the hard(ish) work is done

Finally got around to welding the last mounting ear on the gas tank, nice fit and looking good. Obviously it'll need a final dressing up before paint...

Due to the length of the Benelli tank, I had to move the seat back an inch or so, because it mounts to the fender this raised the seat a hair. In order to mount the seat back I needed an angled extension for the seat brackets which was accomplished pretty easily by welding a piece of 1/8" steel bar. Again, still needs a bit of dressing up.

Had my wife sit on the bike to get a better idea of the fitment/modifications. Also tried to visualize the posture of the rider once the Tommaselli condor bars (clubmans) go on. Looking good again, much better than the bike looked stock in my opinion.

Loving the shapes from the rear view

Now it's time for some cleaning up of the welds and mods, then off for paint and a tank relining. I hear the kids are going to radiator shops nowadays and getting RedKote applied to the tank innards. Depending on the price I may go this route, but wonder how that'd hold up with E10 fuel... If anyone has any better options let me know

I'm psyched I found that Benelli tank. It's really got the exact look I'm going for with really a minimal amount of modification

I took off the stock seat to get an idea of the fitting since the benelli is a good 2"+ longer in length. No big deal, will need to move the seat back, drill a new 13mm hole in the fender to accept a mounting bolt, and weld in extensions to the seat pan brackets for the front mounts. I'll be tackling that sometime later. I wanted to see something more immediate with the tank

I jumped into making all the adjustments to get the tank to mount to the frame.

First had to cut off the Benelli's mounting ears, too narrow and no way to bolt onto front of the frame. Only cut about half off because I figured I'd weld in a section of Aermacchi ears from an old tank I have laying around. Great success, only got one welded in though because the baby woke up and I had to go back to being a daddy. Still need to clean up the weld, but you get the idea

Stock rubber bumpers for the original tank extend off the frame like a T, that will have to be eliminated for clearance. In their place I welded in a piece of straight tube steel a couple inches back. This extends up and rests of the foam bumper already on the Benelli tank. I'm going to put a real rubber bumper on the tube, but for now a discarded plug will work. Old is what's left of the stock bracket for the tank bumpers, new is my modification

The new tank sits just about 1/8" in front of the T for the front seat mount. More than enough clearance, but I'm going to have to move the eyelet to attach the spring clip for the tank, that's going to have to wait until I get the seat refitted though

this is how it stands after today's work. I still have to weld in the hook for the left side tank ear, but I'm pleased with the fit.

Asked my wife what she thought and she's not into it. This means I'm doing it right. I can't wait to see it with the reworked Radaellis and Tommaselli Condor Bars/ Levers. Also digging the stock seat, think I might leave it on the bike instead of making my own

Benelli/Motobi/Wards tank, no more leggero

Picked up this Benelli Cobra 125 tank for pretty cheap, has exactly the look I wanted for the macchi project and will spare me all the additional work I needed to do on the Leggero tank

I widened the Leggero, but still needed to clean up a few pinholes, then I needed to lengthen it, but you can kinda see a side by side that the Benelli took care of all of that.

I love the knee pockets and shape of this tank

The width of the tunnel is perfect for the Macchi, and will only need a very minor tweak at the front mounting ears to get it to mount right up. This is a longer and racier tank than the stock Sprint one, so I'll be losing the Bates seat and fabbing up on of my own - not sure if I want to go with a bench look or cowl it up yet... Still going to go with black and white paint, also want to see if I'll be able to save that faded "Made in Italy" decal

need to take care of the rust in this, but it's nothing too serious, that was the one benefit of the two macchi tanks I have, still had original tank lining

Chicks dig Benellis

but then again I'm building this for a girl... may have to reconsider the style so she doesn't pose with it in her underwear

Radaelli re-work part II

Finally got the time to paint my front hub and then the motivation to actually start lacing the front wheel. Pretty impressed with the results and glad I didn't waste money by sending them out for lacing. Also happy that the paint matches the powder coating so well, VHT engine enamel saves the day again

Went from this:

To this:

To this (you can see I messed up the lacing a little, had to go back and re-do that):

And then ended with this:

I really love the contrast of the stainless spokes/nipples and the semi-gloss black powder and paint. Glad I refinished the Radaellis like this instead of springing for Borranis. Despite the bling factor of the Borranis and the weight savings, I think what I ended up with is fitting the character of the Macchi and the direction of the build much better

NJ happy place

This week my world was rocked, quite unexpectedly. My bearings are off and I'm wounded. To compound things I'm on night shift, which means I'm left to my own devices, replaying scenarios over and over in my head and getting agitated. Talking to friends helps, talking to Shane last night really helped, but I don't talk nearly enough about important events, in fact by all outward appearances things are normal.

