wallyengles
Pack Dog
- Joined
- Oct 10, 2010
- Messages
- 61
- Reaction score
- 0
- Bike
- Yamaha XT600
So, I've had a somewhat continuous project running for the past couple of years. Round about 2008 my dad heard that a buddy of his had an old moped or 'help my trap' standing in the shed on his farm. This individual however, is the type of guy with hundreds of projects standing around everywhere and is tired of all of them, but never sells or gives away.
When we saw it standing there under a layer of dust and grime we thought it would be the perfect bike to restore due to it being extremely simple.
After much begging and trade options and and and, he finally stopped by one day and just dropped it off. I was in matric at the time and decided the best course of action, being a teenager that knows everything (not that I'm much better now :biggrin
, was to totally strip the bike. The type of strip down where everything goes into one big box because 'I'll remember where that goes'. Suffice to say I didn't.
Now, when the previous owner had the bike he decided that it had to be orange. So, out came the spray can and seat, cables, wires, lights and tyres were all painted orange. So after I had stripped the bike I took all the frame bits and generously applied some paint stripper. If you've ever used paint stripper you'll by now have gotten the feeling that, with my skill level, it didn't go too well. So I sanded the frame for about a month then messed it all up with the worst paint job in history. Despondent, the frame joined the rest of the parts in the box and got stored in an outside shed.
Skip forward to last year and I find our garden worker scooping up leaves with the chain guard :eek7: so out came the boxes and I started to slowly re-assemble the whole bike, after a few months and the coming of the new year I finally finished assembly and not a single part got lost, a miracle.
I then, for the second time, stripped the whole cycle, labelling literally each washer. Sanded and painted all the bits again and had other bits chromed. Whilst being chromed the headlight surround melted in the acid bath and is until now the only missing piece in the puzzle.
I've assembled most of the cycle and cleaned everything again. Only after cleaning up the engine did I find the Laverda stamp on the casing, much to my surprise. The gearbox still had oil in after lying in a box for three years, the chain was essentially seized in the position I left it but after two cleaning sessions and lying in brake fluid then oil I've gotten it nice and loose again.
The only place I could source tires for the bike were in Holland for the princely sum of R 1000,00 and I had someone literally carry them in his carry on to bring them here.
Interestingly the bike is stopped using cable operated disc brakes that took me a while to figure out how to assemble. It was produced in fairly small numbers, not sure if that's good or bad but this particular one has seen some decent mileage judging from the sprockets and brake condition. I also haven't tried starting it yet but I will soon! It was also registered at some point since I could just make out a TX number plate on the front and rear number plates. I'm gonna paint on a random TX number in white to give it a nice look.
Here's a site with some more info on these little bikes (not much though): https://www.laverdino.de/Laverdino.htm
I've posted some pics below of how it looks now and one of how I got it exactly there aren't many as I've done most of the work at random periods and haven't thought to take detailed photos. I'm going to be finishing the rest off and getting what orange is left out of the picture and hoping I end up with at least a pretty conversation piece. Sorry for the quality of the photos, and my below average writing skills.
How I got it:
Some views:
The pedigree:
When we saw it standing there under a layer of dust and grime we thought it would be the perfect bike to restore due to it being extremely simple.
After much begging and trade options and and and, he finally stopped by one day and just dropped it off. I was in matric at the time and decided the best course of action, being a teenager that knows everything (not that I'm much better now :biggrin
, was to totally strip the bike. The type of strip down where everything goes into one big box because 'I'll remember where that goes'. Suffice to say I didn't.Now, when the previous owner had the bike he decided that it had to be orange. So, out came the spray can and seat, cables, wires, lights and tyres were all painted orange. So after I had stripped the bike I took all the frame bits and generously applied some paint stripper. If you've ever used paint stripper you'll by now have gotten the feeling that, with my skill level, it didn't go too well. So I sanded the frame for about a month then messed it all up with the worst paint job in history. Despondent, the frame joined the rest of the parts in the box and got stored in an outside shed.
Skip forward to last year and I find our garden worker scooping up leaves with the chain guard :eek7: so out came the boxes and I started to slowly re-assemble the whole bike, after a few months and the coming of the new year I finally finished assembly and not a single part got lost, a miracle.
I then, for the second time, stripped the whole cycle, labelling literally each washer. Sanded and painted all the bits again and had other bits chromed. Whilst being chromed the headlight surround melted in the acid bath and is until now the only missing piece in the puzzle.
I've assembled most of the cycle and cleaned everything again. Only after cleaning up the engine did I find the Laverda stamp on the casing, much to my surprise. The gearbox still had oil in after lying in a box for three years, the chain was essentially seized in the position I left it but after two cleaning sessions and lying in brake fluid then oil I've gotten it nice and loose again.
The only place I could source tires for the bike were in Holland for the princely sum of R 1000,00 and I had someone literally carry them in his carry on to bring them here.
Interestingly the bike is stopped using cable operated disc brakes that took me a while to figure out how to assemble. It was produced in fairly small numbers, not sure if that's good or bad but this particular one has seen some decent mileage judging from the sprockets and brake condition. I also haven't tried starting it yet but I will soon! It was also registered at some point since I could just make out a TX number plate on the front and rear number plates. I'm gonna paint on a random TX number in white to give it a nice look.
Here's a site with some more info on these little bikes (not much though): https://www.laverdino.de/Laverdino.htm
I've posted some pics below of how it looks now and one of how I got it exactly there aren't many as I've done most of the work at random periods and haven't thought to take detailed photos. I'm going to be finishing the rest off and getting what orange is left out of the picture and hoping I end up with at least a pretty conversation piece. Sorry for the quality of the photos, and my below average writing skills.
How I got it:
Some views:
The pedigree:
