Some work on a TX650.

[th62]

Exhaust pipes. I mocked up a pipe for the right side, welding together some exhaust pipe at the appropriate angles with the right amount of twist then took it to an exhaust centre and asked them to mandrel bend two bends from 42mm pipe to match the angles, so I could weld them together later. The exhaust guy assured me he could bend the entire pipe with the correct twist, then reverse it for the left side, so naturally I jumped at the chance to avoid welding the two bends together. Roll on five weeks, yep that's right, it took him five weeks, and I picked up the pipes and took them home. Well, what a balls up, the only thing that was correct was the twist. So, I cut both pipes around half way between the two bends, removed a 25 mm section and welded the two bends together. Problem! The bottom bend was way out, leaving the exhaust bending down toward the ground. To fix, I made a V cut in the pipe a few inches after the bend, bent the tail section up and welded the two pieces together. Repeating the process for the other side. Now, if you think exhaust pipe is round, it ain't! So twisting the pipes and butting them together leaves a few steps. So, I hammered them a little so they'd match up, welded them together and ground them smooth, then painted them with exhaust black pint.
I mounted some 10mm thick ally in the four jaw, turned up the 42 mm hole, then marked the position of the 10mm exhaust stud holes drilled them through, shaped the clamps and polished them. For the lower mount, I bent up some 3mm steel plate in a half circle with short returns either side, shaped another 3 mm piece of steel to affix to the frame and welded it to the half circle clamp, then painted it exhaust black paint. Next I bent some 3mm ally plate in a half circle with returns each end, stuck it together with the steel half circle and drilled through four holes for stainless Allen heads, and polished the ally half clamps. The pipes have a very slight upwards sweep.

 

[Aukai]

WOW....

 

[Firstram]

Very nice!

 

[Nogoingback]

Nice job! The pipes (and the bike) look great.

 

[th62]

Remote spin on oil filter and cooler.
To effect the modifications for inclusion of a remote, spin on filter and cooler, I had to modify the right side engine cover. The oil pump is located inside this cover.

The oil galley from the pump is 10mm and is drilled at a odd angle on two axis' to the cover. Halfway along it is cross drilled at a right angle, both of these holes are plugged with a blanking bung at the front of the cover. The cross drilled hole leads to the stock filter behind the cover on the side of the engine side cover. So, the pump pumps oil up the 10mm hole, does a right turn into the cross drilled hole and on to the filter, then on through the engine.

So, in order to fit a remote, spin on filter, I had to remove the bung to the 10mm hole on the front of the cover, drill the 10mm hole out to 10.8mm and thread with a 12mm tap to a depth of 40mm. I then turned up a stainless, threaded barb to suit, the threaded barb when screwed in place, covers the cross drilled hole, thus bypassing the stock filter in the side of the cover. So the pump now pumps oil up the 10mm hole in the cover, through the threaded barb and then on to a remote spin on filter, via a rubber hose.. The oil enters the filter and then exits that and continues on to the cooler. From there it flows to the replacement filter cover I machined up, into the filter housing behind the cover, which is now empty, then on to the engine. Sounds complicated, but it’s not really. The spin on filter does a better job than the stock filter as the stock filter is really only a strainer.

Mounting the side cover on the drill table was a job and a half, as the hole to the oil pump is off skew on two axis’. Once I’d drilled and tapped the 10mm hole, because of the weird angle the hole exits the cover, it’s not square to the surface, so I had to square the surface up and countersink it to accept an O ring to seal the barb using a modified router bit.

Next I spun up a spin on filter housing, drilled two holes in the side and tapped them for mounting, drilled two holes in the top for oil inlet and outlet and underneath turn a round channel for the oil to enter the exit. I then spun up a threaded spigot to screw the filter on, pressed that into place in the filter housing, then spun up a threaded barb that screws into that, sandwiching the filter housing between. To mount the filter housing, I fabricated some new engine mounts from 10mm ally, the right one being extended downward some 25 mm and affixed the filter housing to that. I drilled and tapped two holes in the front of each each mount, fabricated a cooler mount from 3mm all and fixed the cooler to that via four small, Rubber grommets. For mounting I cut four lengths of 10mm ally tube to length to fit between the cooler mounting lugs, cut four stainless 6mm bolts to length, threaded them through the cooler lugs and ally tubes and on through the grommets. To prevent the grommet from being squished from overtightening, I spun up four positive stop T nuts from ally and threaded them.
I removed the old strainer cover and binned it, then machined up a new cover with a protuberance for oil inletand pressed a barb I spun up into that.

So now the the system works thus: Oil leaves the pump and travels up the 10.8mm hole in the side cover and exits via the stainless barb screwed into the front of the cover. The oil enters a rubber tube and travels via the central stainless barb in the filter housing, into the filter then out via the pressed in barb next to the inlet barb. It then travels to the cooler via a rubber hose, through the cooler and cooled oil then flows via a rubber hose to the protuberance on the right side of the engine cover via the pressed in barb and on to lubricate the engine with nice, clean, cooled engine oil.

