Izzy Mazzy Motor Works

The Manx build heats up

2009-05-07T07:48:00.000-07:00

Hi all. Ok, this is the next post in a series of catch-up blogs. I’d like to get you up to speed on the Manx build. Just some quick trivia, the name “Manx” was associated with the single cylinder racers produced by Norton Motors, finding great success on the Isle of Mann in the 40's and 50's (Ever heard of the Manx TT or Manx GP?). The name was never formally given to the racer by the factory, but it rather just evolved by the fans and has somehow stuck with machine ever since

You need to understand the Manx is a really unique build for anyone (not just us) to be doing, especially a roadworthy one. The scarceness of the parts and the uniqueness of the motor really make this bike one in a thousand. Every time I speak to people in the UK (where most of the parts are from) they’re amazed by what we’re doing and the fact that we’ve actually been able to come with the (wherewithal!) real deal Manx motor. Roughly 1 in every 100 Manx Frames actually get a Manx motor, with most of the rest getting triumph or other Norton Twin engines. Of those few frames that get a Manx engine, undoubtedly 99.99% are for racing. In other words, if there more than 2 or 3 roadworthy (i.e.: Non Racing) Manx’s in the world, that’s probably a lot. Ours will be roadworthy, fast and absolutely perfect.

Anyway, you can probably tell we’re pretty pumped here. Over the last two weeks, Chenny and I have been putting in some big hours. With a machine like this everything has to be perfect. The motor is really powerful and apparently vibrates like a jackhammer, leaving your toes numb and your butt “toyt” so everything has to fit well for risk of it all falling apart. There is a lot of measuring, drilling and marking off to do on the raw race frame and so we’re doing what is called a “dry build”. This when you build the bike entirely from the ground up making sure everything fits correctly, welding bits onto the frame if needed and chopping things off that aren’t. Once everything fits nicely, we break it all down, send the frame off for paint and other small bits for Nickle or Chrome plating and them rebuild the thing for good. Dry building is the only way to build a bike without running into fitment issues later on and having to get the frame re-painted.

We mounted the fuel tank, drilled holes for the foot pegs, measured the seat brackets and assembled the front fork assembly. Everything was going so smoothly, enjoying a few beers and listening to 80’s rock when we ran into a massive problem. The engine just would not fit into the frame! At this point I rolled up into the fetal position on the workshop floor, sucking my thumb, while Chenny attached a mouthpiece to our Oxyacetylene gas welding rig in an attempt to curb her hyperventilation.

You see, that beefy engine is held in the frame by a set of “Duralumin” (super hard core aloominaam) engine plates. These engine plates have holes pre-drilled in them so they can be mounted on the engine and frame. When we assembled, the engine and plates, said holes simply would not line up with the holes on the frame. Could the engine plates be wrong? Could our frame we bent or out of whack? Could the engine have been drilled incorrectly? We had a serious issue on our hands

The biggest problem with trying to get the engine to fit is that the engine is, well, an engine, and engines tend to be heavy. What is even heavier is the thought of damaging the thing with all the schlepping and shoving and grunting we were doing trying to get the thing to mount properly. At this point, we pressed pause, scratched our heads and decided to build a pattern of the engine to be used as a mockup in order to find out the real issue instead of using the actual engine.

Building a pattern basically entails measuring the engine case, creating a plastic tracing sheet and accurately drilling a piece of wood (in this case a lovely breadboard…this is a green workshop people) in order to mimic the dimensions and mounting points of an engine. We were then able to mount the pattern, (which is considerably lighter than the engine) in the frame and move it around to see where the issue was.

Chenney with the tracing sheet, used to transfer the hole pattern to the wood block

Pattern and plates mounted in the frame

Here you can see how the holes on the top left don't line up with the holes on the frame

So, it turns out the holes definitely aren’t lining up but our frame is nice and straight and the issue is not as bad as we first thought (Real life Drama Queens never get training this good!) I’ve contact my suppliers in the UK and we are getting a set of custom engine plates made up, which should be arriving in the next shipment later this week. This shipment, just by the way, includes a very fancy rear wheel, the carb inlet manifold and a delightful exhaust nut. We love it when toys arrive and we’ll be sure to share when they do.

