Frame Fiasco

Restoring a Royal Enfield  Meteor Minor Motorcycle Frame

 

 

 

Intro

Inflatable dartboards, chocolate teapots, ashtrays on motorcycles, glass hammers, and shit flavoured lollipops.  

All of the above pretty damn useless.

But top of the useless list has to be “women drivers”. Sure, they cant wait to tell us men how we are the inferior race and how they are genetically designed to multi-task, but put a woman in charge anything resembling a motor vehicle and her skills become about as useful as a barber shop on the steps to a guillotine.

Where is this bigoted rant going I hear your cry. Fear not reader all will be explained, because when it came to overhauling my meteor minor bike frame back in late spring, the  inadequate driving skills of the fairer sex did happen to prove quite handy. Read on…………

It was about xmas last year when a then pregnant mrs M commandeered my mazda Turbo and relegated me to driving her 1.0litre Toyota Yaris. A never-once-cleaned deathtrap covered in peeling stickers of brightly coloured flowers.

It wasn`t the macho look which i`d usually go for, but I was guilted into relenting to her on grounds of “Safety for the baby”.

To cut a long story short, she left my beloved blue mazda “road melter” overnight at a train station and a woman bumped into the back of it.

Then,  a lady in our street drove into it while we were sat in the house watching x factor.

And then,  to top things off, Mrs M was cruising slowly through a supermarket car park when…

MRS M: “ this old dear just started reversing and drove straight into the back door, ”

ME:”was she going fast”

MRS M: “no I just watched her slowly reverse into it”

ME: “why didn`t you beep your horn then to let her know you were there”

MRS M: “Oh….er…. I didn’t think of that” *see bottom of page

I rest my case. women drivers. Useless. But meteorites, every cloud has a silver lining and this chain of unfortunate events  did result in me striking up a pretty decent relationship with our local bodyshop repair man, -afterall he was sharing my paychecks.

Nevertheless, somebody I would come to need after the balls up with my meteor bike frame.....

Overhaul Of a Meteor Minor Motorcycle Frame

I'm not sure whether royal enfield used to stove enamel the original paintwork on their frames. The paintwork on the headlamp housing/casquette was badly corroded,  and what paint there was easily flaked away to reveal a  powdery white aluminium corrosion.




Unlike the paint on the casquette, and the fuel tank which i blasted off effortlessly in my earlier blogs, the black of the frame was as tough as a south wales nightclub bouncer and was just as dull.

Even on my buddies heavy duty bead blaster, it took me over 2 hours to shift the old black paint and the remaining corrosion which had appeared in all the nooks and crannies. Still, i was pleased with the results (see pic at top of page) and the frame didnt require much filler. I was ready to move on.

My mate Ross .

The more keen eyed avid readers of my earlier blogs will have noticed Rossy as the guy who "aquired" me some BSF tools from the shed of an old pensioner that died in his street. All above board i assure you meteorites.
However, rossy's entrepeneurial gusto and talent for turning around knackered old items and flogging them for a tidy profit on ebay has earned him a reputation for being a bit of a wheeler-dealer / ducker-diver amongst my team at work.



Del Trotter

Ross L Gleen

Rossy is an all round good egg and i am a tight bastard, so when he offered to respray the bike for free how could i say no?

He had his own little spray shop set up in his mums garage and the gloss black went on without a hitch to a standard that Banksy would be proud of.

Never one to quit when im ahead, i suppose alarm bells should have began to ring when he offered to laquer it with some special laquer from "a good friend of mine" who has a carbon fibre business..


Apparently,  laquer was assured to dry as hard as the sole of a zulus foot.

Actually, it was a Disaster.

After all our hard work, it appears this pal of rossys forgot to mention that the laquer in question dried to a matt cloudy finish similar to the blurred faces in an adult "contacts" magazine.

I took it home and stared at it for a few days.

With almost no spare cash in my motorcycle fund, or any fund for that matter, it was looking like i was stuck with it.