My usual response, in lieu of socializing, is to retreat to Sewaren and meditate along the Arthur Kill. I grew up in Sewaren, and even among the tank farms, refineries, power plants, and blight of what was once a resort town, I find solace sitting on a bench and watching tanker barges go by. Directly across the Arthur Kill is Staten Island, if you wore a full body nitrile suit, you could swim the 100 meters to NY and not get cancer. To the immediate south is the Outerbridge Crossing, and immediately beyond Staten Island on the horizon you can view the lower Manhattan skyline and Brooklyn. When I was a kid everybody would go down to the waterfront on the 4th of July to watch the fireworks from the East River.

When things were bad as a kid, I'd hop on my bike, sometimes with some Salems I "borrowed" from my mom, park myself by the water and just clear my head. I still do the same, except my mountain bike is replaced by a motorcycle, and the salems, well, now it's natural tobacco in one form or another... It's amazing, at home, at work, even on my bike lately, I find it hard to relax and just think about nothing. The second my ass hits that bench on Boynton Beach (nerd out on some history), instant nirvana. I looked up nirvana to make sure that's the word I meant, as it turns out it's perfect, even in literal Sanskrit form.

I don't know what I'd do if I moved out of state and lost that place. I went there after the shit hit the fan this week, I might stop by on my way home from shift and watch the sunrise... That should be just enough time to recharge and return to the madness

Alfredo Rocco - 1925

"Socialism, then, as experience has shown, leads to an increase in consumption, to the dispersions of capital, and therefore to poverty. Of what avail is it, then, to build a social machine that will more justly distribute wealth if this very wealth is destroyed by the construction of the machine?"



wake up and get to work

Glory, glory

Hallelujah

East coast nightlife tradition

Radaelli re-work

Typical of 60s Italian bikes, ther Macchi came stock with Radaelli chrome steel rims, with the thinnest possible chrome plating. Between Italian chrome and paint, I think they wanted their bikes to decompose at an accelerated rate, probably good for keeping up sales.

The Macchi appeared to have been stored properly for the 46 years of its existence, there was minimal rust and the original Pirellis didn't even have dry rot cracks, but the rims were rusty and chrome was peeled off all over the place. This is the front rim, the pic is bad, but everything that doesn't shine is rust. Actually the pic makes the room look much better than it actually was...

What you also can't really see are broken spokes and seized nipples, they are all being replaced by stainless, expensive, but worth the money in my opinion... I figured I had three options for cleaning things up 1) wire wheel it and respray black, probably the cheapest option but the least desirable 2) media blasting and powder coating, sounded good but I never had anything powdercoated and was concerned about the price, and 3) Replacing the rims entirely with alloys

Option one was out of the picture pretty quickly, I'm building this for my daughter, I don't want the paint to chip and flake after only a few thousand miles of use.

Option three was looking like the way I was going to go, but was the most expensive route. I could source new Borranis for about $150 a piece, but they'd be blank stock that would need nipple holes punched through the dimples right off the bat. That cost would work out to about $50 per rim, so going with alloys before I could even factor for lacing and truing, I'd have about $400 spent on the rims (with the punching) and $200 for the stainless spoke kit. I like the look of black rims, so maybe even tack on the cost of black anodizing... The one way to justify the expense would be the weight savings and trying to eke out every last bit of HP from the 250 engine, and the fact that I'd be rolling Borranis, and that racing pedigree would really fit the bike.

The cost got me thinking more and more about option 2. I'd already spent the $200 on the stainless spoke kit, but by using the existing rim I wouldn't have to worry about getting new rims punched out or the $300 for new rims, and I assumed powdercoating black would be cheaper than anodizing aluminum. The deciding factor would be the cost of powdercoating, if it was close enough to $300 I'd just go with alloys, but having never gotten powdercoating done I didn't know what to expect. As it turns out, it wound up being only $35 a wheel which included all the prep (blasting, sanding, and cleaning). Option two won out, big time, and I'm really pleased with the results.

Nice semi-gloss black finish, smooth as glass. I told them not to worry about the inside of the rim since the tube and tire would be covering it, so you do see evidence of pitting there, but the stuff visible when the bike's in use is beautiful. Powdercoating is definitely the way to go.

When I dropped them off I wanted to make sure the Radaelli stamp would still be visible and they said they couldn't guarantee it, but it made it... Now the world can easily tell just how cheap, errr shrewd, I am. Hey look how greasy my fingers are too!

