The Mighty SpongeBob
Puppy
This is a project rebuild story series that I wrote for a magazine. I keep getting so much feedback from it asking for back issues of previous parts of the series that I'm going to post all of the articles here. Tell me if you want more of it.
How to go Motorcycling for the Most Minimal Money Measurable
By
Gary “SpongeBob ChurchMousePoorPants” Smith
Wherein we take a look at the economy of the world today, and of us in particular, and try and see if we become a biker, with a good solid reliable proper bike under us that we can go on rallies and events and track-days with, at a price that wouldn’t even get us a decent helmet, jacket, and boots if we had government tender money to spend on the hobby. Basically, we go scrapyard searching for a machine, and then see if we can rescue it and turn it into a useable everyday bike for a fraction of the cost of buying new.
So it’s a whole Brand New Year again already. And everybody has a whole brand new set of resolutions just waiting to be broken again. And, for manygood people reading this fine tome, most of you have a brand new list of wishes that you hope will come true this time around. And for a lot of you, one of them is the dream of buying a brand new motorbike this year, or even a good 2nd hand-but-brand-new-to-you bike. But there is one major problem. Not many of us have any brand new money anymore these days to buy a brand new bike, or most of the time, any kind of bike, with. Trust me, I saw more than one bike dealer last year get a lump of coal in his Christmas stocking only as a result of the state of the economy.
So what to do if you are bikelessbut are really determined to get onto two wheels this year by hook or by crook with just what limited resources you have?Are you really restricted to only being able to afford one of the “cheaper” lower quality Asian brand Fong Kong machines that you just know will barely last until Easter before it deposits you motionless somewhere out in the VerVerlaateVlaktes? Those great splendiferous Free State plains are magnificent vistas to view when you are barreling along with a solidly throbbing motor underneath you, but when the only throbbing you are experiencing is the pounding in your chest of your heart as it’s about to explode from the exertions of pushing your immobile steed along a deserted dirt road ‘net tussennerens en niksnie’trying to find a farmhouse for assistance somewhere, then the sheen of the joys of motorcycle ownership tends to get a tad tarnished somewhat.
So you can’t afford a new bike, or even a decent 2nd hand one, but you have this long dormant desire to be astride a mighty steed being let loose on the land to travel and explore and to go and ride and crash and fall down in lands far and strange. You want something that you can go to all the great Rallies on, something that will take you on the popular off-road adventures like the Rallye Raid or the famous Alfie Cox weekend every year, and something that you can get to work and back on that will use less fuel and time than your car. So what do you do? Well, we think that we have come up with a possible answer. Buy a rolling wreck or accident written off machine for next to nothing from a junk-yard or scrap dealer, and build it back up yourself. The Top Gear car guys do it all the time and, as Clarkson is so fond of saying, “How hard can it be?”
Sound like a crazy idea? Maybe, but think about this for a minute, almost every new bike that gets bought in this country, whether it’s a superbike or a Harley or a Dual Sporter, within the first 6 months or so of ownership, gets about 80% of its ancillaries replaced with aftermarket or upgraded parts anyway. Don’t believe me? Think about it.
Scenario 1. Customer walks in and buys a brand new superbike. 1st thing he replaces is the exhaust end can. Or maybe the whole system.Then of course a performance air filter. Next thing, an aftermarket screen. Then it’s the engine electronics management system (power commander). Then it’s a set ofRearsetfootpegs. Then fold-up fold-back multi-adjustable levers.Then tail-tidy rear-end bodywork kits. Carbon or billet clutch covers or engine side-cases are available for most superbikes from Gorrila-zilla and the like, so they go on next. If he wants to be really flash then it’s a whole bodywork kit set from someone like Marenello. Going to the extreme, its billet machined triple clamps and fork holders that are easily available. If he really wants to spend, carbon wheels from Blackstone TEK are simple bolt-ons. New forks and shocks can be supplied by guys like RACE! orWilbers. Tuck-in indicator and taillight kits take care of the signaling stuff. So think about it, in a crashed or well used and thrown away bike, what else is there that gets damaged that most people aren’t going to be replacing anyway? As long as there is not a bent frame or shattered engine block, then there is no difference between replacing all the good parts on anew bike with aftermarket parts to replacing all the broken parts of an old bike with aftermarket parts.