Granted, most of the black frame would be covered by components of the bike, however i knew that if i rebuilt the bike on a frame which i wasnt happy with, i would always regret it.

Then, like an avenging angel sent from heaven above "CRASH!"

The old dear drives headlong into my mazda car door in the car park while Mrs M merely looks on in apparant suprise.*see bottom of page

With the insurance job in hand, we elect to use our tried and tested local bodyshop guy Steve who does a swift and tidy job and drops the car back to our doorstep within a few days. On return of the car, i just happen to be out the back moping around and  glaring disappointedly at my bike frame -pondering the future of the whole project.

"being as though, you have put so much work my way lately" he said "i`ll respray that frame for you for 25 bucks. i`ve got a bit on at the minute,  but i should get it back to you in a week or so""

Before he had a chance to change his mind, i had thrust £25 into his hand and humped the bike frame into the boot of my car to drop it back to his workshop. I hoping for a quick turnaround.

Quick turnaround. hmm. i think not. It appears that when Steve was doing a Job on mates rates rather than the more lucrative insurance work, he attacked the task with all the enthusiasm of a comotosed sloth.
Days became weeks, and lush green leaves turned to orange and red, before finally disappearing into the great gutters in the sky.

But, just as my 33rd birthday rolled around and i realised i had been dabbling with this project for exactly a year, I had the phone call and Steve had indeed come up with the goods.
I was absoloutly chuffed to bits with the results. A rock hard glossy finish that would hopefully see my old frame right for another 53 years. See the results for yourself:-

 

 

 

 

Upcoming Blog

For those of you still interested, i am currently restoring my forks. Blog Due in the next few weeks when i figure out what i am doing!

 

*some artistic licence used when describing Mrs M`s driving skills and intelligence. In reality mrs M has yet to do anything wrong in her entire life and is a wonderful driver.

 

Tin ware Night mare

 Why has there been no blog?
First off, I wish i could tell you all that i have got balls the size of watermelons and that i laugh in the face of danger.
i dont.
i would however like to think i`ve done the odd outrageous act in my life that some people may consider to be courageous. I`ve jumped out of aeroplanes, gone bungee jumping into water, and have even driven my wifes deathtrap of a car for the last nine months at speeds in excess of 40mph. Brave. ish.

However, after a hot summers day  spent inside a sweaty windowless factory, and  being welcomed home to the sight of mrs M waiting at the door with her arms outstretched offering up a teething overtired baby, i would need to have total disregard for my own safety to tell her to:-

"hang on to the baby a bit longer, i just need to jump on the computer for a few hours to waffle on about my wrecked old motorcycle."

I`m not insane, and to be fair i quite like my un-melon like balls just the way they are. besides i am loving being a dad to the lilly the meteorite, and that my friends is why i have had to take a 6 months sabbatical away from this blog. afterall....

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
Andre Gide (nobel prize winner)


Right enough, the blog has been neglected, but behind the scenes progress on the beast itself has been simmering along slowly like a decent chilli con carne bubbling on the hob.
where do i start....

A Rolling Chassis
As we all know, i am by know means a motorcycle boffin. i can talk on the subject of classic bikes with about the same authority as i can talk about knitting. So i was a bit nervous to say the least when i got dragged into a conversation with this  guy in work whom had previously won awards for the restoration of a millitary BSA m20 motorcycle.

The guy was an absolute encyclopedia of knowledge about classic bike nerdiness and talked for about twenty minutes about the ins and outs of all sorts of bikes without me knowing what the hell he was on about.
smile and appear interested i thought, i`m gonna need this guy`s help one day.

Anyway, one thing i did take from our conversation was when he said-
"One of my biggest regrets was decideing to get my engine right first and then look at sorting out the frame. The problem with doing this is that once you have stripped the bike to piece part,       say on day 1,  it may be years before you see anything resembles a motorcycle again.
This does nothing for your motivation, i`d get the rolling chassis sorted first, you`ll get all the bits you need for that bike dont worry."