Since I'm not shedding any weight by keeping the stock steelies, I figured I'd drill out the hubs. I probably only shed about a gram of weight, but it looks good.

I saw a guy with a Sprint H that made an Ala d'Oro replica and he added a brass mesh behind the holes, it looked sharp, gonna have to try some things out...

Now the question is, do I polish the aluminum to match the stainless spokes, or make the hub black to match the rim? I'm leaning toward the latter

Awesome.....

Spotted at Lowe's

Infidelity and Italian sex

A strange thing happened the other day after a longish ride on the BMW. Had a good ride, parked the bike on the centerstand in the garage, went to bed. A couple days later I want to take the R90 out for a midnight run and the rear tire is flat. So flat I could take the tire right off the rim with one hand... Fuck me, put some air in it and couldn't hear any leaks, spin the tire and can't find any punctures or tears, check the rim for cracks and the like and nothing... Decided to let the bike sit overnight and see where my tire pressure winds up... Wake up fresh and head to the garage where the tire pressure is exactly where I left it. It being exceptionally nice out for a January, I just want to make sure my tube is good, without spending the time myself to whip out the tire irons and dunk the tube in our claw foot bathtub - I think my wife would've killed me anyway - so I take it to a shop.

The whole ride I keep looking down at the rear tire, waiting for a flat and the inevitable dilemma of limping along or getting a tow - it never came. Made it to the shop, checked the pressure, awesome. They dunk my tube, can't find any leaks, but I tell them to replace the tube anyway because all that air had to get out of the tube somehow and I don't want to risk it blowing out going 110mph on rt. 440 - took all of 20 minutes and a little chunk taken out of my wallet. Honestly my pride wasn't hurt that much because tire mounting isn't something I pride myself on, in fact I've only had to do it once. Since I've owned my BMW I've replaced most of the electrics, clutch, rear main seal, trans. input seal, had my flywheel lightened, redid the top end (well a machine shop did the major stuff I didn't have the tools for), rebuilt my final drive, and alot of other crap I can't remember now. Part of those involved the complete removing of the entire drivetrain and trans, or taking apart the engine and that's cool, I don't shy away from mechanical stuff, but I did rip a tube my first attempt at mounting a tire.

The thing that did hurt me, quite a bit actually, was seeing someone else test ride my bike. It's how I imagine it'd feel to catch a dude banging your wife, well maybe not. Here's a bike that I built, that I've been inside so many times it's now romantic. There's not a part on the bike I haven't had my hands on and I know every detail like it's in my DNA, and some stranger is taking it out for a couple miles. I never want that to happen again.

There was one benefit though. I've never seen how my bike looks with a rider on it because it's only been me on it and the roads in NJ aren't curbed with mirrors. I've also never heard the sound of it from any other perspective of being on it, along with the wind and other vehicles. That was something... my pipes sound damn good, and the bike looks good with a rider on it. It was interesting to see the riding posture assumed by the test rider, and it was cool seeing him come back with such a huge smile on his face... This brief spat of moto infidelity sucked, but it offered me a fresh perspective of MY bike and made me appreciate all my work that much more...

And that got me thinking about sex... kinda

Sex in general is probably on my mind more than most, I blame it on the fact that for half the year I can't sleep with my wife, it's the nature of working rotating shifts. I really never think of it relating to machinery though. I've always had an affinity for German stuff, and that's about as unsexy as it gets. Function over fashion triumphs every time and I love that. I love the boxer engines on my old VW and my BMW, I love that the BMW one looks pretty much just like an aluminum box with cylinders sticking out of the side. I get it and scoffed at people who referred to their cars and bikes as she, especially the harley guys.Then I saw a show on MagRack about Italian bikes...

They featured this guy with a collection of vintage Italian motorcycles and he was breaking down how the early designers (the Benellis, Tonti, Bianchi, etc.) were designing bikes in the feminine form. He had a few backbone frames like the Macchi I have an was going over the details.. "See this is the spine, see the shapely curves in this tank and how the frame narrows at the waist..." Now I see it, now I get it... If any culture could be said to be opposite the Germans it'd be the Italians, I only have to look at my mom and dad as proof. They also take the cake in the category of appreciating fashion over function.

