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| Suzuki RG 125/250 nose fairing from the mid '80s |
It doesn't look like it, but there has been some progress on the Ducati Superlight DS project.
Despite using mostly Ducati parts from ostensibly similar bikes, nothing fits together particularly well. The stretched steel swingarm is off a 750SS and this fitted easily to the SL motor. However the Multistrada DS motor is different in the way it fits its swingarm and the 750SS swingarm doesn't just bolt up!
This would have been a difficult problem if the bike was running rear suspension, but this bike is going to have a ride-height adjustable lockup strut and so the swingarm doesn't need bearings or bushes 'cos it's not going to be moving.
So the swingarm is held in place (side to side) by two cylindrical spacers with a slight interference fit. The swingarm and spacer sit on a titanium pivot and the pivot is held stationary by two M10 titanium pinch bolts. It worked out much better than I was expecting and I'm confident in it.
At the other end of the swingarm, the chain-adjuster setup has been redone. It used to have one, and it used to work okay, but it was built in a hurry and I wasn't really happy with it. There's nothing very radical about the new design, it's just built better.
The other issue with the DS motor is that the engine mounting bolts are diameter 12mm while the SL ones are 10mm. So I drilled out the mounting bolt holes in the SL frames and expected the DS bolts to fit. They didn't.
Initially I thought this was 'cos the flange under the bolt head was too wide to fit the recess in the SL frame. So I turned down the flange in the lathe and then discovered that the DS engine bolts were just too short...
So the solution for this is two 330 x 12 round steel bars (I have some titanium stashed away to remake these at a later date) threaded M12 x 1.75 for the first 20mm at each end, and some 30 x 20mm spacers to position the M12 Nyloc nuts outboard of the frame recesses' (the M12 nuts will fit inside the recesses but there isn't room to fit a tool in there as well, so the nuts couldn't be tightened - hence the spacers).
This is a brutal solution given the effort put into removing weight from this bike, so it might get revisited if I can think of something more elegant/lighter.
Oh, and I picked up a nose fairing off a Suzuki RG 125/250.
So tune in next week for more progress.
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| Stretched steel swingarm from a Ducati 750SS |
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| Freshly made chain adjuster assembly |
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| Weird-ass locked-up swingarm pivot arrangement |
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| This is going to look deadly in matte black with shark eyes |
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| Ratty 1000DS motor with titanium bling and new chain rollers. New belts are on the way |
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| Swingarm again |
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| 330x12mm diameter engine mounting bar with M12 Nyloc and 30mm long spacer. Not happy with the weight of this arrangement! |
Images - Mercenary Garage
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