It seemed to me that he was talking sense. With limited time to commit to the bike, i would need the instant gratification of walking into my shed and seeing something that half resembles a motorcycle to keep me interested, other wise it would just become yet another flash in the pan idea doomed to a life of rust and corrosion in the corner of my shed. Time to make a plan.

Prioritising
From my own experience within the aircraft industry, i can tell you that the more heavy duty pieces of structure tend to be more robust and have the greatest longevity. They have enough meat on them for you to cut away the bad stuff and still leave you with something that will look good and serve its purpose. common sense i suppose.

My crusty old naked frame (talking about bike) was made of sturdy stuff and i knew could be brought back to life with a bit of elbow grease, all i would have to do was get the items to dress it.

I knew it was the thin crappy pieces of material which are the items that would fail to last the distance from the late 50s. Unless your name was doc Emit Brown and you drive a Delorean, these parts would be at a premium and would probably end up making a sizeable dent into my daughter`s inheritance.

I whipped out my trusty 1958 Meteor minor parts book and decided to make a shopping list of part numbers for the i would need.

These are the bits i was after:

Toolbox

 

Hitchcocks have the meteor minor toolbox listed as "temporarily unavailable", as are much of the tin ware items on the meteor minor. 

I`d been searching for about 5 months when this toolbox pitched up on ebay.

Realising they are about as common as rocking horse shit, i did a deal with the seller to end the auction 8 days early for a princely sum.

Its actually from a crusader, the lid part numbers are the same, but the box body is different. I dont think it will be a problem, and figure i will just have to "make" it fit

 

Chainguard pt no. 43501
Chainguard pt no. 43506
Chainguard pt no.43507

A fully enclosed chainguard in 3 sections with rubber gators in the middle. do these really exist anywhere outside of google images?? rarer than a pork chop in a bar mitzvah.





Rear mudguard pt no. 43736

Another ebay bargain? it definately looks the part and has apparently come from a 1960 meteor minor deluxe. It is in chrome, and has the cut away on one side only (front right of photo, back left of drawing). I intend to spray it when i get the rest of the big tin ware items in the list so that they are all an exact match for colour.

 

 

 

Front mudguard pt no. 43735

I contacted various dealers yesterday to try and source one of these mudguards. There are literally none around to suit a 17" rim. I was considering opting for one of the retro style handbeaten mudguards made by some dude in india until they told me that they are for a 19" rim, it will be no good.

 

 

Other News

 If your interested, i have just done a full overhaul on my bike frame. it was an absolute fiasco. keep an eye out for the next blog in a week or so.

 

 

Meet my Baby Meteor

Yes folks,  The meteorite has arrived.

After 9 months, 12 days, and a gruelling 35 hour labour, my wonderful wife, the heroic Mrs Meteor delivered the heir to this motorcycle and new addition to the Meteor Family -Lilly Belle Mary on the 12th Jan 2012.

She was a big momma,- 8lb 13.5oz and is absoultely beautiful. I was bursting with pride from the moment she came to meet us (even though she poohed on me straight away!) and haven`t come back down to earth since.

So i suppose i should take this moment to explain how i have neglected my meteor minor and have spent the last 40 days and 40 nights walking in a wilderness of sleepless nights and being elbow deep in dirty nappies.

But that wouldnt be strictly true. Sure, i have been known to change the odd soiled diper when nature calls for my little girl, and i`m now typing this blog with my left hand whilst i sling my little girl over my right shoulder,
But Mrs M`s wonderful boobs have been taking care of  Lilly`s midnight snacks, - which means during the night i am about as useful as a   one-legged man in an arse kicking contest and my reputation for being able to "sleep on a washing line" has remained in tact

Thankfully, my new role as chairman of the Llandow father/daughter cuddle-club has not been overly taxing on the energy levels. 


So rest assured fellow meteorites,  even as i boldly venture into the strange new world of fartherdom, a parrallel dimension exists just at the bottom of my garden. A sanctuary free from crying babies and stinking nappies. A place where men can be men and the motorcycle is god! The church of St Enfield`s doors are open and i`m about to start my sermon of the new year.......