But do you think it’s only the superbike boys? Dream on. The Harley guys will happily admit that any Harley-Davidson you buy is only the starting point of a blank canvas for you to make your own personal piece of artwork out of. Their replacement accessories selection to put new parts on inplace of perfectly good working standard parts extends to a catalogue as thick as a phone book for each model in their range.
And the Dualsport guys? Once again, the first thing that happens before a new dualsport bike rolls out the showroom is also an exhaust can gets slipped on. Then it’s a replacement bigger better nicer sump-guard. Then also a high rise windscreen. Then handlebars are immediately upgraded to Renthals, and with that along comes bar raisers, or adjustable triple clamps to move the bars backwards or forwards. Then it’s the shorty two-fingered levers, along with upgraded hand-guards. Then more purposeful wider stronger foot-pegs are a perceived essential must have. Adjustable gear and brake levers are also in the mix to fit different size boots and riding styles. Then shark fin brake protectors, swing-arm guards, front disk protector and headlight guard. If it’s a GS then, cylinder head covers, fuel injector guards, and shock covers all get added. Shorty front mudguards or high-rise front mudguards also replace the stock items. If you are really serious, then a long-range tank gets put on, and if you want, complete new rear shocks and forks from Wilbers again. And again, air filters and aftermarket ignition kits all get added to the mix. Tyres, chains, sprocket sizes etc. all get altered for personal preference before the machine is deemed ‘just as I want it” by the new owner.
So the question becomes, if everyone just takes their brand new very expensive motorcycle and then just replaces most of the new parts, that get damaged in accidents or with 20 years of wear and tear,then why don’t we just buy a 20 year old knacker for really cheap and replace the parts anyway, and then have a reasonably good bike looking all new and shiny for about a quarter the price a new one would cost. It sounded like a really good experiment to try so we thought we would give it a go. Watch what happens here.
The first thing to decide is what type of bike you want. Now unless you have a specific need for a certain style then it’s a no-brainer to be choosing a dual sport bike. DS’s can handle the daily traffic commute, they can tour to Cape Town, you can do a track day on them, and of course, you can attend the very popular off-road weekends like the Wild Dogs guys are always having. So, you want a DS bike, now which one?
Well here’s something to think about. The older the bike the cheaper it will be. So let’s say we are really scraping the bottom of the barrel here and are looking for something older than 15 years, because that will drop us into the cheap as chips or hopefully the “find one abandoned in an old farm shed” category. So going back 15 or 20 years in the dual sport world, we are looking at things like old thumpers (XT500 / 600s, XL500 / 600s, KLR600 / 650s) and the like. But it would be nice to get just a bit bigger engine so also think of Yamaha Super Teneres, Honda Africa Twins, or Suzuki DR Bigs.
While you have every right to be scared of the former list of bikes for having serious worn engines and usage problems, and for being back in the world of drum brakes and twin shocks even, the latter three mentioned here are actually quite safe bets to buy 15 year old versions of for one simple reason, … those bikes were developed in the formative days of the Paris Dakar Rallye when it was just becoming famous, and were the bikes that the factories were building to try and win it with. Unlike these days where the race bikes are all hand-crafted once-off specialist machines that bear not even a gnats nostril of resemblance to that companies production bikes, the race bikes from 2 decades ago were actually very close to what was sold to the general public. So the everyday bike that you bought back then was 90% as well built as a full endurance model. That means things like frame mounts, engine cases, bearings, mounting points, swing-arms, bearing seals, sprocket shafts, and all things like that were built to withstand the rigours of the hardest race of the world, so in a few decades of road work, everything is normally hardly evenworn. Add in the fact that a race bike has to be worked on and repaired every night, or even during the race by the rider, and usually everything is designed to be easily accessible and simple to fix. So for a combination of a strong well-built bike that should be cheap, then the ex-Paris Dakar styled machines are about the best bet to go searching for.
