Handlebars and chroming

It comes to something when your mind starts wander to the blingy bits.  Who would have thought 8 months ago when I took on this basket-case that I'd ever get round to thinking about chrome!

My handlebars are pretty tatty.  The chrome is long gone and at some time they've been painted with silver paint.  And now the rust is coming through.  Of all the bits on this bike, the handlebars probably need the least functional rework.  I could put them straight back on the bike as they are and they would work perfectly well as they were designed...... but something in me makes me think they need to look good too.
And so I went in search of a polisher and chromer.

20 years ago, I worked in a business that used a lot of polishers and chromers. There were at least 3 companies I used to work with that were within 5 miles of my house.  I set off to say hello to them again.  But I should have guessed; a lot of change has happened in Birmingham in the last 20 years, and the companies I used to know are no longer there.... not even the buildings!  In their place now are shops, apartments, and building developments for "the creative industry".  The face of Birmingham is changing rapidly.  Gone is the heavy industrial heritage, welcome the clean & tidy "creative industry"

And so I opened my search out a little wider and thankfully Dudley and the black-country are still hanging in there with their traditional industrial skills.
I phoned a couple of platers and without even seeing my handlebars they reckoned about 60 quid!  But someone suggested I go and see Castle Chromers (right close to the castle in Dudley).  From what I saw of their unit, they certainly looked like they knew what they were doing (lots of classic car parts around the place)
I showed them my handlebars (and I also had my headlamp bezel with me too).  Without hesitation, the response was £60.  I tried to bargain with them but no joy.  On reflection I suppose its about a right sort of price by the time you've paid a man for a couple of hours work - but sadly its well out of my budget - especially on a non essential job.  But before I left the fella at Castle Chrome said "why not just buy a new handlebar?"

"Ridiculous" I mumbled as I drove away.  "This handlebar is 60 years old.  You cant buy a new one".  As I drove home I happened to drive past Streetbike (not best know for its vintage parts).  I'm not sure why I stopped, but I did.  I felt a bit foolish walking in past all the superbikes and monster machines with my rusty 7/8" scooter handlebar.  I dropped it on their spare parts counter and they pointed me to a rack of anodized coloured bars - not really what I was looking for.  But then from behind the counter, one of the chaps bought out a chromed handle bar that looked remarkably like mine.  Pretty much the same angles and rise - just a couple of inches wider (which I rather like)...... and they were £25.  It was a no-brainer really.  I could keep my original bars for when I was rich enough to get them renovated, but in the meantime I could have some shiny bars for 25 quid.  As for the headlamp bezel, I can think on that for a while

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!

I Got Wheels!

I've just got back from a couple of weeks away for work (firstly in the US and then in Cambodia)
I am exhausted.
But not so exhausted to investigate a large package that had arrived for me while I was away.

It was 7 weeks ago when I spotted a pair of Manurhin Scooter wheels for sale on the French website www.leboncoin.fr - this was about the time when I was realising that my own rear wheel was incorrect.  I contacted the seller and thereby started an epic story of email negotiations and logistics.
The seller - Morgan - was based near Lyon (mid France) and didn't speak English.  And I don't speak French but together we managed to communicate quite effectively via email and Google Translate.

Morgan wanted 80 euros for the pair of wheels.  Although I didn't really need another front wheel, his looked better than mine in the photos so I agreed at 80 for the pair.  He also had a pair of aluminum footrests for sale too, but at another 80 euros I had to decline.
Now I spend most of my life in front of a computer - I consider myself "always online".   Morgan, I suspect however probably isn't.  Replies could sometimes be a few (several?) days coming.  So it was with great delight when a few days later I received an email from Morgan offering me the footrests at a 'discount' price of 45 euros for the pair.  I gratefully took the offer and we started the (lengthy) process of working out how to 1) get the wheels and footrests from Lyon to Birmingham,  and 2) make the payment transaction

I had a quick look at courier prices from the likes of Fedex and DHL and these looked to be around £120-150 - this was going to be be an expensive pair of wheels!
And so I thought I'd try AnyVan, the online delivery auction site.  Within hours of posting my need, I had my first offer to collect and deliver - £300.  Over the next few days various couriers bid down the price to a far more sensible sub-£100.
In the meantime, I was trying to pay Morgan.  I was keen to pay at least a deposit in order to secure the sale.  Morgan doesn't use PayPal but would accept a cheque or maybe a bank transfer.  We spent a good couple of weeks trying to find a mutually acceptable payment method, and at one stage when emails were particularly slow in coming I thought that maybe it was all off, he'd either sold them elsewhere or had simply got fed up with the hassle of it all.
In the meantime, back to the courier;  Offers were down to £60 and I was ready to accept, but had to apologise to the bidders that I couldn't commit as I hadn't actually bought the items yet... in fact I didn't even know if they still existed for me.
It was driver 'swift1' (mark) who first suggested that he could do a pay on collection for me if it would help facilitate the process.  Unfortunately Mark couldn't make the time window that I needed (but I should say now that Mark was a superstar in doing his best to try and make this work - and if I could I would give him 100% feedback based on his efforts alone), and so eventually I found 'philbfc' (Phil) who was equally enthused to do his utmost to help me.

Eventually Morgan responded to my email;
"Sorry i didn't have time to give you answers. There's no problem for manurhin wheels they are for you"
I was mightily relieved and followed with a flurry of activity to arrange money and dates (doubly complicated by the fact that I wasn't going to be around to pay on receipt when the wheels were eventually delivered to my house)

Between Phil and Morgan (while I was in Atlanta), they arranged a pay-on-collection at 11pm on Thursday evening as Phil was traveling through Lyon on his way back to the UK
That night I received the following email.  It warmed my heart;

Bonjour 

Le colis est partie hier soir .