Allow myself to amaze...myself

2009-05-05T18:57:00.000-07:00

So after a long hiatus (from work, writing this blog, and all varieties of Mexican food) I’m posting the first of a few “catch up” blogs. Mom and dad were in town for a few weeks so my attention was distracted somewhat but that doesn’t mean we didn’t get to spend heaps of time melting metal, burning rubber and inhaling petrol fumes. We like living on the edge in this part of Williamsburg, in fact we’ve been thinking about contacting the Discovery Channel to come do a series on us but unfortunately all the most apt names have been taken. With names like “Extreme Engineering”, “Modern Marvels”, “Dirty Jobs”, and “The Dog Whisperer” all taken, we’re quite stumped, so we’ll continue to market ourselves through this blog.

Ok, enough rambling and on with our first little triumph. Flashback to that cracked Harley crank case. Other than the fact that the thing is cracked, we had to replace the oil relief valve bushing, a very clever device that works with oil pressure in the crank case and rotates in time with the engine, opening a small valve at the peak pressure point of the engine’s cycle in order to squirt oil onto the cams and lifters in the chamber on the front of the crank case. You’d swear I knew what I was talking about, but it turns out we’ve learned a thing or two since we last blogged.

From letft to right: 1) Bronze stock 2) Old nasty bush 3) Precision engineering :)

So, first chore was to make a bushing for that valve. As mentioned, we aim to make as many of the parts as possible, both to save cash and to hone our skills for the day when we eventually create our own complete engines from scratch. A single bush costs in the region of $60 (That’s ZAR600 for the folks in SA and highway robbery to us peasants in New York) The $5 piece of bronze stock and the huge amount skill required to produce the thing meets both of our objectives here, so on we go. After measuring the original part and referring to the books for the correct tolerances, we created a drawing of the part. We then popped a nice piece of bronze in the lathe and spun it down to size, bored the hole, and cut it to length. We then mounted it on the mill and cut the oil passage in one lovely movement. We measured the thing up to make sure it matched the drawing, and voila! (I have to stop at this point to admit that LeAnne and I were thoroughly impressed with ourselves)

Next chore was to tend to those cracks in the case. I popped the case on the mill and bored out a big portion of the case, enough to remove the majority of the cracks. I then made a steel “insert” on the lathe that would be pressed into the bored out hole on the case. The idea is that steel is much stronger than the aluminum of that case, so when the new bush is pushed in, the steel will take the load and not the 100 year old alumnaaam. Get it? You’re probably just going to have to look at the pictures to work it out.

In this pic, you can see the steel insert already in place, just below the bronze bush

Bush in situ

That’s about it. Such a small little thing, but so much enjoyment! Next blog, we’ll get you up to spend on how the Manx build is coming along. We’ve run into a few issues, but that never stopped us before. Stay “tooned”

Izzy

The Manx has landed

2009-04-15T19:31:00.000-07:00

Hi all, sorry for the delay in my blog posting. It seems my posting is almost as erratic as my welding form. Anyway, thank you mazzy for that tear-jerking account of how Harley Davidson crafted a legend in iron using nothing but railway track iron and old train parts. Quite literally, the HD boys had friends that worked on the railway lines (just like the ones where my brother Matt lives) and so it's no surprise that their first engine flywheels resembled steam engine inner wheel sections. Really awesome stuff and something to which we would aspire if we weren't afraid of getting our throats sit at the shunting yard (sorry, personal joke)

Nice pad, whats in that box?

Anyway, allow me to bring you up to speed. Firstly (and I literally can’t contain my excitement) our Manx Norton Engine arrived (I'd like to thank our sponsors at Brabys!)

Laura at the front desk was absolutely floored.
Scene 1, Act 1: 7:30 AM, the morning after another very rough night for Izzy at the grindstone. The phone rings at Izzy's Manhattan residence...

Laura (With reading glasses perched on her nose): "Mr. Isaacs, this is Laura at the front desk"
Izzy (Dressed in boxer shorts, clearly hung-over): "Hey sugar"
Laura (Unphased): "Mr. Isaacs, FedEx has arrived with an extremely heavy crate for you"
Izzy: "Is it my tax return?"
Laura (Rolling her eyes): "Mr. Isaacs this crate is very heavy and has arrived from Manx Molnar Precision in the UK."
Izzy (Shooting streamers around his pad): "Send them right up!"
Laura: "Bleeeeeeeeeeeeeep..........."