With all that in mind, and to show you how to do a project such as this, we went looking for a bike to do it with. And in keeping with the theme of this exercise that we want to go biking “as soon as possible for as cheap as possible”, we set ourselves a few targets to try and stick to. One was that whatever we bought had to be a runner, and it had to stay a runner while we worked on it, which means no engine rebuilds or frame up restoration must be needed; Two, by the time we are finished it must cost us less than one fifth the price of having just gone out and bought a new bike and Three, all bits we replace on it and any work we have done to it must, as far as possible, be South African made parts. Yep, we are going to support localmanufacturers and products as far as possible in this exercise.
Of course we had to come up with a general average of what a new Dual Sport bike costs, so after looking at all the BMWs, KTMs, new Yamaha SuperTenere, Triumph Explorer, Honda CrossToureretc, we came up with a theoretical cost that a new DS bike would probably set you back about R160 000.00. That means that buying our running junker, and re-equipping it with all new pieces to make it socially acceptable and usable again, can’t cost us more than R32 000.00. Can it be done? Let’s give it a go and see. Game On!
WE FIND A BIKE.
Well that wasn’t a problem was it? A few internet searches and some advert trawling and we came up with a machine. It’s a Honda XRV750 Africa Twin, a 2001 model bike, and it was the right price. The seller wanted R15 000.00 for it but a bit of arguing and waving of a wad of dosh around under his nose soon had him down to R12 000.00 which was a good start. What wasn’t a good start was the extensive bodywork damage that it sported. It has been dropped at speed on its right hand side, there is evidence of a heavy impact on the left side, and the front fairing seems all a bit skew as though it’s been reversed over by a truck at some stage. The passenger foot-peg passenger brackets are broken, the seat is torn, the Rallye computer and the speedo don’t work, only one headlight works, the chain and sprockets are toast, the tyres are square and the foot-peg rubbers are totally worn through. On the plus side though, the tank has just the very tiniest ding in it that isn’t worth bothering with so there will be no panel beating needed, and its starts and runs with the engine sounding fine. We laid the money on the table, took the keys and rode it home.
Unfortunately the ride home brought up its own set of problems very quickly. The chain and sprockets are so worn that taking a handful of throttle had the chain slipping around the rear sprocket. Also the chain has so much slack in it that even with the adjusters at maximum, the chain drags along the top of the swing-arm and is gouging a channel in it. Also the handlebars are quite bent on one end and missing their bar weights on the other. More seriously though there is a horrible graunching noise from the rear end somewhere every time we go over a bump which is ringing alarm bells of very expensive suspension maladies. Also it does splutter and die on occasions and takes some winding of the starter to get it to fire again. And there are some fairly determined cracks in the body panels that were letting then come apart and flap and jump around at speed like Julius Malema at a Broderbund AGM. And finally, about a km from home base, the rear tyre burst. Because it was so close to home, we just rode the last kayorso on the flat tyre and got it into the garage to draw up a SitRep report.
The first thing we said we had to stick to, was that our target was that it had to remain mobile, so tyres, chain and sprockets were the first things we dealt with. And that was ablessing in disguise as we found that the rear tyre fitted to it was a massively oversize superbike tyre that had been rubbing on the plastic shock protector every time it hit a bump which is all that the horrible rear end noise had been. With two brand new CORRECTLY sized tyres in place that problem was solved. Then a chain and sprocket set went on and that was right, and while all the wheels were out and apart, just for safety’s sake, new brake pads went it as well. A new headlight bulb was R12.00 and was popped in by the counter hand from the shop in the parking lot. Another target that we set ourselves was that we were going to use all high quality name brand stuff in this rebuild, so there could be no claims at the end that we stuck to budget by using real cheap and nasty pieces. So Bridgestone tyres, EK Chain, PBR sprockets and proper Ferodo brake pads were used. That got it on the road and going again. A quick session with the old Q-bond bottle got most of the broken plastics reasonably joined up again and in one piece and now we are going to ride it for a month before deciding which is the next direction we have to go in fixing / upgrading it.
After the purchase price we have exactly R20 000.00 left to make it a good looking usable bike. The brake pads were R500.00, the tyres were R 2000.00 fitted, and the chain and sprockets were about R1 500.00. So that is 4 grand spent and its now safely useable and we are up and running on two wheels, even if it does still look ugly as sin and, cosmetically speaking, is a rolling wreck.