Royal enfield Meteor Minor Restoration - Fuel Tank Overhaul part 1

Blog 4 of 4 -to read earlier posts, click archive at top of page

Restoring a Royal Enfield Meteor Minor Fuel Tank Intro
For most of my life i had quite short hair. High and tight -marine corps style. I used to put gel through it and keep it trimmed regularly.
You see, a hair dresser friend of mine once told me that "peoples hair are their crowning glory" and that the way that you keep your hair says something about you on a first impression.

That, my friends, was before i met mrs Meteor. 10 years ago, she was a plucky young student full of querky ideals -or as me and my buddies thought, she was mad as a bucket of frogs.
On realising that my hair had a bit of a wave in it, she demanded that i grow it beyond its regulation 2 inches to see how it looked.

In an attempt to woo the young Miss M, and despite being called a "tatty bastard" from many of my pals at the air force base where i worked, i perservered and cultivated the curly indie rock god mop you see below. I now call it "biker chic"!

(above) Me trying to look cool  in a 1965 RAF Vickers VC10  engine intake (2004) -one of my few good hair days

From my earlier writings you will have probably guessed that mrs M rules the roost around my house. There are jelly fish with more of a backbone than me, and so the curly hair stayed. Afterall, she is always right. hmmmn.

However meteorites, i assure you that this fuel tank, the crowning glory of my Royal Enfield Meteor Minor, will not be under the influence of mrs M`s darth vader like rule.
As the most important visual feature of the bike, i intend to restore it to a state more polished than the pitch of a door to door encyclopedia salesman.
Read on......

Stripping the Paint

Apparently Diamonds are supposed to be the hardest thing known to man. I think Clint Eastwood`s "Gunney Highway" in "Heartbreak Ridge" comes a close second

("i eat razor wire and piss napalm, and i can put a round through a fleas ass from over a 1000 yards").

Whatever. Somewhere high up on the hardenist list is Aluminium Sulphate, and a buddy of mine has an aluminium sulphate bead blaster at his work.

I gave him my rusty old tank, and let him go to work on it. A day later he handed it back to me blasted and then soaked in a strong chemical agent. Apparently the inside was dirtier than a tramp`s armpit at a mud wrestling competition

I was absolutely thrilled with the result see below:-

left side "like a new pin"

Right side- hiding a bit of a filler under where the chrome panel sits. Dropped once upon a time?

Lining The Inside of the Tank

With the tank stripped back to bare metal and with no surface finish to protect the steel, i knew  that i would need to get something inside the tank real quick before a new layer of surface rust began to take hold.

I had the outside of the tank primed straight away, but didnt have the first clue in regards to how i was going to protect the inside surface of the tank. A few days had gone by since i had the paint removed, and i kept the tank next to the radiator in my spare room to keep it dry and free from moisture. The corrosion hadn`t started yet, but the letter was definately in the post that was for sure.

Knowing sweet F.A. about motorbikes, i enlisted the help of a seasoned biker i knew named Nige. He`d done up plenty of bikes in his time and even made his own trike. With his barbed wire wristband tattoo and shaved head, he was Biker-cool personified (apart from his secret penchant for tinkering with vintage lawnmowers). I knew he would have the answer.

 (above) me with stangely shiny and concerned face holding freshly primed fuel tank. bad hair day

Nige advised me that lots of people used a special resin called Petaseal which could be poured inside the tank, and would  set hard to form a seal against the elements.  Sounds like a plan i thought, so off i went to see the gurus at LLandow classics.

They did sell petaseal. However, after i talked to them about my plan, they told me that although i was on the right lines, petaseal had become a bit outdated. Apparently, fuel companies nowadays have introduced an ethanol mixture into their unleaded fuel, which breaks down the components of the fibreglass-like petaseal and allows bits to break off and enter the fuel system.

However, they did stock an a new alternative called TAPOX  which was german made and almost twice the price, -£37 bucks. Tapox claimed it would  stand up to this industrial alchohol and llandow classics had not sold any yet, so i was in uncharted territory, a pioneer in the new method of lining fuel tanks.