(She loves me) Now let me explain, just like mazzy did so eloquently, the magnitude of this particular moment. Old man Norton, at exactly the same time that our Harley boys were cutting their teeth on their neighbors lathe, was experimenting with a motor driven bicycle of his own. You see pedaling sucked in those days, and one can relate, and that Old man Norton detested pedaling so much, that he eventually became responsible for the company that would create the most successful production racing machine in history.

My newest utensil

Now why is that so amazing? Not just the fact that it was a successful machine, but the fact that anybody (If the Izzy brother's and Mazzy himself had been around in those days...) could go out to the dealer on 11th avenue and pick up a Manx Norton for private racing, and that bike would be exactly the same as the ones raced by the legends of the 50's; men like Mike Hailwood, John Surtees, Geoff Duke, and Barry Sheen. It was not uncommon for junior riders with their own Manx's to win open Grand Prix events, racing against the world’s best. Just incredible.

We'll be sure to keep you posted on how the Manx build progresses. I'm not expecting it to go very smoothly, with the cycle parts being sourced from various manufacturers around the world. This is the first bike that we're building from scratch, with all our previous projects either being restorations and or chop jobs, all from existing motorcycles, and the possibility of parts not lining up and the smallest of items not fitting is very high, but as my grandpa always taught me: "The bigger the problem, the bigger the hammer"

Stay tuned for the next posting where I’ll show you what we’ve been doing to those Harley engines. The lathe has been working overtime, and we’ve definitively got a little surprise for you with a gas welder that got a little “heated”. Till next time folks.

So why Harley Davidson???

2009-04-07T20:40:00.000-07:00

Hi guys!! So being the person I am, I tend to look for any opportunity to bring up our troop of mechanics consisting of accountants, scientists, bankers and the projects laden in our workshop to anyone that will listen (or pretend to hehe). You see I'm very proud of the workshop and even more so the gang that makes it up (including our visitors and petrol headsI -know some folk don't know what a petrol head but I'll leave that for another blog).

If you asked me what project I hold most dear, without doubt its the rust covered, abused and abondoned, soiled and stinky, forgotten and downtrodden 3 vintage Harley Davidson engines dating back to 1916, 1922 and 1924. we're going to restore these babies to their former glory and I can't wait!!

But it's not the challenge of the project that makes it so dear to me, nor the fact that they date to nearly 100 hundred years. Its something way deeper then that....you see these engines symbolize so much more namely friendship, perserverence, success, creativesness, freedom and so many other adjectives I could go on writing forever.

Okay...so I bet everyone is pretty much going what is this guy on about right about now :-) so let me explain it to you.

It was a cold damp day in the heart of Manhattan. Izzy and I were tucked away in our office doing great things, but things that do not involve a mallet or a grinder. In the silence that exuded from deep concentration of creativeness Izzy suddenly turned around to me and said "check this out" and there on his computer screen were 3 pretty messed up pieces of metal that sort of resembled an engine. Anyway, Izzy went on about the grand scheme to secure these babies. It sounded like a cool project and I was genuinely keen on the whole idea....but the engines didn't represent much to me. My understanding of a Harley was a very noisy bike with really obnoxious and sometimes down right dangerous riders...I'd never really taken to them as a bike although they are deep rooted in Americana culture.

Boy did that soon change...what started as lazily paging through a book on the HD story, I soon became enthrawled in their history and the early bikes they developed. You see Bill Harley and Art Davidson were 2 poor 21 year olds who decided on building an engine that could power a bicycle up hills without them having to pedal. A project that started in a tiny wooden shed with no money, no tools, no knowledge, no proto types (there were the beginnings of a motor bike back then but they were more bicycles with tiny engines attached to them) ended up becoming one of the most recognized symbols around the world. Bill and Art soon had all their friends and family involved and together they ended up building some of the best bikes to grace the road.

I see so many similarities in their story to ours. What started out with Izzy and I securing a premises in a little room in Wiliamsburg to have a better set up to learn about restoring bikes has resulted in a group of crazy friends hanging out and having a great time learning about bikes, engines and machining. Such a great hobby and who knows where it will take us, but we're having so much fun!!

You see the bike right at the top that graces this web page. That's a 1916 HD race bike. You see the gleaming beautiful engine inside that frame. That's a 1916 engine...10 years older than the first production bike developed by the troop of odd balls that created HD. That's what our engine is going to look like soon....and trust me that's a piece of history we'll always retain...loyalty, camaraderie, perseverance, resilience....that's what those engines represent to me....

