Progress

Well the Honda has been standing long enough for the petrol in the tank to start going off (yes fuel also goes off).

I found a bike that is a bit newer that was involved in a crash but the motor made it unscathed, bought it, and started the transplant of the motor from one frame to the other.

The frame that I got had a whole bunch of little things on that are still in very good condition, that mainly makes the projet a little better aesthetically. What a great experience working on something old and having spares right there on hand, little things like a power cable that still has all the little rubber end covers on, handle bar controls that have not been through the war and so on.

I also got my bike lift working and the project bike is now mounted on the lift. this makes it wonderfull working since the bike can easily be moved around the workshop and is a little higher so no more back breaking bending over or sitting on the cold cement floor.

Currently I'm waiting for some spares to service the front brake master cylinder and a new brake light switch for the front brakes. Hopefully everything works and we will have this bike back on the road within the next month or two! hope to keep you posted! 

Play house

A couple of months ago I got given a pile of crates that required a better end than the scrap heap. so i stripped them all into sheets and designed a little playhouse for my 2 year old girl. I bought some 38x38mm batons that were treated for insects and cut slots in them. i then slid the sheets into the slots and made a basic box with holes for windows and a door.

Needless to say this Impressed Emily to no end! she was running screaming with her hands above her head lie the woman that get stuff on the Oprah's favourite things show.

I lined the door and window holes with more slotted batons. making the structure stiffer and stiffer as I went.

No house is complete without a roof, so up went some trusses and i made a little patio outside the front door. i had paint left from  painting my house and covered the entire structure with a couple of coats to seal and cover the wood.



With it being easier to paint a room where you can stand up straight, i decided to get most of the painting done before the roof went on. All the trusses got a coat of Plascons "Carrot Muffin", and i painted the inside of the house the same colour as Emily's bedroom.

Had to putt a tarp over the top since it started raining and the roof was not up yet...

I took some more of the sheets and cut them into strips fr the roof. A friend let me use his nail gun to get the sheets onto the roof. After being very sceptical of the nail gun idea i must say that after having used one, the sincere need to have one in my tool kit settled on me in earnest. Now I just need to convince my wife. the entire roof got coated in a water based bitumen type product and then painted with roof paint.

Things got a bit busy and the house stayed like this for a couple of months. Until last week when my wife reminded me that the house still needs a door. I remembered an old folding desk that we converted into a shelf by removing the desk top. I thought that a solid pine stable door would do the trick and proceeded and cutting up the old desk top. I routed a lip so the doors could hook into each other and made a heart shaped peep hole in the upper door. these then got hung with some cabinet hinges, and it looked pretty cool.

Everything then got taken off, sanded down and varnished. In anticipation of this door i had turned some door handles on my little lathe and made something up so that there would be some way to grip the door.

The handles got mounted on the door with some sliding bolts on the inside to connect the upper and lover door and to "lock" the door into the door frame. I added a little piece of off cut wood to the lower end of the door frame to ensure that the door could not be pushed past closed by an over enthusiastic little one.

Inside of the house needed some touch ups so i repainted the ceilings and the touched up the trusses. the skirtings also got painted. no little cottage under a fig tree is complete without some terracotta tiles so next i taped some masking tape on the floor and painted the floor. .

The end result was pretty pleasing, Emily loves it and all her dolls have had a meal in her "new" house.

Covered in clay

So my mom in law turned 60 a couple of weekends ago and we signed up for a visit to celebrate. The visit turned into an early Christmas because we will not be seeing that part of the family over the actual Christmas time. 

This year moms house was full and we got to stay with my wife's dad on the farm just outside the village. He lives in a house that he literally built with his own hands. 

Cob, a mixture of clay and dry grass, is rolled into balls, slapped in place and shaped with your hands making the wall. This is done in a circular fashion, working your way around the wall until you get back to where you started, by which time the cob should be dry enough to start the next layer.

This process is followed until the desired height s reached. After all this you need to seal the clay from the rain, else it will just become a neatly washed pile of mud. To seal it, it gets plastered with a mix of clay and lime. Then you roof it, floor it, furnish it and move in (in short that is).

What a lovely place. Because of the thick natural walls the temperature is beautifully regulated inside, summer and winter. None of the walls are perfectly straight, giving the house a lovely natural feel.

At night everything settles due to temperature differences, making the house feel alive as it moves at night. A huge porch gives a lovely farmhouse feel and give a great vantage point to enjoy a stunning view over the farm and of the surrounding mountains.

The only thing missing is a line up of motorcycles and some sort of a test track... LOL!! I don't think that dad will bite though... :)

tripple power for the tandem

well. here we go. the family fun ride has become a little cumbersome and required some extra power. so a little (and i mean little) searching brought up a local guy in south africa that imports a little engine for a bicycle and that just seemed right up my ally check it out at www.ecotrax.biz . order placed and took delivery of the kit yesterday.

with this part of the blog i hope to keep up with the progress of the transformation of the bike. will start posting pics as soon as there are some pics to post.

hope you enjoy.

Just standing looking pretty

"I would really like to have one...".  "No problem just buy it cash". That statement narrowed my wildest dreams down to a, well lets say a vintage bike. no problem, I would buy an old running bike cut it up and make a trike or something. Then the only thing was to decide what would "look nice". I settled on a specific bike, the old double overhead cam CB750 Honda's. Maybe means nothing to a reader but meant everything to me. Four exhaust pipes wildly protruding out the front of the engine and real bike sound - like on the YouTube clips. An incentive bonus paid out and the search was on, limited only by a budget.
I found what seemed to be the bike while surveying the Gumtree prospects. The only thing about it I disliked was the color but that was going to change regardless... I bought it!

Loaded the bike on the back of the pickup and brought it home. how i wish that first impressions lasted... This thing was a not nearly as nice as it looked... In fact it did not run anymore. Some nasty words were exchanged with the seller and the work started.

Tried this, changed that, set this like that. Would not have known where to start if it were not for the guys from www.cb750c.com . This was an incredible resource and still is for that matter. If you have one of these bikes, join the forum, but please read the new members thread...

Got it running and started the fun task of sorting out the cosmetics. Enjoyed a three month long adventure of painting the bike with rattle cans and kitchen curtains. Hard work but a good experience.

Finally a bike that looked like I want it to look. It was a fun two weeks that it was running until one morning on the way to work when I had to turn back and change transport.

That is where we are now. The bike is not running again. at least now it looks good.