Thank you.  There is a lot more crying and expense to be done yet though.  

Refresh the brewski’s and corn nuts again… Intermission….
Sneezles61

While I was waiting for the bodywork, I gathered everything together and made a provenance file for the bike.

Every letter from the previous owner, every receipt from the rebuild and all the posts I made on the previous thread are included.
The next owner after I have shuffled off this mortal coil in 20 or so years will enjoy it.

Already know who the next owner will be. When I become too infirm to ride it around the village occasionally,  it will go to one of my ex motorcycle activity center apprentices.
Known him since he was a 12 year old young riders club member and school holiday volunteer at the center.

He had done the heavy lifting and shown enormous commitment to the center, so when he was approaching school leaving age, I offered him a full apprenticeship in motor vehicle technology.  After his apprenticeship, he subsequently went back to college full time to study precision engineering and became a first class mould and toolmaker.

The little sod laughs when I speak of thousands of an inch being precise..

His father was an alcoholic, so he looked to me to be a father figure. He was like a son to me.
He is now approaching 40    and enjoying a stellar career in precision engineering with a family of his own. I am extremely proud of him.

He will enjoy, cherish and keep the bike in fine fettle long after I am gone.
His current ride is a complete, unrestored but preserved1965 BSA Bantam.  He says it has taken nearly 60 years to look like it does and is worthy of preservation as is.

Unfortunately my stepson would immediately sell the DT on, or ride it into the ground and destroy it very quickly. Very different mindset to material objects.  It would not be in good hands.

Provence file detailing the rebuild.


Every letter, receipt and disaster is contained within. It is quite a heavy tome!

I happened to come across a NOS front wheel rim.  I had been casually keeping a weather eye out for one, but it was not a priority.  The chrome on the front was not great close up, but looked fine from maybe 6 feet away.

The previous guy had had the wheels rebuilt with new spokes, but kept the old rims.  I don't quite understand why, although the rear was in far better condition than the front.

Anyway the new rim was a bargain.

Rim arrived and I set to swapping it.  It must be almost 20 years since I last built a wheel and doing one at least once every month, never used to faze me much, but I never looked forward to it.
Yep one a month, sometimes one a week.  Not for the reason you would expect though.  We ran a variety of Yam RT100s, TTR125S and TTR125L kids bikes on fleet,  ( IIRC 6x RTs, 8x TTRS and 8x TTRL) that were prone to rear hub failures, esp the TTR125.  Remember that these bikes were being pounded over rocks, jumped, wheelied and running through streams and mud 7 days a week, up to 6 hours a day.
What would happen is that the wheel bearing locations would become fluted on the inner side.  The casting was just not strong enough to support the constant pounding over those numbers of hours without distorting.
We tried having one machined with a steel insert fitted, but then the hub would crack after a few more weeks.
It is unlikely a privately owned machine would ever encounter these problems.
Don't even get me started on TY250S and TY250R Z spokes.... Soon as the hub wore out, we scrapped them and fitted Talon rear wheels.

Remember, the general public were hiring and riding these machines and the maintenance and paperwork had to be top notch. 
A great deal of my time was fighting off no win, no fee ambulance chasers.  One sniff of impropriety or botched maintenance that led to a serious injury would be catastrophic for the business and my career. 
As one of my hats was head of maintenance and another was operational health and safety manager, I was in the frame for jail time for corporate manslaughter if someone got killed by negligent maintenance or supervision... That tends to concentrate the mind and the stress is huge.
The owner of a motorcross and offroad park not too far away did in fact go to jail for that very thing.  I do not recall the details but it was something to do with a throttle cable bodge and a young lad got killed.

I appear to have digressed...oh dear.

Back to the tale.  New hubs required regularly meant I was no stranger to wheel rebuilding, so I set to with a cheerful whistle.

Gawd.  20 years is a long time.
Started lacing the wheel.  The spoke pattern is not straightforward and involves 3 different spoke types.  After a couple of hours I had a lay down and a gentle cry.  I drank a lot of beer that night.  Sunday morning dawned and hung over,  I forced myself back in the shed to try again.  It went together OK this time, wheel built, tyre re mounted ( thank god it was not that vee rubber), and wheel refitted.  It looked great.

The rear wheel rim is better, but I am still keeping a weather eye out for a NOS bargain.  At least the rear looks a bit more straightforward.

New rim, tube and tape.  Now I just need to fit them.


Much better.  The chrome on the front was ok from a distance, but could be better... It could not take a polish.