Hehehe...anyway...weather is warming up so get ready to be invited to the workshop for a barbecue or "braai" as we say in proper South African!!

Later petrol heads :-p
Mazzy

Welding, Milling and Grinding...Sounds like Saturday night to me!

2009-04-02T13:30:00.000-07:00

Luke...I am a your welding teacher

And now, back by popular demand from our friends at our lawyers S,S,M&P (Sue 'em Screw em, Milk 'em & Punish 'em) we have a second posting for this week. (Just kidding Jaimee and Debs!) So as mentioned, we've had a busy couple weeks at the shop, and the amount we learned (and the risked to body and limb) could never be described in just one posting, making the title of this article that much more apt.

We told you we were going to learn to weld right? Well, we needed a project first (at this shop we don’t waste time practicing making jungle gyms or patio furniture) so we decided to make an engine stand for one of those rusty old Harley motors. The stand would allow us to work on the motor, but would also look quite nifty on the coffee table, loaded up with 100 pounds of nickel plated brilliance once we've restored an engine. "Industrial Shick come Soho Avant-garde" we call it.

Anyway, so our new chum Josh gave a crash (and burn) course in welding with his nice MIG welding outfit, Mazzy, LeAnne and myself each welding a corner of the square base with Josh filling in our burn holes. Welding is not too difficult, but the problem is that the face masks are so dark that you literally can't see anything, nevermind anything of value that you’re trying to weld.

I learned very quickly, that there are few dummies rules to welding:

1) If you feel a huge wash of current going through your body, you're probably welding your finger (or worse).

2) If you don’t see any sparks, you're welding fresh air. (i.e.: Not favorable)

3) If you see sparks, you're welding something...anything (like the table or that nice tool box)

4) And the last and most important rule of welding...wear sunscreen. The exposure to ultra violet light literally causes sunburn...great for these winter months. (T-shirt tan's never looked so good.)

So we welded up the stand with Mazzy and LeAnne going absolutely bonkers with the grinder afterwards to clean up the mangled blobs of metal (called "welds") at each corner of the structure. Anyway, the good news is that stand sits flat on the table, can hold the weight of a sumo wrestler, and looks dashing clad with 1000cc's of American Muscle

Outstanding! (Shit I'm funny!)

So, next chore. After tinkering with Josh's MIG welding outfit, the terrifying thing that it is, I decided to try brazing that crank case mounting lug that I spoke about in our last post. Here you can see me roasting the poopoo out of the thing, but unfortunately our torch was just not powerful enough to melt the rod. I phoned up the lady who supplied brazing rods and her words were "You need more power buddy" (Love these yanks) apparently “alooominaam” dissipates heat very readily, and the larger the chunk of metal being heated, the more heat you need, so next weekend, we're renting a few solid rocket boosters from the NASA Apollo program and we’ll see what happens...

Izzy: "I first heard about "braising" on the Food Network"

Right...moving on...next chore. The fancy bronze bushing in that Harley Crank case I spoke about the other day (The one with the giant crack in it...yeah that one) would not come out, and I suspected the shoulders of the bush had been "peened" i.e.: rolled over the surrounding metal to stop the thing from being ejected at high speed. Enter our 2,000LB milling machine, hungry from neglect while we melted metal shot sparks around the shop. We popped the case in the mill and carefully machined the "shoulders" off the bush, hopefully releasing the thing from its mangy seat.

Read my lips...no bush

Unfortunately, the bush still would not come out. These bushes are pressed into the cases with 0.002 of an inch interference fit (i.e.: The round puzzle piece is fractionally bigger than the round hole. Very confusing for toddler machinists) which is actually quite a lot, resulting in very tight squeeze. The solution, per our almost 100 year old maintenance manual, is to press the bush out from the opposite end using an arbor press, another ridiculously heavy piece of cast iron which acts as a lever to push the sucker out.

Guess what, the $40 eBay press we had was too small for the task, so I have arranged to exchange it for the "Uber Beast Press" (UBP) which will be making an appearance at the front desk of my building very shortly. Incidentally, the doorman is constantly irate, with all the "obscure" and disproportionately heavy packages arriving of late. Just wait till that Manx Engine arrives...all 100 pounds of British Pomposity crammed into 500cc's, 50 horsepower and one giant piston...mouthwatering stuff really, but quite cumbersome for Laura at the front desk who accepts all packages and neatly marks them with the addressee's apartment number before stacking them in a specially designed, cheaply wood laminated closet behind the desk. These day's she's thrown off when "regular" mail arrives for me and I'm quite convinced she literally can't stand the sight of me. She's just great...

