QR50 - Finished

Well, it's taken 18 months but the little beast is finished. The eBay picture looked like this:

What is only obvious after the event is that the frame is bent, the piston is cracked, the crank threads are all damaged, the kickstart splines are gone, the exhaust is missing, the airbox is missing, the forks are completely shot (the springs, for example, are rusted away to dust) and the tyres, tubes and tapes are ripped and mismatched. The kickstart pedal is wrong - it fits but is for a right-hand kickstart, so the pedal folds the wrong way; the handlebars are wrong and the levers and grips are all missing.

Oh, and everything is covered in red poster paint.

The good bits? the tank is solid, the front mudguard is solid, the seat base is good and the whole of the transmission is good. Most of the generator is ok apart from the pickup and the carburetter is repairable; the cylinder bore is good, but there is a fin missing. The wheels are round, the rims are straight and all of the brake parts are there - but the linings have come off.

This is how it arrived:

It's been a brilliant little project, and I have learned much. I've used the mini-lathe to repair the crankshaft threads, the kickstart splines and to make the fork sliders, stanchions and bushes. I've used the welder to make the silencer and the airbox, and to overlay the damaged kickstart shaft ready for new splines and to weld up the forks.

I've discovered how to weld plastic - there was a hole in the rear mudguard caused by the rear tyre wearing through. I've learned to look and to see the wood for the trees - I had painted the frame before I realised that the reason the rear mudguard was worn and the seat didn't fit was that the frame was bent.

I've learned how to wrap plastic parts - the tank, mudguards and number plate are polythene and impossible to paint.

After all that, it seems to work - it starts, drives and stops through I need a small person to test it.

I hope they like it.