Honda QR50

 Back in 2019 son Thomas bought a pile of bits which he didn't have time to rebuild. It took 18 months but the little beast was finished late Spring 2021. The eBay picture looked like this:

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

Oh, and everything was covered in red poster paint.

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

This was 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, 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.