The xmas edition of the REOC`s gun magazine reinforced this theory regarding the ethanol in lined fuel tanks, so i took it as sound advice and dug deep in my pockets and shoe-horned out the near forty notes.

I rang up old man meteor and he came down to oversee the pouring of the two part mix. I sealed off the petrol tap hole with a plastic rubber blank so that the threads were protected, and used a sheet of plastic and some elastic bands to seal the fuel cap.

I mixed up the two components inside the tapox  box (hardener and resin) and funnelled it into my freshly primed tank.

I sloshed it about as per the instructions, to such an extent that the ever impatient old man meteor threatned to leave and go home if i shook the tank for another second. Afterall, he had waited at least two minutes and the impregnable 12 0/c lunch barrier was fast approaching.

The instructions inside the tapox said that you need to apply gentle air pressure after you have coated the tank. I assume this is to help it set. It warns you not to use electrical appliances such as hairdryers etc as the tappox mixture is highly flammable and it certainly smelt that way.
Chez meteor maybe a decent shed, but it doesn`t boast the facilities of an air compressor and  
I opted to ignore this step. Instead, I whipped off the plastic sheet covering the petrol cap and pointed it down wind atop my patio table for a short time.  This may become something i`ll regret.

I took a sneaky peak inside the tank an hour or two later, the tank was well covered but still wet with the red tapox mix. Mrs M was beckoning me back to my dad-to-be diy duties, so i put the tank back in the shed and awaited the mixture to cure overnight. This was the result the next day:-

(above) the worst of it

Although the Tapox had cured perfectly, it hadn`t seemed to key into the metal with the even coverage i had hoped for.
I was left with what i would describe as wrinkles of untreated areas which looked like a tigers scrotum!

I must admit i was a little disappointed. This was not the aircraft quality result that i expected and so I headed back down to Llandow classics to see what they thought.
To be fair, i was the first guy that they had sold this tapox stuff to, so they didn`t know what to expect either, however, the guy there said that  may be that the resin had dryed this way due to some residual contamination after the item had been soaked in a chemical cleaner. To be honest i think he`s probably right.
I`ve used enough dodgey chemicals in my time to know that some cleaning agents definately leave a film of chemical residue behind after cleaning. Hey, you live and learn.
Besides, the guy reckoned the tank was in pretty good nick anyway and the tapox had covered enough to do its job, particularly at the most vunerable rear end where they are prone to rust.

He advised me to maybe inhibit the tank by maybe pouring in a bit of diesel to keep it free from any moisture damage and i went on my way. reasonably satisfied.

(above) the primed tank. Filler definately requires some rework

Well meteorites, xmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, and so is mrs m`s belly- only two weeks to go and  i absolutely can`t wait! 

i did broach the idea of Enfield as a middle name, but she told me that i needed to get a life.

If the meteorite hasn`t arrived by xmas, she has promised to helped me out with all the extra furnishings i need to finish the tank off as a xmas present such as the badges and petrol tap etc.

hopefully, i`ll get one more blog in by then, but part 2 of the fuel tank will be coming sometime in the new year. if not have fun over the xmas period.

Meteor Man

Royal Enfield Meteor Minor Restoration - Bulk Strip

BLOG 3 of 3. (blog 1 at bottom  of this page or click archive above - October)

 

An Acknowledgement

As the reader counter passes 800 spanning the globe, I`d just like to say how pleased I am that people are taking an interest in this blog, -I must be doing something right, I hope you all continue to enjoy it.

To give credit where credit is due much of this readership has been thanks to the fab review of this blog from Enfield royalty and blogging behemoth David Blasco of www.royalenfields.com. Definitely worth taking a look if you are interested in anything Royal Enfield, or would just like a lesson in how to look debonair on a classic motorcycle. (must see photo of David on his Enfield sporting cravat , Mrs M reckons he is the Hugh Hefner of the classic bike world!)