This coming weekend, we’ll be sandblasting, a new exotic activity for us at the shop. We have 6 rusty Harley cylinders to blast the poopoo out of, so stay tuned and definitely spread the word.

Chinese precision

2009-03-30T20:28:00.000-07:00

This is a workshop right?

Ok, I'm just posting a quick blog before I hit the sack. We've had an amazing couple weeks at the workshop. I managed to pick up a great Bridgeport milling machine for the shop. Our philosophy at the shop is that even though we don't have the skills to get the get job done, we have the determination to work it out. Buying a ready made part is the absolute last resort. We aim to make as many of the parts required by ourselves, and we're not shy to learn the skills (or fork out a little cash to buy the equipment) to do so. Anyway, so I found a great deal on the bridgeport you see above. If anyone is not familiar with what a milling machine can do check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn0YRgvxF6c or a number of other short clips on YouTube.

It's been called the most influential tool of the 20th century. (When asked what the most influential tool of the 21st century is going to be, my response is usually "an accountant with a milling machine") Anyway, our machine, in relative terms, is actually quite a beast. It weighs 2,000 pounds, is 7 feet tall and lives on a healthy diet of WD-40 and metal chips. It's made of the purest, heaviest cast iron available and in the right hands, can produce just about anything a fledgling workshop needs to restore engines, create prototypes and pretty much burn rubber (other than producing the actual rubber of course). We are SUPER excited to have this machine and everybody crowded around as we took our first terrifying cuts off a piece of scrap mild steel. (I'll skip the part about moving this 2,000LB beast upon arrival with a terrific hangover, the result of a brutal evening of client enterainment. I'll skip this because everyone at this workshop is a healthy well rounded individual, we respect the environment and love ping-pong too) Anyway it's clear this thing is an absolute gready glutton for metal, chewing up (in a VERY tidy well mannered approach) deep healthy grooves and edges, leaving the neat appearance of little Compact Disks where the milling bit had "trodden". Absolutely lovely.

Head Case

Jumping ahead a few days, we got stuck into doing some practical work, more of which I'll speak about in our next posting. Below you can see how we've milled a 1916 Harley Davidson crank case that had broken a mounting lug. (Nothing like going straight for the 100 year old crank case as the first project huh?) The idea is to mill off the jagged edges and create a "step" in the material. We then milled a second piece of stock aluminium (pronounced aloominam..yes the "i" in "ium" is silent in these parts of Brooklyn) with an identical step which will be welded to the crank case and filed/machined to replace the broken lug...once we've figured out how to weld that is...yes we are absolutely serious and yes we're totally nuts. The job is quite hard to explain, but lovely to do on this machine, giggling as it skates through metal like the lead role in the nutcracker ballet.

More on that "welding" requirement next...remember, we have absolutely no idea what we're doing but I definitely would not recommend trying this at home...Till next time ye'all.

The two step

Our bridgeport spec's:

Preowned BRIDGEPORT Vertical Mill, Model J (New 1990)

Table working surface	9" x 42"
Number of t-slots	3
Range: longitudinal, power	30"
cross	12"
vertical, knee	16"
quill	5"
Minimum/Maximum distance, spindle nose to table	2.5"/18.5"
Minimum/Maximum distance, centerline of spindle	6.75"/18.75"
to face of column
Ram travel	12"
Head tilt, left & right	90 degrees
Head tilt, front to rear, each way	45 degrees
(3) Power quill feeds	.0015, .003, .006 I.P.R.
(8) Spindle speeds	80-2,720 R.P.M.
Spindle taper	R-8
Maximum collet capacity	3/4"
Approximate Weight:	1,950 Lbs. (of raw muscle)

Production is on the up

2009-03-18T19:34:00.000-07:00

Pub lunch?

This weekend was an absolute bender at the shop. Right now we have quite a few projects on the go:

1) 3 X Antique Harley Engines to restore and turn a profit on
2) Learning how to use lathe. Most recent topics include thread cutting and milling in the lathe
3) Getting our beloved Honda Cafe Racer to run right
4) Building a MANX Norton (baby)

So, this weekend we split up the workload nicely and all got stuck in. We all marveled at how nicely the Harley Crank cases are coming out after a good "seeing to" by the wire wheel. At this stage we have only stripped one of the 3 motors and are busy preparing an inventory of parts that need to be made (in the lathe) or bought.