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The wonderful British weather finally stopped raining long enough for the roads to dry out.  Time for a quick road test and shakedown ride. 
The bike had already had quite a few heat cycles through it, so it was time to put a little pressure on the rings.
Did around 15 miles with rpm kept in the midrange and rested every few minutes at 3000rpm for the rings to shed a bit of heat in case they were running a little hot.

Nothing really untoward happened, gearchange was slick, brakes were ok, but being used to twin hydraulic discs the size of dinnerplates, they would not be setting my world on fire.
However for a bike with a cruising speed of 50mph they were adequate, and if any more powerful, those long and skinny forks would have trouble handling the load and the front end squirm all over the place.

One thing is apparent.  As I will never be taking the bike off road, the gearing as it is with a 14T front sprocket as standard is not much good for roadwork.
First was far too low and pulling out of a junction, you were reaching for second as soon as you got your feet up on the pegs.  Top gear had the engine running extremely busily just keeping up with the traffic (I live in a rural area, so most speed limits are 60mph).
I put a 15T on the front and this was much better, albeit at the expense of accelleration and it is a little overgeared in top.
First to second is now snicked in at probably 12 mph.  It struggles to reach 60mph and 6000rpm in top gear however.
However, the engine sounds far happier.

One thing I was surprised at was the linear power delivery.  There was no discernable point where the ports and pipe came into their own.  It pulled fairly strongly from 3000 rpm to 7000 rpm.  However it did seem a little disappointing in comparison to my memories of owning one brand new in my youth.

I thought I remembered my old one coming "on pipe" at around 6000rpm and becoming a fire breathing monster with front end lifting off the ground in first and second.

Back in the day, I had a variety of two strokes  - yam TYs, RD200, RD250, various bultaco sherpa trials bikes and a YZ250 think it was the G model.... Anyway, last of the air coolled ones, before they went watercooled with the odd water running through the steering head setup.  Anyway, looking at 30bhp tops.
Since then I have had a variety of fire breathing superbikes topping out at 185mph and 165bhp.
I also weighed about 10 stones wet through and looked like a string bean.
These days, my ex body building frame, now gone to seed weighs 16 stone and my shoulders are twice as wide.

Perhaps it is just my perspective of power and faulty memory that has changed, along with the extra weight and a larger area of sail perched on top of it than before.  Perhaps I expected too much of it.

Finished off with a long straightish road close to my home, swapped the plug for a new one and  held it at 5000 rpm in 4th and a little over half throttle for about 4 miles, to check the midrange mixture with my 135 main.  Books says 130 or 140 standard, so I split the difference.
When I pulled that old plug at the side of the road, I developed a new talent - juggling.  God that plug was HOT!

Midrange mixture was slightly rich at a chocolate brown colour, but not black.  Happy for running in, but I dropped the needle a notch and tried again.
The motor appeared to be crisper in the midrange and not having a new plug, I cleaned the old one and tried again.
Now it was a milk chocolate brown, so closer to the ideal, but still a little rich.


Before I went further, I needed a full throttle run to see what was happening there.

And once again, the fun and games began....







 

By now we are into the high summer of 2022 and I have owned the bike for 12 rollercoaster months.

I had put maybe 50 or 60 miles on it by now and it was imperative that I do a full throttle run to check the fuelling with 135 main jet. 
Back to my long straight.  Clean plug fitted.  Start her up.and get into top with throttle wide open.

45mph.  50mph. 55mph BWAAAARGH and a sudden power loss.

Merde!  Have I blown the piston? Has it fried the rings? Clutch in, killswitch off and coasted to the side of the road.
Having gears that change down when the engine is breaking down was a novel idea for this bike.  At least something is a success.
So what has happened?  Removed helmet and gloves and could not see anything out of the ordinary.

So I kicked it over and it started first kick.  So piston is not holed then.  But it sounded loud at the exhaust flange area.
Has the exhaust come loose and blown out the ring?

Nope.  Still looks tight.

Sticks hand around area of front of pipe to feel for the draught of escaping gas.  Much draughtiness, in fact it was downright windy down there.

Down onto my knees, long knackered by a lifetime of kneeling on hard concrete repairing various types of heavy truck and heavy equipment.  Had a look under the front pipe.  It had a hole in it about 3/4" round.
 What the feckity feck is going on?  I do not know which was the most painful, my knees or looking at that hole.

The silly old sod has obviously shafted me again. 

Back home and pipe removed.  I had seen before that he had repaired the front pipe. In one place.  It looked like he had plated and brazed it.
I was wrong.  Digging away at the pipe, bits of exhaust repair putty was coming away and the front pipe was like lace underneath.
He had smothered putty on, hardened it and smoothed it into shape like body filler.