I am enlightened, and richer. Thanks to a football pool I won (first time ever), I should be able to swing some Borranis to replace my rusty Radaellis :-)

Gas tank fab part 1

I've been thinking about how to go about cutting up this tank for two days now, trying to determine the least amount of cuts and thereby the least amount of welding. This is my first shot at welding up a gas tank and I only have a MIG welder

The pitch of the tunnel makes a vertical cut pretty hard to get straight. I had to use a sawzall just to get in there and sure enough it was uneven, but this it the part of the tank that needs 1/2" of widening to accommodate the 250's wide frame.

The rust on the inside wasn't nearly as bad as it looked from inside the tank

I welded a 1/2" piece of 18ga mild steel to the left side, you can see on the right side that the sawzall didn't cut so straight... unfortunately the tunnel is so deep in the middle/front area that my angle grinder couldn't get in. There's a couple tiny pinholes that'll need patching, but a pressure test when all is done will reveal just how much more work I'll need to do to make this leak proof. I'm going to have to make a horizontal cut to deepen the tank, so I'll fix that gap still

I put a few tacks on the top to hold it together as the widened bottom looked good with the top of the tank in the original position. You can see how the widened bottom affected the front of the tank

I still need to cut horizontally across the tank to deepen the tank by about 2", but that's going to have to wait, my neighbors will kill me if I start up with the angle grinder at this point in the evening. Once that's cut, I'll get a better shot at joining up the two sides of the tunnel area, from the inside of the tank. Then after welding in another 2 inches to deepen the tank, I'll finish the welding on the vertical cut on the top side of the tank and start pressure testing. This is a little intimidating being my first tank job and having to weld something not for structure, but for holding liquid, but I think I'll be able to work through it and have something neat

put it on the bike for fitment and the tunnel area is just right, though the rest of the tank is a little out of proportion

a little work with photoshop came up with this

A little off, but a lot closer to the direction I want to go

more to come when I get some more free time, lately it seems to be harder and harder to find my way to the garage

Leggero style

I've been mulling over the stock tank on the Macchi again, especially after seeing a nice Motobi Barracuda one up on ebay all cleaned out and ready for paint. The guy wanted quite a bit and I thought the tank might fit the 250 SS, but the measurements the seller sent me just won't jive unless I cut up the tank and widen it.

If I'm going to cut up anything it's not going to be a rare tank like that in such nice shape

Now, I've got a rare Aermacchi M65S Leggero tank at home which is pretty beat up and rusty that I wouldn't mind cutting up.

At the least I'm going to have to widen it a couple inches down the center to accommodate the wider frame backbone of the 250SS, then I'll probably have to make it a little bit taller so it looks good on the bigger bike, and then I'll have to change the mounting ears on the front, but those are easy to make (or I could cannibalize them from the other Macchi tank I have that came with the bike)... Maybe it's my taste in vintage racers, but I like the longer style tank with knee pockets as opposed to the stock one on the bike which could pass as a 60s Sportster tank. I just hope there's enough meat to weld to because it is definitely rusty on the inside

"Styling as fresh as a sudden smile," who can argue with that kind of ad gimmick. I'm surprised they didn't push the "Italian design" angle


Naturally the tank change would probably force me to change the seat style as well, but we'll cross that bridge when it comes, maybe the stock flat tracker seat will look alright... I like the typical cowled single style but that look is kinda overplayed and I don't necessarily want another cafe bike in the garage, my BMW is more than adequate.

There's more stuff I should be worrying about with this bike right now, like sourcing Borranis or some other alloy wheels, and new spokes/nipples so I could actually mount the Heidenaus and take the bike for a real ride... butttttttttt... my budget it super tight and I have all the metal for welding sitting around the garage

and this came in the mail yesterday...

Choppers don't fit my riding style, but I can respect and appreciate them. I like their look and their attitude, but you've got to value comfort even less than I do to ride one. It's great seeing guys building amazing bikes in their garages and hearing the stories that go along with them. More importantly it's great seeing old bikes resurrected and worked on by hand, using swap meet parts, and American ingenuity, instead of just getting a new S&S engine and parts fabricated with a CNC being bolted on to a pre-made frame.

I've been looking forward to seeing this film since Lou Metal posted the kick start trailer, maybe I'll see if Max wants to get drunk and watch it after I get out of work tonight, or save it for another Moto Wednesday at VW Dan's, along with the 1956 Isle of Man TT DVD for a repeat showing. I really hope it doesn't disappoint

Now back to work and moping around about Manny BaDildo winning today's football pool... prick

Night shift can turn you philosophical. The world is still and you and a small minority of people are awake, left with nothing else but your work and your thoughts.