It's a lot of fun getting the cases cleaned up, but then Leanne pointed out a serious problem with the timing side crank case. The boss that supports a bush for the oil relief valve is badly cracked as can be seen in the photo below. Look for the cracks to the right of that bronze bush. That hole to the right holds another bush which we forced out because it was gross and mangled. The cracks probably happened because a previous mechanic tried to replace that bushing at one point with an oversize variety, creating pressure on the surrounding aluminum.

This hardly cracks me up...serious problems

Guess what...looks like we're going to have to learn to weld! This is on the agenda for next weekend when we plan to make engine stands for these three engines with steel angle plate (practice welding for this more intricate job which we'll tackle in due course). The plan I guess is to drill/mill out some of the cracked area's and fill them in with new molten metal. We will then bore the hole to side, make a new bush and fit that in place before precision-reaming it to size and setting the oil valve in place at the correct location in relation to crankshaft pinion gear...all of this I/we have absolutely no idea idea how to do! (I sound like I know what I'm doing cos I saw some dude do it on YouTube...brilliant stuff really) I guess there's nothing quite like learning on a 1922 engine to raise the stakes and create a little suspense (Good God us accountants will do anything for a buzz)

Piece of history or paper weight?

Anyway, more on that in future posts (provided we don't blow ourselves up attempting to weld for the first time next weekend). It was time to finally get started with my Manx Norton build. I have been collecting parts for a mid 1950's racing Manx Norton for almost a year now. Originally I wanted to build a Triton (A Norton Featherhbed frame with a Triumph twin cylinder pre-unit motor...pre-unit implying separate gearbox and engine units) but the purist in me said I had to build something historic and something according to strict originality specifications. This led me to order a Manx Norton engine from Molnar Manx in the United Kingdom in May 2008 (almost a year ago!). I'll supply a complete list and origin of parts at a later date but the bulk of the rolling chassis comes from Unity Equipe in the UK, with the Gearbox (a 5 speed Quaife complete with Kick starter modification) from Mick Hemmings and Racing Shocks from my man Graham at TGA (Wonderful gent he is) As it stands, the motor should arrive any day now but I am still waiting on a rear wheel (dreadfully expensive thing) as well as tires, ignition and carburetion.

The parts were creating quite a seen in my apartment, so after almost getting booted by my landlord, it was time to move the stuff out to shop and begin the build. Man I can’t wait for that engine to get here. So first up, I wanted to test the fit of the gearbox in the engine plates, and wammo no go. Time to crack out the milling attachment for the lathe. The slots for the gear box adjuster bolts needed to be milled wider by about 2.5mm and it was great fun actually doing something practical with the lathe other than just practicing with bar stock. So we got that done with relative ease and popped the gearbox right in the frame to test fit. The idea is to build up the bike in almost every detail to ensure things fit properly before breaking it all up and sending the frame and other bits off for paint and plating. Then you put it all back together again and hopefully end up with something special.

Then we tried the supposedly simple task of popping the front wheel on…and guess what, the thing was too fat to fit between the forks. I measured the fit and we were 5mm out (or 2.5mm on either side of the hub.) The plan is to machine (in the lathe…love that thing) each brake plate so we can get the wheel nicely mounted. I spoke to Andy Molnar in the UK who said that he doesn’t usually fit the kind of wheel that I have because they are slightly oversized and generally considered to be heavy. So I asked how much a regular Manx wheel would cost if I decided to switch out my wheel…$2,000 was his reply. Guess we’re going to be sticking to our plan of machining this puppy!

Gearbox fits...now

Well we had a great weekend and ended it off with some good food at the workshop supplied by the good Polish folk at the organic market up the road. My brother Steve is in town and I was chuffed to show him the shop and have a beer or two with the boy while we breathed in the fresh smell of gasoline and machining oil.

Game faces

Solitude...