Le règlement a bien été effectuer .

Je suis également contant que les pièces soit pour une personne passionner .

Je compte sur vous pour redonner vie a ces Pieces et les remettre en belle état . 

Hésitez pas pour m envoyé des photos de votre projet .

J espère que le colis arrivera bientôt chez vous.

Amicalement 

Morgan

Saturday just gone (while I was in Cambodia) Phil dropped the package off at my house, and today within 15 minutes of returning from a grueling 21 hours traveling halfway round the World, I actually touched the wheels that I had first inquired to buy 7 weeks ago.
I was delighted :-)
They might not be the colour I need for my bike, but I reckon they are in such good condition that I wont have to do anything to the wheels, tubes, tyres or hubs to get my scooter up and running.
What a great christmas present (to myself ;-)

Painted frame

Its been a while since i posted any updates on my blog.  This is partly because I've been so busy with work I haven't really had much time to get my teeth into any proper jobs on the bike.  I have managed to grab a moment here and there to work on bits and pieces but until I have completed something it seems a little pointless to be writing about it.

However, in order to keep something rolling along, I did take my frame, front forks, rear swinging arm and a few ancillaries in for painting a few weeks ago.  I was concerned that I might be being a little premature with this, but as the frame really didn't need much re-work, I thought getting it painted would at least be progress of some sort (and could be happening without my involvement while I was busy elsewhere)

I decided that I would get the scooter powder-coated (rather than wet-sprayed) as I am lead to believe that Manurhin scooters were indeed one of the earliest adopters of electrostatic powder-coating for motorcycles.  As I had already used (and was very pleased with) Redditch Shotblasting for my powder coating when I was rebuilding my Vespa it was natural that I would go back to them.  I phoned them up and arranged to drop the parts into them the following day.  When I arrived at their unit in Redditch, Dave came out to meet me "Oh its you" he said, sounding a little miffed "I didn't realise it was you when we were talking on the phone"
I was a little taken aback by his reaction to seeing me, and I asked what he meant.
It turns out that Dave had read my blog about the Vespa rebuild and was a little concerned about the 'bad' press I had given him.
Well, my first thought was "Wow, someone actually reads my blog?!" but then I quickly panicked wondering what on earth I could have said that was bad.  Not only do I try to avoid writing 'bad' things about people, but I thought I had expressed my delight with their work.  I don't need to explain my writing here - but to cut a long story short, He was gutted because he thought I'd written a bad review about his company, and I was gutted because he had interpreted my writing as a bad review when actually it wasn't.  Anyway, I think we are friends again and for the record I think Redditch Shotblasting do a marvelous job and I thoroughly recommend them (just remember that all good thing come to those who wait.  I waited patiently this time for the job to be done (3.5 weeks) and once again, I was delighted with the end result)

I had initially decided that the frame should be black - I think all chassis' should be gloss black - but talking it through with Dave and looking at his very extensive range of colours, I changed my mind at the last moment and decided to have it coloured as near as damn it to the original colour of the bike - Maroon.  I say original because as I have already discussed on this blog, I'm not 100% sure what the 'original' colour actually was.
As much as I like a black chassis, I am very pleased that I chose the Maroon in the end - it looks fabulous

Frustratingly - exactly the same as when I picked up the painted Vespa frame - I have to leave the Manurhin frame wrapped in its bubble wrap for a couple of weeks now while I jet off for work.
But at least I have something exciting to be getting on with over the Christmas holidays :-)

By the way - Did I mention that I think Redditch Shot-blasting and Powder-coating do a great job ;-)

Refocusing

I had been feeling a little down recently over this project;  Everything was broken and everything was costing me money.  But I love being in my garage and I rather like the bike, so I couldn't bring myself to simply walk away from it.
It dawned on me that the bottom line was simply a TIME and MONEY problem.  I was investing a lot of time in fixing things, and investing a lot of money in procuring things that I couldn't fix.  And I felt that I could barely afford either.  I was fairly happy to spend my spare moments fixing and repairing things, but I was beating myself up over the increasing costs and this was getting me down.

The other day, while resting against my bench and feeling a little weighed down by all the problems still to be overcome in this project, I started to wonder what would happen if I could let go of some of the constraints that I seem to have subconsciously imposed upon myself.  As I thought about it, there appeared to be a number of them;

1. I must finish any project that I start.  Anything else will be a failure on my part
2. I must get this scooter ready to ride to France next summer
3. I am obliged to 'restore' this scooter back to its original design and former glory
4. I must not spend more money on the project than I can expect to get back should I sell the bike

In the grand scheme of things this is not a terribly difficult project, and there is no reason why I couldn't get it finished in order to ride to France next summer - this is quite a motivating vision for me.  However to achieve this, I suddenly realised that perhaps I have to stop (within reason) worrying about the cost - If I need bits, and someone has them for sale, perhaps I should stop fannying around and just buy them and press on with getting the job done.

It had an amazing effect on me; with this sudden clarity I really felt a weight come off my shoulders.

And I thought on.  There is no way this scooter will ever be considered as "restored" to its original design, but there is no reason why it cant be 'good enough' as a resurrection from a barn-find grave.

And so with this new view on the project and being much more conscious of my self-imposed constraints, I feel once again motivated.  I WILL finish this project and it WILL be 'good enough' to ride to France next summer  :-)