building up the chassis

This weekend has been ear-marked in my diary for many weeks. Two days to myself with no interruptions (other than the occasional running of family here and there).  A good lump of time therefore to make significant progress.

This was the first time that I've had chance to look properly at the parts that I had powder-coated before Christmas - Unwrapping a newly powder-coated machine part is not a dissimilar experience to unpacking your new iPhone - it is a moment of excitement and wonder.  I unwrapped 3 parts; the main frame, the rear swinging arm and the front forks - and decided that I should put them all together.

Rebuilding the front forks is quite fiddly - theres a lot of springs going on in there and I had to resort to a sash cramp to hold things in place while I screwed the end-stops into the fork tubes.
Fitting the rear swing arm and rubber suspension bumpers to the frame was pretty simple and non-eventful.
Fitting the front forks to the frame however was more hassle than I expected.  First of all, the manual refers to all sorts of "compensation washers" in the assembly that I simply didnt have in the original parts that I had.  Was this because they were never fitted in the first place or because someone had incorrectly serviced the bike in the past?  I could only reassemble with the bits I had to hand but I tried to understand the logic of the assembly and be content with the way I was putting it all back together.
Holding loose ball-bearings together while assembling forks is always tricky but packing them into a good bed of grease helps - I also used a bungey-cord to hold the fork assembly in place while I fitted the top bearing nut.  And talking of that top nut - why was it SO tight to screw down?  I had it on and off many times to investigate why it felt so tight - it wasn't cross-threaded, and there was no thread damage or contamination - it was just bloody tight!


All in all a satisfying weekend with a real sense of progress

Servicing the Wheels

I had thought initially that my new wheels were is such great condition (well they are by comparison to the wheels that came with my bike) that I would simply put them on the scooter as-is in order to get the machine up and running (and then overhaul them at a later date).  However on closer inspection a couple of bearings were shot and so i decided to replace them all.  All 5 bearings! 2 on the front wheel and 3 on the back (despite the fact that the spares manual only actually identifies 2 of them - it does illustrate 3)

As an aside here I was surprised / appalled to see that someone somewhere sometime had had need to whack (a lot) the rear wheel hub with a hammer.  I wonder why?    This meant that the lip of the bearing housing was damaged and I had to file and linish the lip out in order to create a clear exit for the bearing.

As always, removing the bearings wasn't as easy as I'd hoped.  I had no cross-section drawing of the wheel hubs, so I wasn't quite sure what it was that held them in the right location other than a number of "interior" and "exterior" "stays" (overly complicated machined spacer tubes).  It turns out that each bearing is pressed home to a lip, so driving the bearing through to extract it is not an option.  I turned to google to ask "How to extract a bearing from a blind hole" and I wasn't keen on either of the three most common suggestions;
1.  Weld a bead to the race
2.  Force it out with hydraulic pressure of a grease gun
3.  Buy a blind hole bearing puller
So in the end I thought I'd see if I could pull them out with a Rawl-Bolt.  And with a little bit of heat here and there, I was delighted to find that the bearings came out without any fuss at all.

I bought new bearings for about £3 a piece.  I opted for shielded (zz) bearings as some of the extracted ones were shielded one-side and there are no grease points down there in that quite harsh environment of splashing puddles and road grit

And so on to fitting the new bearings.
I am a big fan of freezing bearings to contract them before fitting so an overnight stay next to the frozen peas and oven chips was in order.
A little propane gas on the hubs to give them a little expansion and the bearings just dropped home (encouraged with a hammer) - simple

I was a little worried still about the state of some of the spokes - some of them appeared very loose and had certainly suffered at the hand of whoever it was that had beaten the rear hub with a hammer.  It crossed my mind a number of times to maybe bite the bullet and get the wheels in for a professional overhaul, paint and re-spoke.  However, when I inspected the spokes a little closer, it appeared that they were serviceable and I could simply tighten the loose spokes - I even attempted to 'tune' them to the same tension - I'm not sure I've done a perfect job, but I think I've done a good enough job in order to get the bike rolling (and maybe even MOT'd)

Is this home?

I've been saving this little bit of the story for a while - just in case it came to a complete conclusion.  It hasn't yet, but it still might.  However, even without a full conclusion (yet) I think it is still a story worth telling.

I've always been a bit miffed that I have no historical documentation or information for my scooter, but on the other hand I have rather enjoyed the process of trying to uncover the facts about my bike.  Initially I thought I might find a good lead through the still existing Manurhin Manufacturing organisation in France, but they so far have refused to answer any email I send them (surely there must be someone there who remembers 'Le bon vieux temps')  And I thought I might have found a little enthusiasm from a company with a proud historical pedigree like FN Midhurst whose forefathers were once UK concessionaires for Manurhin Scooters, but alas once again, not even an acknowledgement from them.
And so I started to lose hope in finding people who might be interested in a little historical probing.  Until that is, I started to look at repairing my seat pans.

Right from the beginning I was keen to see if I could get the engine up and running, and while I was working on this I stored all the body bits out of the way at the back of my shed.  Once the engine was running I started to turn my attention to other bits (Im not sure why the seat pans were important at this stage), and it wasn't until I dragged the leg-shield out of the dark that I noticed a little decal on the inside that for some reason I hadn't consciously seen when I was taking the bike apart

This looked to me to be perhaps a sticker placed on the bike by either a service mechanic or even a dealer.  Its Scottish address seemed to concur with my understanding of where the barn was that the scooter was discovered in by the chap I bought it from.

I wondered if Google might turn up anything on Doug Murray - and blow me! it did! :-)
I sent a speculative email to Murrays Motorcycles and had an immediate reply from Mr Gordon Murray




".......You have got the correct family but one generation on.   My dad is Doug Murray but he closed his motorcycle business in 1967 and went into selling cars.  Going by the address he must have sold that [my scooter] new or nearly new as he moved out of Hawkhill in 1962.   He is 83 now........ "

Over the course of a few emails, Gordon went on to explain that he was still in touch with the shop forman and he thought that the old shop sales ledgers still existed somewhere.  I was very excited.  I wondered if chassis numbers might have been recorded, in which case I could trace my scooter.
Sadly Gordon hasn't been able to find these ledgers (yet) but he sounded very interested to help so I still keep my fingers crossed.
In the meantime, Gordon sent me a photo of his dads shop in its day, along with a little bit of historical context;

Note the Vespa and the Scootacar (which still exists in Dundee!)

"......There were 2 main motorcycle shops in Dundee in the 50's and 60's.  Doug Murrays was the 2nd largest.   George MacLeans was the biggest and sold Triumph,Norton,BSA etc etc.   My dads shop had the 1st Honda & Yamaha franchise in Scotland.   There were also a couple of smaller workshops.  He was also the 1st Toyota/Daihatsu/Skoda car dealership in Scotland.  People say he was ahead of his time as these were unheard of makes at that time.   I remember that the Toyotas and Daihatsus had radios as standard which was not the norm.   The picture of the shop was taken sometime between '56 and '62 but I am not sure exactly when.    My dad always was one for the 'unusual'...... "

"Unusual"?  This convinces me more than ever that this is where my Manurhin was originally sold..... Now if only I could reach out and find the young Scottish laddie who bought it!