2009-03-18T19:11:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I had no one to go play at the workshop with, so I went on my own. Believe it or not, other than the hugely diverse set of skills we've got going at our workshop (accounting is a skill but not really a useful one out in Williamsburg), there is also the mundane requirement of taking photos to post on this blog for all you good folk. Now I'm not going to give you a whole story about how I had to operate the lathe on my own, or generate some soppy guilt trip for my dear mates who allowed me to tinker in solitude, but I will leave you with the two photo's below, which I ashamedly had to take using a tripod and a self timer:

Round 1

Ah, thats better! (Get the old head in the shot)

Leanne, Mazzy and Mat...feel guilty yet? Hahaha, love you guys! You might have noticed that the fuel tank is off Sherman. If you read my earlier post, there is something (deliberately) omitted. I managed to chip that fancy hand pin stripping when we moved the workshop to it's new location. That teeny tiny little chip would drive me totally bonkers, so I decided to ship the tank all the way back out to Sturgis Mississippi for another stroke of the trusty paintbrush. This little lull should give me enough time to get my bike license so I can ride this thing legally (and satisfy my beloved old lady)

Shermies is alive

2009-03-18T18:17:00.000-07:00

Great behind

OK so I know it's been a while since I posted, but that's because man has to make a bit of cash during (regular) work hours to feed into the hungry cash furnace that is Izzy Mazzy Motors. This doesn't mean that nothing got done on the weekends...it just means we were too worn out at the end of a greasy session in the shop to post anything. Anyway, so we've missed 3 weekends worth of posts, so what follows should be an accurate account of what went down on Dobbin Str.

So, Shermies "my boy" has been a little temperamental, and Leanne and I spent a whole Sunday out at the shop tinkering like mad. Basically, the boy would fire right up, but wouldn't be able to rev or generate any significant power. We tried a million different thinks...thinkered with the carb settings until we traced the problem to faulty throttle cable.

Sherman is a 1958 BMW R50 and it the first thing motorcycling related I ever bought. I picked him up for a thrifty ZAR25,000 (or South African "Rondt" according to grandpa Bob) back in February 2006 and I guess I've been tinkering with him ever since. This year we decided to do a total restoration and boy did we have a blast. Nothing was left to chance and every single component of the motor, frame, wheels, electrics and bodywork was refurbished or replaced.

The paintwork was the best part of the restoration in my opinion, with the tank, fenders and headlight bucket sent of for hand-pinstriping in Sturgis Mississippi (If I spelled that right). In the old days, BMW used to employ women in the factories for one reason only (Not what you're thinking Mazzy) and that was to hand-pinstripe the bodywork, something no man could do with such perfection. Everything that looked a little rusty was polished up or replaced with stainless steel (I'm absolutely anal about rust...heaven only knows how I'm going to eradicate it from those mangy Harley Engine's were working on)

Anyway, I'm very proud of the boy and on the 1st of March 2009, I finally got to take him for a (totally illegal unlicensed) spin around Williamsburg. Thanks to Mazzy, Mat and Chenny for their huge input and assistance. Our new buddy Josh, who has a unit in our workshop building, put it quite nicely: "This bike is proof that restoration projects can actually get completed!"

The lathe

2009-02-19T22:18:00.002-08:00

Alright, so what is a lathe anyways? Well, it a heavy piece of iron basically, that has a motor attached to it with the purpose of spinning a piece of metal (The "workpiece") so that one might make cylindrical parts out of that workpiece. This is by no means the dictionary definition, but its certainly the experience of all involved in the installation of our latest workshop toy.

A lathe really is a fascinating piece of machinery. It is the only tool in the workshop capable of reproducing itself (kinda like an Alien creature in a sci-fi movie from the 70's) We decided to buy one when we committed to being able to make almost anything required to restore antique engines. Anyway, our lathe arrived earlier than anticipated, and we managed to convince the truck driver delivering the thing to help us shove it the 100 feet or so from the street into our workshop. This was not without profanity or vulgarisms, nor was it short of a good chuckle, as the 600 pound blue bombshell landed sweetly in the middle of the shop. Now we had to get the lunker onto the cabinets and level the the thing so the parts produced wouldn't look like grandpa knuckles.

Izzy (the other one) and Mazzy. I dunno about you, but I find this pic absolutely hilarious. I mean look at these clowns!