The exhaust before this was badly pitted and in my opinion, in poor shape, but now it was clearly beyond redemption.
"Repaired and restored" exhaust with putty falling out everywhere.  


I was going to have to do what I did not want.  I was going to have to fit a Fresco front pipe and damn the originality.
Looked like the ship of originality had sailed.

I am a great believer in karma and kismet, and once again fate lent a helping hand.  A common theme of this build has been that very rare to find parts in the UK have appeared on ebay exactly at the right time and in excellent condition....at a price.

I checked the price of a Fresco exhaust and as a futile gesture, I put the part number of the OEM exhaust in the search bar.
I got a hit from the same breaker I bought my almost brand new shock from.  It was not there during the week because I never cease looking for items I need or would like, but it was here now.
It was also twice the price of the Fresco pipe.
The blurb said it came from the US along with a bike fittted with an aftermarket pipe and looked to have had very little use.
I checked the part number stamped on the pipe.. 2A6.  Yep it was the right pipe.

Another £300 flying out of my back pocket.  To add insult to injury, no point checking the plug colour, because when the pipe blew, it went lean, hence the drop in power.

I still have that little task to do...  Just great.



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It has been a pretty grim build so far.  I have decided that the forum would be better served if I stopped updating the "other thread" and add it and subsequent trials on to the end of this un to give the followers of this one the complete picture of horror, angst, teeth grinding anger, paranoia and ultimate resignation that the thing will never be finished.

So jumping forward to the present instead of updating the paranoia thread.  I will probably return to this little episode later in the thread for those that do not know what I am going on about and to give it a more proper context.

For those following the other thread.. 
In the time I made four cups of tea in return for the favour this morning, the engineering shop lads had drilled the rivets out, tapped the holes in the basket 6mm and were just starting on drilling and reaming the cover plate just a gnat's hair breadth bigger than the measured bolt threads.  This they felt was the best way of ensuring the cover plate remained perfectly central and in balance. 
Countersinking the holes in the cover plate may have introduced an out of balance condition and it was felt that the removal of the absololute minimum of metal was the way to go. 
I was cast out of the engineering shop in disgrace for suggesting countersinking it and made to go brew the tea and leave them alone to get on with it.
They ruined a new 5.5mm cobalt drill bit on the cover plate it only managed to drill out a single hole.  To everyone's surprise it is hardened steel.  They ended up using a carbide bit. 
Much easier than trying it at home using hand tools.  Total cost for job.. One packet of Jaffa Cakes.

Rivets drilled out, holes tapped and cover plate reamed.  When I arrived home, the new rubbers had been delivered, so I will put it all back together at the weekend.  Those are the old ones.  Looks like they have shrunk over the last 40 years.

The three small holes had rubber pegs in them.  I am guessing they are some type of anti rattle rubber and were compressed. I just cut some O ring stock of the appropriate diameter about 2mm longer than the old ones and will fit those.  I am guessing that they replace the earlier DTs anti rattle ring RT and MarkT mentioned in the other thread.


A clearer look at what the DT175 E, F and MX (2A6 basket) rubbers look like, in case someone needs to source some in the future.

Exhaust arrived from the breakers and it looked pretty good.  In fact it looked damned good. It also came came with the US style rear silencer in the same excellent condition.  Sadly the baffle is missing.  I have searched for a baffle without success. 
I would much prefer a removable baffle to the labyrynth type silencer that Europe got.

Still, it gave me a chance to have a poke around inside it to assess how much carbon was in there - not a lot from what I could tell.

Took the front pipe to work to subject it to various cleaning processes, the first being to lift the lid of the long unused but still full Sodium Hydroxide paint stripping tank.  I was interested in the effects of Sodium Hydroxide on fatty acid molecular bonds and "forgot" to bung up the ends of the pipe.  Silly me. 

I left it overnight to stew and then put it through various other cleaning process, finalising with a beadblast, rinse and 20 mins in the rust remover bath and hot wash.

Pipe really was as described.  A couple of tiny stone dings from rocks thrown up by the front tyre, but absolutely zero corrosion pitting.

Very pleased.

So you don't think it needs burning out.
Does the bath remove carbon deposit.
Hope bath doesn't ruin the noise deadening stuff inside. Sure looks nice!!.

No.  Back in the day in the UK before the elfin safety explosion, it was  an accepted practice to bung a silencer up at one end and fill it with caustic soda to remove oily two stroke carbon deposits.