Next month we do the bodywork. Or maybe we don’t, maybe we do the foot pegs and guards first. Or maybe we do the handlebars and have the suspension serviced. We dunno, we wait and see.
How to go Motorcycling for the Most Minimal Money Measurable
By
Gary “SpongeBob ChurchMousePoorPants” Smith
Wherein we take a look at the economy of the world today, and of us in particular, and try and see if we become a biker, with a good solid reliable proper bike under us that we can go on rallies and events and track-days with, at a price that wouldn’t even get us a decent helmet, jacket, and boots if we had government tender money to spend on the hobby. Basically, we go scrapyard searching for a machine, and then see if we can rescue it and turn it into a useable everyday bike for a fraction of the cost of buying new.
So it’s a whole Brand New Year again already. And everybody has a whole brand new set of resolutions just waiting to be broken again. And, for manygood people reading this fine tome, most of you have a brand new list of wishes that you hope will come true this time around. And for a lot of you, one of them is the dream of buying a brand new motorbike this year, or even a good 2nd hand-but-brand-new-to-you bike. But there is one major problem. Not many of us have any brand new money anymore these days to buy a brand new bike, or most of the time, any kind of bike, with. Trust me, I saw more than one bike dealer last year get a lump of coal in his Christmas stocking only as a result of the state of the economy.
So what to do if you are bikelessbut are really determined to get onto two wheels this year by hook or by crook with just what limited resources you have?Are you really restricted to only being able to afford one of the “cheaper” lower quality Asian brand Fong Kong machines that you just know will barely last until Easter before it deposits you motionless somewhere out in the VerVerlaateVlaktes? Those great splendiferous Free State plains are magnificent vistas to view when you are barreling along with a solidly throbbing motor underneath you, but when the only throbbing you are experiencing is the pounding in your chest of your heart as it’s about to explode from the exertions of pushing your immobile steed along a deserted dirt road ‘net tussennerens en niksnie’trying to find a farmhouse for assistance somewhere, then the sheen of the joys of motorcycle ownership tends to get a tad tarnished somewhat.
So you can’t afford a new bike, or even a decent 2nd hand one, but you have this long dormant desire to be astride a mighty steed being let loose on the land to travel and explore and to go and ride and crash and fall down in lands far and strange. You want something that you can go to all the great Rallies on, something that will take you on the popular off-road adventures like the Rallye Raid or the famous Alfie Cox weekend every year, and something that you can get to work and back on that will use less fuel and time than your car. So what do you do? Well, we think that we have come up with a possible answer. Buy a rolling wreck or accident written off machine for next to nothing from a junk-yard or scrap dealer, and build it back up yourself. The Top Gear car guys do it all the time and, as Clarkson is so fond of saying, “How hard can it be?”
Sound like a crazy idea? Maybe, but think about this for a minute, almost every new bike that gets bought in this country, whether it’s a superbike or a Harley or a Dual Sporter, within the first 6 months or so of ownership, gets about 80% of its ancillaries replaced with aftermarket or upgraded parts anyway. Don’t believe me? Think about it.
Scenario 1. Customer walks in and buys a brand new superbike. 1st thing he replaces is the exhaust end can. Or maybe the whole system.Then of course a performance air filter. Next thing, an aftermarket screen. Then it’s the engine electronics management system (power commander). Then it’s a set ofRearsetfootpegs. Then fold-up fold-back multi-adjustable levers.Then tail-tidy rear-end bodywork kits. Carbon or billet clutch covers or engine side-cases are available for most superbikes from Gorrila-zilla and the like, so they go on next. If he wants to be really flash then it’s a whole bodywork kit set from someone like Marenello. Going to the extreme, its billet machined triple clamps and fork holders that are easily available. If he really wants to spend, carbon wheels from Blackstone TEK are simple bolt-ons. New forks and shocks can be supplied by guys like RACE! orWilbers. Tuck-in indicator and taillight kits take care of the signaling stuff. So think about it, in a crashed or well used and thrown away bike, what else is there that gets damaged that most people aren’t going to be replacing anyway? As long as there is not a bent frame or shattered engine block, then there is no difference between replacing all the good parts on anew bike with aftermarket parts to replacing all the broken parts of an old bike with aftermarket parts.