Anyway, so the floor at the shop looked like the surface of the moon, so I managed to get some specially made levelers for the feet of those two cabinets. (you can see one of them as an orange disk at the bottom of the cabinet on the right) Very nice little bits, but a little precarious to set up. We loaned the red crane looking device from our new chum Josh, who tinkers with old VW's (or Volks Wagons to the yanks). That lathe is 600 pounds and we were absolutely shitting ourselves, so all "hand's, fingers knees and toes (knees and a tooooooes shoop-shoop)" where kept well back, and eyes were protected from any falling giant heavy stuff.

Me doing final set up

So after "orking" the heavy goods, we manged the final setup and got to turning out a few parts. Again, I must re-iterate, this whole process was totally terrifying. At the best of times, a lathe a dangerous piece of machinery. Lifting the thing is a "mission", and getting the thing started for the first time was hysterical. We all crowed behind a suitable barrier should the thing explode when the "on" button was pushed. The hardened "machine man" would have merely quoted "bunch of fags", but eventually we pulled ourselves away from the shelter and got close enough to the thing to take our first cuts and ponder the road ahead, as we move on to becoming machinists, mechanics and generally otherwise diversified accountants and lab rats.

"Nice chuck sugar"

Off to Boston to pick up our 3 New Baby Harley engines :-)

2009-02-19T18:40:00.000-08:00

So we've been really pumped for the last 2 weeks to go fetch the 3 vintage/antique Harley Davidson engines!! Them being situated in Boston was an extra treat seeing Izzy and myself had never frequented that area before!

So we collected our troop i.e. Blue, Big Foot and Chenni and off we went on the 5hr drive to Boston! Big Foot had lived there before so she was a real help in directing us and getting us up to speed with the offerrings in Boston!

The Gang on our way to Boston

But we had little time to waste and off we went to fetch these antique engines! Boy we had no idea what was in store...pretty much 7ft and 400 pounds of rough, grizzly, hairy biker dude...trust me it was quiet the sight!! This guy couldn't even fit into Izzy's SUV!!!!

Mazzy, Giant Biker dude, Izzy and the Engines

Anyway I've met few people more quirky in my time and this guy had the weirdest ebay fetishes (restoring ancient bibles and collecting stuffed animals - he even offered us a baby aligator BLYUK!!!)...he was also had some radical opinions...ummm....let me just say he made Eugene look like Desmond Tutu haha!!!!

Izzy doing his thing

So after Chenni had finished playing with the stuffed squirrel we promptly shoved her and the beautiful engines (although pretty gunky and worse for wear) into our car and headed out for a night of debauchery in Boston. Now being accountants, Izzy and I have had our fair share of running in's with bouncers...but seeing as we're bikers now...looks like we've upgraded to cops!!! I'm not even shitting you...Boston's finest came in and threw us out of the establishment!! Big foot threatened to sue and even call her dad the "Major of Boston" wink wink nudge nudge to close down the establishment!! Thank God Blue managed to hold her back!! It was all really comical!!!

Chenni bike modeling wheels from the 1800's

So that ended our night in Boston...good times!!!

And our engines??? Lets just say the 1924 had no idea what was going to happen to it over the next 24 hours...but that I'll save that for another story...you can actually see some pics of us working on it in the blog we posted last night!!

Until next time!!

Izzy Mazzy Motor Works

Harley Davidson - Day 1

2009-02-18T17:38:00.001-08:00

Ok, so our past experience has been limited to British, German and Japanese bikes and machinery in general, so we decided to take a trip out to Boston to fetch some prized Harley Davidson antique engines that I managed to find on eBay. We managed to get a 1916, 1922 and a 1924 (well according to the eBay poster anyway) and I am still working on finding a way to verify those years based the numbers stamped into the crankcase castings.

The idea is to restore the motors to pristine condition and ultimately sell to cover the cost of the motors, the year's rent at the shop, and the cost of our prized new lathe (all 600 pounds worth). So we bundled into truck, headed out to Boston, picked up the rust buckets, got battered, booted and back on the road. Back at the shop a few hours later, we managed to strip one of the motors and get our first look and the inner guts that old Bill Harley took from paper to the foundry.

Let me tell you, the thing is rusty, smelly and very sticky. Here you can see us drilling out the case studs because they had seized, and heating up the pinion shaft to remove the gear, which never happened and ended up being pushed out the other end when we got the flywheels apart. The rest of the afternoon was spent scrubbing the nasty parts, eating pizza, drinking beer and marveling at American engineering from the 1910's and 20's.

First Blog Day

2008-11-22T07:58:00.001-08:00

Testing this blog thing out