Story Since last Blog
I`d been gazing out at my garden shed from the confines of our new nursery for a couple of minutes of almost every night last week. On more than one freezing cold evening, I even connected up the extension lead to my outside power and reeled it out to "Chez Meteor" to spark the old lead lamp into life.
Not that I had any intentions of setting to work you must understand. I was merely there to stand and stare, wallowing in my own self pity. You see meteorites, I`d been doing some long days at the aircraft engine factory where I work, and my evenings had been filled with the stink of wet gloss paint in the new nursery and trudging around the sodden Welsh countryside in the dark with my trusty hounds Neville and Dolly.

Sensing my frustration with a fatherly intuition nothing short of a Jedi, it was up to Old Man Meteor (my dad) to take the bull by the horns, step in, and demand that mrs M give me a Saturday afternoon DIY ammnesty so that we could spend some quality father-son time working on the bike.
Not even the pregnant, nesting, mrs M could deny us of that, especially when he assured her :-
"these old bikes are so basic.......we can strip the whole bloody thing in about an hour using only two spanners. It`ll be a Piece of Piss!"

• famous last words I thought. But nevertheless, the missus rubber stamped the afternoon off, and I looked forward to finally getting something done on the Bike. Read on………….

I worked Saturday morning and arrived home just before noon. Old Man Meteor wasn`t even meant to be arriving till 1-ish, but when I arrived, he was already in the shed spraying every nut and bolt on the bike with wd40 to act as a releasing fluid.
I should probably mention that my dads work ethic is slightly akin to that of the Tazmanian Devil cartoon character. To be fair , he is an excellent engineer, but sometimes, when you are trying get him to teach you how to do a job, you firstly have to reign him in as he only seems to work at one speed -flat out. 
I gave him the usual talk of how we need to just take our time with this strip so that we wouldn`t do any damage by rushing. As usual with all DIY we do together, he would agree and then begin tearing into the bike like a tornado in a trailer park.
Knowing that i wouldn`t have time to stop and say "i`ll just take a photo for the blog..."  i just decided that it was best to just get stuck in with him. He probably hadn`t had his regimented 12 o clock lunch yet, and would be extra keen to get cracking so he could finish for a late lunch.  I kept my work overalls on and went straight out to the shed to begin.

Stripping A Royal Enfield Meteor Minor

Fuel Tank
In my  last blog i promised i would make some headway on the tank.  I took the tank off a few weeks ago, (only a couple of bolts)  and have made a start. However, because there is so much to do to it, which all requires a good wedge of cash, i am only about halfway through. Part 1 to be posted shortly.

Engine removal

Old man meteor had brought over his trolley jack and a couple of axle stands which we positioned under the engine. We took just enough weight to allow the mounting bolts to be removed so we could take it off the frame. This worked really well, and with aid of the formentioned wd40, each bolt that connected the engine to the frame came out without a hitch.

With the 500 twin wobbling on top of the jack, me and the old man gripped a side each and managed to somehow man handle the old lump into the corner of the shed. bloody hell it was heavy! i thought that id be spending the rest of the evening walking about like the hunchback of notre damn.

 Frame Disassembly

The frame was obviously much lighter now and was easier to move around in the space of my shed. I`m not going to tell you about every nut and bolt in the strip of the frame, as it was all pretty straight forward. You can see below the items which i pulled apart:

  

Wheel Strip 

Next up was to get the tyres off the wheels. The tyres will probably go straight in the bin as they appear to be brittle from standing in water for some length of time. Besides one of my neighbours who claims to know a bit about bikes reckons that they are so square that they may have fitted  a bike with a sidecar. I think he`s probably right as one of the readers of this blog also emailed me to say that i had side car forks fitted to my motorcycle.

There is definately an art to getting the tyres and inner tubes off the wheel rims and i am glad the old man was there to guide me through it.