But do you think it’s only the superbike boys? Dream on. The Harley guys will happily admit that any Harley-Davidson you buy is only the starting point of a blank canvas for you to make your own personal piece of artwork out of. Their replacement accessories selection to put new parts on inplace of perfectly good working standard parts extends to a catalogue as thick as a phone book for each model in their range.
And the Dualsport guys? Once again, the first thing that happens before a new dualsport bike rolls out the showroom is also an exhaust can gets slipped on. Then it’s a replacement bigger better nicer sump-guard. Then also a high rise windscreen. Then handlebars are immediately upgraded to Renthals, and with that along comes bar raisers, or adjustable triple clamps to move the bars backwards or forwards. Then it’s the shorty two-fingered levers, along with upgraded hand-guards. Then more purposeful wider stronger foot-pegs are a perceived essential must have. Adjustable gear and brake levers are also in the mix to fit different size boots and riding styles. Then shark fin brake protectors, swing-arm guards, front disk protector and headlight guard. If it’s a GS then, cylinder head covers, fuel injector guards, and shock covers all get added. Shorty front mudguards or high-rise front mudguards also replace the stock items. If you are really serious, then a long-range tank gets put on, and if you want, complete new rear shocks and forks from Wilbers again. And again, air filters and aftermarket ignition kits all get added to the mix. Tyres, chains, sprocket sizes etc. all get altered for personal preference before the machine is deemed ‘just as I want it” by the new owner.
So the question becomes, if everyone just takes their brand new very expensive motorcycle and then just replaces most of the new parts, that get damaged in accidents or with 20 years of wear and tear,then why don’t we just buy a 20 year old knacker for really cheap and replace the parts anyway, and then have a reasonably good bike looking all new and shiny for about a quarter the price a new one would cost. It sounded like a really good experiment to try so we thought we would give it a go. Watch what happens here.
The first thing to decide is what type of bike you want. Now unless you have a specific need for a certain style then it’s a no-brainer to be choosing a dual sport bike. DS’s can handle the daily traffic commute, they can tour to Cape Town, you can do a track day on them, and of course, you can attend the very popular off-road weekends like the Wild Dogs guys are always having. So, you want a DS bike, now which one?
Well here’s something to think about. The older the bike the cheaper it will be. So let’s say we are really scraping the bottom of the barrel here and are looking for something older than 15 years, because that will drop us into the cheap as chips or hopefully the “find one abandoned in an old farm shed” category. So going back 15 or 20 years in the dual sport world, we are looking at things like old thumpers (XT500 / 600s, XL500 / 600s, KLR600 / 650s) and the like. But it would be nice to get just a bit bigger engine so also think of Yamaha Super Teneres, Honda Africa Twins, or Suzuki DR Bigs.
While you have every right to be scared of the former list of bikes for having serious worn engines and usage problems, and for being back in the world of drum brakes and twin shocks even, the latter three mentioned here are actually quite safe bets to buy 15 year old versions of for one simple reason, … those bikes were developed in the formative days of the Paris Dakar Rallye when it was just becoming famous, and were the bikes that the factories were building to try and win it with. Unlike these days where the race bikes are all hand-crafted once-off specialist machines that bear not even a gnats nostril of resemblance to that companies production bikes, the race bikes from 2 decades ago were actually very close to what was sold to the general public. So the everyday bike that you bought back then was 90% as well built as a full endurance model. That means things like frame mounts, engine cases, bearings, mounting points, swing-arms, bearing seals, sprocket shafts, and all things like that were built to withstand the rigours of the hardest race of the world, so in a few decades of road work, everything is normally hardly evenworn. Add in the fact that a race bike has to be worked on and repaired every night, or even during the race by the rider, and usually everything is designed to be easily accessible and simple to fix. So for a combination of a strong well-built bike that should be cheap, then the ex-Paris Dakar styled machines are about the best bet to go searching for.
With all that in mind, and to show you how to do a project such as this, we went looking for a bike to do it with. And in keeping with the theme of this exercise that we want to go biking “as soon as possible for as cheap as possible”, we set ourselves a few targets to try and stick to. One was that whatever we bought had to be a runner, and it had to stay a runner while we worked on it, which means no engine rebuilds or frame up restoration must be needed; Two, by the time we are finished it must cost us less than one fifth the price of having just gone out and bought a new bike and Three, all bits we replace on it and any work we have done to it must, as far as possible, be South African made parts. Yep, we are going to support localmanufacturers and products as far as possible in this exercise.