Every once and awhile I question paths my life has taken. While I have no regrets concerning marriage or becoming a father, my occupation is an entirely different bag of hats. Between operating pipelines out of two facilities this morning, I also had the displeasure of writing up three procedures and "best practices," to be read by my peers. They concerned new startup steps with new equipment coming online, how to interpret unfamiliar data, and tracking surge relief flow to prevent overfilling tankage and causing a release. Light reading...

They won't read them, but they'll sign their name and say they did. Then everything I outlined in said documents,  I'll have to explain repeatedly over the next few weeks and then maybe my point will finally sink in... It's not like we could kill someone or destroy an ecosystem by fucking up at this job right? Oh yeah, we can...

I left field operations for a supervisory role, so I guess it comes with the territory. I guess business owners deal with incompetence and apathy on a more regular basis than I do, but then again their employees likely can't blow something up or destroy a town's water supply with a fuck up.

I miss swinging valves, climbing tanks, I even miss what I thought was annoying PPE, and standing by for cuts while getting drenched during a thunderstorm. I'm imprisoned at a desk now, doing a thankless job.

I find myself taking walks around this facility when I can, going outside and looking up at what stars the light polluted NJ skies will afford me to. Orion is most reliable nighttime friend.

Someday I want to ride my motorcycle out to the desert, if nothing else just to see an unobstructed view of the heavens. I don't think I've ever seen that in my lifetime and as a human that bothers me. Though even in NJ, working out in the field on night shift for 7 years, I've seen more shooting stars than most people will see in a lifetime. I've seen glorious sunsets and sunrises from the tops of petroleum tanks, someday I'd like to enjoy that without the fumes and chemicals around me.

When I'm in my garage rebuilding carburetors, welding up something, putting a motorcycle together and all that jazz I feel useful and at peace. If I didn't have so many dependents and responsibilities in my life I think I'd get out of the pipeline world and open up a shop somewhere. Apparently making sure the Northeast's infrastructure stays afloat doesn't rock my world, but it does pay my bills and affords my wife to be a stay at home mom.

I always tell people that even though my job is really important, it's not the least bit rewarding. When I worked summers doing masonry, I could finish a day covered in sweat and dirt and look at the job and tell myself, "there, I MADE that today." My work could potentially stand for generations to enjoy. The same reward comes with working on my bikes. Moving hundreds of thousands of barrels of petroleum product daily doesn't come close to matching that feeling.

When a guy in this industry tells me an opportunity arises in their life and are questioning it, I tell them to jump at it as this industry has a way of trapping you. My shift-mate is doing just that and becoming a police officer, taking a serious pay cut, but good on him. I'm envious, and I tell him that.

I'm certain that when G-Wagen gets older, I'm not going to push her into college or what I consider to be a high paying field. That was the story of my generation. A generation that can't think or do anything for themselves. A lot of times I feel like I'm 20 years older than my peers because of just this. That's why G-Wagen's gonna have that Macchi, and wrench on it, and learn what it feels like to think and work with her hands. By the time she's ready for a career, the trades are going to be damn near extinct.

I don't want her to wind up behind a desk, on night shift writing philosophy to keep from going insane. I don't want her wondering what it'd be like to ride somewhere remote to see the stars the way we're supposed to see them. I don't want her to have to see the sun rise in a petroleum plant with Nomex on. Fortunately I don't think I'll have to worry.

She's already smart and defiant. She's gonna be the tattooed girl with a hot rod daily driver like her mother, kickstarting her Macchi with a blunt, independent attitude like her father... I hope so anyway...

See where your mind wanders when the rest of the world is asleep.

Now back to the batches, making sure the rest of the world stays cruising

No presents for Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone, may your stockings be filled with rusty gold and forgotten relics

Success! Kinda...

Needed to make a few modifications for fitment today. Drilled out the angle irons to accept a 10mm bolt, had to reshape the center stand's feet to sit at an angle, had to cut off a segment of angle iron on the right side mounting tab for engine clearance, and then I had to weld additional tabs on the stand to stop it from moving forward too much (I thought the angle iron top tabs would do this naturally, I was wrong)...

This pic was taken with the bike running, hence the rear wheel is in motion...

The only thing that kinda pisses me off is that I got rough measurements to build this from an old cached ebay auction and I think the guy wasn't using a 19/18 front/rear set up. There isn't a tire mounted on my front rim right now because I'm going to be switching to alloys, so on a naked rim I only have about 1-2" of room to lift the front end with the centerstand in use, that can't be right... Easy fix would be to cut the steel bar sides and weld extensions, but I'm gonna wait until the front and rear rims/tires are all replaced... in the meantime I still have the "jiffy stand"