1. Turn dust cap upside down and use it as tool to operate inner tube valve to deflate
2. Wedge large flat edge screwdriver between the rim and tyre and move around the rim levering the screwdriver downward to break the bead on the tyre. repeat at 3 inch intervals all around the rim.
3. When the bead is broken all around on both sides of the wheel, use some tyre levers, (or in my case the same big screwdriver as all my decent tools are in work) to lever one side of the tyre up over the rim. Begin just to the left of the valve
4. Again, repeat at 3 inch intervals all around the rim, using a second screwdriver to hold the previous section in position and stop it slipping back behind the rim of the wheel.  work the tyre off the rim all the way around untill you reach the valve.
5. Reach up inside and pull a section of the innertube out. again work around the rim in sections until you reach the valve and the whole thing can be removed from the tyre.
6. Once the inner tube is out, push your screwdriver under the tyre again from the same side, but this time reach across the rim and nudge the opposite tyre wall up over the other rim. this should be much easier than the first side now.
7. with your screwdriver pushed under both walls of the tyre. pull up with the handle and simultaneously use a plastic mallet to beat the remainder of the tyre from the wheel.  

TOP TIP: USE A BIT OF WASHING UP LIQUID WHEN CARRYING OUT STEPS 3 AND 4. IT MAKES THE TYRE SLIP OFF THE RIM MUCH MORE EASILY.

  

PROBLEM: The Forks

Everything was all coming apart a little to smoothly. That was until we got to the forks. The chromed tubes were heavily coroded and i was worried that they would be seized inside the fork / headlamp casing. I had a quick glance at the exploded diagram in the meteor minor parts book to have a look what i was dealing with.
I decided the best course of action would be to simply remove every bolt on the assembly and attempt to withdraw the tubes.

This was easier said than done as they were stuck fast inside the fork housing.
I used a piece of wood as a drift, and began beating downward on the crown of the steering stem in the hope that it would force the stem and tubes away from the headlamp casing in one foul swoop.

To some extent this crude method began to work. The two tubes and steering stem did begin to come away and we exposed the ball bearings which were bagged up and stored away for another day.

However, as the crown had to move downward over the heavily corroded tubes, it began to seize once more.  The repeated blows began to take there toll and the tin wear which you see below the tubes looked like it had just done 15 rounds with mike tyson. I began to panic, and decided the best course of action would be to call it a day on the strip. i doused them in wd40  and decided to spray them every night for the next 5 nights. You can`t win them all. Id have have another crack this coming weekend. .

Besides, If all else fails i will have to take emergency action and call in my buddy Nitro Neil from the engine shop where i work. He is Merthyr Tydfil`s finest super moto pit mechanic in his spare time, and master tactician when it comes to rectifying other peoples cock ups on aero engines in work.
It wouldn`t be the first time he has bailed me out!

Heavily corroded and now slightly battered tin ware

Whitworth and BSF tools donated by a guy who died in my friend Rossy Wossy`s street. Put to good use once again!

Chez Meteor full of stripped down meteor bits.

Other News - Exhaust Purchased


The other day, a good mate of mine rang me up and told me about an exhaust which he had seen on ebay.   The exhaust is in excellent condition and came from a meteor minor sport. But, I must say, that the silencer is  not the classic "cigar" shape which i have seen on many meteor minors, but had a slightly more flared shape.

For a split second i did think twice about buying it. I considered that maybe  such a visually important part of the motorcycle would  have to be the exact standard part and that there would be enfield purists scouring south wales looking to burn me and my bike at the stake. But then i remembered a conversation i had with the gents down at LLandow classics when they told me how many people give up on getting bikes on the road because they crack up when they cant get parts of the original spec.

They advised me that Meteor minors were thin on the ground in the 50s and 60s compared to the more prolific triumph bikes, and some meteor parts would be as scarce as rocking horse shit these days. Particularly stuff like mudguards and tool boxes.

I get myself on ebay and snap it up like a fat kid with some candy floss.

New exhaust for £30

I suppose thats about it for this time meteorites. As i stated earlier, The fuel tank is well underway and  the investigation into my dodgey frame number is also being carried out. So If your interested and want to keep up with any developments,  don`t forget to follow this blog (its easy and free) by clicking the link at the bottom of the page

Meteor Man