A big job. Took a lot of thinking and work making fiddly little things, housings, brackets barbs, brackets and so on. There's a bit of a jumble of rubber hoses behind the cooler, but they aren't too noticeable.

 

[Aukai]

Damn you've been busy, I need a nap now.

 

[th62]

Cable splitter.
The TX650 came with a silly twin cable hand throttle, one cable for each carb. I bought a single cable throttle and looked around for a two into one junction box. Only ones I could find were made of plastic or steel with no means on mounting them, so it just flops around under the tank with the cables.

Didn’t like that idea, so I made one from a small slab of ally. I bored a 14mm hole through the slab and ran a 5/8” UNF thread through each end on the lathe to a depth of 11mm. Next I milled a step and drilled two 6mm holes in the step for mounting it to the upper engine mounts.
The two end caps are also aluminium turned up from some round stock. One has a one cable inlet, the other takes two cables. I ran a 5/8” UNF thread on them and then ran my scissor knurler over them. Both caps are fitted with O rings as the body will be filled with grease for lubrication. Only the second time I’ve used this knurler since I made it about five years ago. It works well.

The slide I made from brass, 14mm round, for a snug, sliding fit inside the main body, and 25mm long. Through this I drilled three 1.5mm holes, then countersunk them with a 3mm bit for the cable nipples. I still hadn't cut three slots with a slit saw in the slide in the picture, so the. Cables could be fitted.

I also turned up some long adjusters for the cables to aid in syncing. These have a fairly long threaded section about 30mm long. The adjusters were drilled through 3mm for the inner cable, the top drilled to about 10mm with a 5.5mm dill for the outer cable and the top section was also knurled. To fit these to the carbs I fabricated two ally brackets and threaded them the same as the adjusters and fitted them to the carbs. I then made up up three cables, fitted nipples to the ends, fitted the splitter to the top right engine bracket and fitted everything together.

 

[th62]

Seat pan build. I started with a sheet of sheet metal, marked out the shape, bent the rear section up, bent the sides down and bent some more sheet metal around the upturned part to make a cowl, then migged it together. Once on the bike I didn't like it: Cowl was the wrong angle and rear section was too high. So, I cut the cowl off, lowered the bent up section a bit and tried to put the cowl back on, wouldn't fit! As I didn't have any more sheet metal to hand, I cut the cowl in half, bent two sections around for the cowl and spotted them together. This left a gap of around 3-4mm, no matter, I just filled the gap with weld, ground it smooth, then welded the cowl in place. Mounting it was a bit more difficult, front end was easy, I just made up a receiver and bolted it to the frame. For the tongue, I welded a bent spigot to a piece of angle, slid some rubber tube over the spigot, spotted some nuts on the pan and bolted it in place. Rear end was a little different as there was insufficient room between guard and frame to fit a bolt. So I welded a couple of upright tabs to the frame, drilled and tapped them, sunk two grommets in the side of the cowl, turned up a spacer and screwed in two 6mm allen heads with washers. Finally, I cut a section from the front of the seat to avoid the tank tab, bent up some more sheet metal and welded it to the nose of the pan.

 

[Aukai]

Your going to get through the check list pretty quick, nice.

 

[th62]

Side panel build. For the side panels I decided to use ally, as I wanted them in polished ally. First I welded a tab to the rear frame downtube and spun up an ally bullet and bolted it in place, over which the side panel grommet would slide. For the front mounts I welded two B shape brackets to the central downtube and welded two nuts to each. Now the hard part, beating up the side panels. I'd done this before for a Bonneville, but my hands worked back then, nowadays my hands don't work too good due to plastic joints and fused fingers, and crikey it hurts.
I tried using the wife for the hammer work, but that didn't work out, so I resigned myself to to lots of pain and lots of Ibuprofen.
I made up a wooden mould the shape I needed, cut out two ally sheets a little larger and started beating. After getting the edges rolled over at 90degrees, I then had to bend and twist the panels to follow the shape of the frame. Sounds easy, but as the top and bottom rails are set at different angles, believe me, it wasn't. I got the front bend/twist right after much swearing and cursing, now I had to bend twist the rear section to follow the bend on the rear downtube. I finally got that right, then bent up another for the other side.

To fit them to the bike, I sunk three Rubber grommets into each panel and spun up some positive stop T nuts to fit into the the front two grommets. So to fit, you simply slide the the single grommet over the ally bullet bolted to the tab on the rear downtube, then screw two Allen heads, with washers, into the the front B shape brackets. These panels fit real well and looked great, so next came a bit of polishing, even better!

Now after all that work, both side covers were binned. As I had a change of mind on carb intakes and battery box. But, the making of the battery box and two new side panels is another story.