1973 Suzuki GT250 'Robyn': cafe racing commuter

Yes it has some flex, no, it'll do for the purposes of say rego . If it does bend too much the next plan would be up to say 8 or 10mm rod and then shave the ends down to m6 to fit rose joint and rear brake arm still.

It didn't flex too badly when I hauled on it yesterday as a test. Within what I am prepared to tolerate on a rear brake.

More interesting will be that I am running the arm up and the torque rod down so it'll have some weird servo effects but #caferacer

 

Been racking my brains for working out how to do a rear brake return spring, rear brake light switch and rear brake stop.

The solution, as always, is to steal designs from someone else.



In this case, a Monster S2R1000 rear brake assembly setup . Bolt 32 and nut 29 are the adjuster for the rear brake stop, which stops against the rear brake light switch 27, sealed with a washer 36 and lock nut for brake light activation adjustment 41. Elegant solution to both problems that will just require welding a tab off the rear brake lever & a tab off the rear set arm to hold the brake light switch.

Return spring 33 should also be easy to adapt. Nice.

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There's one minor downside: I already need a rear brake light switch for the Monster. So I guess I'll just buy two.

 

Finally home and got a chance to work on this. Made up the rear brake light switch/rear brake lever stop .

Rear brake lever switch

Welded a tab onto the rearset arm.


Also welded an arm onto the brake lever where I can put an adjustable stop.


Adjustable stop shenanigans. You know, welding this was a bastard (@Charlie even didn't think it was possible, which is why my shitty TIGging makes it look so ordinary), but now I can use an M5 bolt and some locknuts to give me an adjustable stop, and also activate the rear brake light switch.


Checking it all lines up ok.


End mill to cut it nice and square so everything fits in nicely.


Mmm, nice hole.


Rear brake light switch/stop assembly all screwed in to check it. Couldn't get it all to line up straight in the middle so I just trimmed it with an angle grinder later.


View from underneath. The tip of this switch is broken which is why I need a new one for the Monster - and now a new one for this too.


All assembled for the last time and it works well. The small hole on the rearset arm is so I can tap in an M3 or M4 thread to put on a heel plate, which will let me hide the switch.


Assembled.

In other news: you go away for a while... and a bloody squatter moves in.






Just in case my normal career doesn't work out
Spent the last 5 minutes knocking up some test pieces to see if I can actually bore things accurately. Yep.



Guess I'll take orders soon to help finance other projects .

 

A) My level of TIG experience (actually - any welding) is close to zero.
B) Thick to thin...
C) ...aluminium .

None of it cast, though I suspect the lever is punched out of some different alloy to the plate that I made the stop lever out of.

Got there in the end, even if it's not 100% pretty. Satin black will hide all sins.

Was really nice to TIG the steel after doing the alloy pedal though, so easy and bam started to stack dimes nicely.

 

Cheers. Fortunately @Charlie is a damned good welder (it's his gear I use anyway), but sometimes you gotta sack up and learn how to do it yourself.

 

Well, it'll have more power and less weight... so I guess that makes it a harley cafe racer?

 

I used special lightweight materials. Good ol' American pig iron is the only way to go.

(But seriously, looked into doing alloy plate based rearsets and short of a lot of milling of something really thick, 12mm plate to move the pegs up and back would weigh more than the steel hoops I did).

 

Plus in the case of the GT, it's even period correct (frames were satin black). Does look excellent done right. Matt black is too matt and gloss just looks weird. Satin's perfect.

 

Brake return spring sorted.



Made up an oil fill cap just because I could.

 

Extended the kickstarter so it clears the gear shifter.

 

Good, good day today. Got some stuff running so spent a bit of today out at @Charlie 's getting some more jobs done. Went better than I could have hoped for.

Firstly, it wouldn't be proper TGR lathe stuff without some knurling. Made up a knurled end for the kickstarter, did some blacksmithing to make a place where it'll sit...


... then bolted it on.


Kick starter clears everything, sits nicely. Going to paint it blaaaaaaaack and then stick a bit of rubber to the back corner of it so it doesn't mark up the engine cases when it's folded in, but otherwise it's sweet as bro.

I also finally got around to fitting the hose to connect fancy 2 stroke oil filler cap to the oil tank. Far better than I needed here, but I used a nice 90º silicone elbow. It'll do.




Had made up spacers to work with the rear socks out of a bunch of washers, but they were only temporary. Thanks to some mathematics and the compound rest on the lathe, I quickly whipped up some tapered spacers to account for the different widths of shocks on different models of GT250.


And with that, it all fell quiet on the northern front. That's the last of the fabbing I think I need to do, so I dragged the bike back home tonight so I can start work on the wiring. That's the first step to getting it running, which means rego, which then means I can hack the spare guards I have, make up expansion chambers, make up a more cafe seat etc etc.


Rad times ahead my friends, rad times ahead.