Of course we had to come up with a general average of what a new Dual Sport bike costs, so after looking at all the BMWs, KTMs, new Yamaha SuperTenere, Triumph Explorer, Honda CrossToureretc, we came up with a theoretical cost that a new DS bike would probably set you back about R160 000.00. That means that buying our running junker, and re-equipping it with all new pieces to make it socially acceptable and usable again, can’t cost us more than R32 000.00. Can it be done? Let’s give it a go and see. Game On!
WE FIND A BIKE.
Well that wasn’t a problem was it? A few internet searches and some advert trawling and we came up with a machine. It’s a Honda XRV750 Africa Twin, a 2001 model bike, and it was the right price. The seller wanted R15 000.00 for it but a bit of arguing and waving of a wad of dosh around under his nose soon had him down to R12 000.00 which was a good start. What wasn’t a good start was the extensive bodywork damage that it sported. It has been dropped at speed on its right hand side, there is evidence of a heavy impact on the left side, and the front fairing seems all a bit skew as though it’s been reversed over by a truck at some stage. The passenger foot-peg passenger brackets are broken, the seat is torn, the Rallye computer and the speedo don’t work, only one headlight works, the chain and sprockets are toast, the tyres are square and the foot-peg rubbers are totally worn through. On the plus side though, the tank has just the very tiniest ding in it that isn’t worth bothering with so there will be no panel beating needed, and its starts and runs with the engine sounding fine. We laid the money on the table, took the keys and rode it home.
Unfortunately the ride home brought up its own set of problems very quickly. The chain and sprockets are so worn that taking a handful of throttle had the chain slipping around the rear sprocket. Also the chain has so much slack in it that even with the adjusters at maximum, the chain drags along the top of the swing-arm and is gouging a channel in it. Also the handlebars are quite bent on one end and missing their bar weights on the other. More seriously though there is a horrible graunching noise from the rear end somewhere every time we go over a bump which is ringing alarm bells of very expensive suspension maladies. Also it does splutter and die on occasions and takes some winding of the starter to get it to fire again. And there are some fairly determined cracks in the body panels that were letting then come apart and flap and jump around at speed like Julius Malema at a Broderbund AGM. And finally, about a km from home base, the rear tyre burst. Because it was so close to home, we just rode the last kayorso on the flat tyre and got it into the garage to draw up a SitRep report.
The first thing we said we had to stick to, was that our target was that it had to remain mobile, so tyres, chain and sprockets were the first things we dealt with. And that was ablessing in disguise as we found that the rear tyre fitted to it was a massively oversize superbike tyre that had been rubbing on the plastic shock protector every time it hit a bump which is all that the horrible rear end noise had been. With two brand new CORRECTLY sized tyres in place that problem was solved. Then a chain and sprocket set went on and that was right, and while all the wheels were out and apart, just for safety’s sake, new brake pads went it as well. A new headlight bulb was R12.00 and was popped in by the counter hand from the shop in the parking lot. Another target that we set ourselves was that we were going to use all high quality name brand stuff in this rebuild, so there could be no claims at the end that we stuck to budget by using real cheap and nasty pieces. So Bridgestone tyres, EK Chain, PBR sprockets and proper Ferodo brake pads were used. That got it on the road and going again. A quick session with the old Q-bond bottle got most of the broken plastics reasonably joined up again and in one piece and now we are going to ride it for a month before deciding which is the next direction we have to go in fixing / upgrading it.
After the purchase price we have exactly R20 000.00 left to make it a good looking usable bike. The brake pads were R500.00, the tyres were R 2000.00 fitted, and the chain and sprockets were about R1 500.00. So that is 4 grand spent and its now safely useable and we are up and running on two wheels, even if it does still look ugly as sin and, cosmetically speaking, is a rolling wreck.
Next month we do the bodywork. Or maybe we don’t, maybe we do the foot pegs and guards first. Or maybe we do the handlebars and have the suspension serviced. We dunno, we wait and see.
