substantially wrong with the drum-brake frontend, it actually stops quite well, for a drumbrake (running some rather soft Ferodo shoes) and even when compared with the stock XT600 diskbrake, but I didn't forget the amount of maintenance work involved to keep it that way, if you actually use the XT regularly.

Ms. Braaaaaap - my XT500 is being resurrected and gets new clothes

Ms. Braaaaaaap is one of the most long-term members in my stable. It's my trusty XT500, which I bought almost a decade ago.

The first two pics are the actual pictures off ebay, which were coupled with a really terrible description of the bike and truth be told the old girl was in a mighty sorry state.

 

This picture was taken at least two years later as it already shows Ms. Braaaaaap with the XT600 frontend and panniers. At about this time I did a lot of miles on a by then already very, very tired stock XT500 engine with an absolutely unknown amount of miles on the piston. 

 

 About two years ago I gave the old girl a quite extensive makeover, polished the fuel tank and was very close to selling her. Luckily nobody bought her back then. Unfortunately she also developed some nasty backfiring issues (more on that a little later) and due to an overwhelming amount of other projects I put her aside for a while. In fact until about pretty much on the day two weeks ago.

What you see here is a manual ignition advancer. Nifty piece of kit, rather hassle free if lubed regularly there's not much to go wrong, right? Well, don't cheat and only look at the first picture to spot the missing part...

 Correct, one of the flywheel-weight-springs has snapped and disappeared. But...

 ... blessed is he who hoards. Nicked the advancer off my spare engine and now the old girl is gifted with a rock solid idle that could be used as a heart-pace-maker... for  hyperactive squirrels.

 Now that wiring and the rusty white mudguards are a bit of an eye-sore to be honest...

 ... but there's a way to sort that one out. 

 The other thing was all the wiring was... rather functional, but not exactly aesthetically pleasing. And the battery box was a tad rusty as well, so that required more than "just" a lick of rust-remover and paint.

The last thing on the list was a very, very stiff throttle. It turned out, that with the TM36 installed, you have to use the correct combination of holes on the throttle-butterfly or the closer will tighten up before the opener cable. Ultimately a DR600 throttle grip and new cables will solve this issue. 













 And... ain't she pretty? Well, yes that exhaust's gotta go rather sooner than later. As I have a way more elegant replacement waithing for its turn.