OSSA/YANKEE 1000cc 2-stroke monster.....

I love obscure (to me) bikes, anything weird or odd or unusual. Or just plain monstrous.....with that I'd like to show you one I just learned of myself....

There was a long familial connection between Ossa and the American upstart Yankee Motorcycles. The Yankee twin cylinder 2-stokes were based on a pair of Ossa singles crammed together rudely.

"Here is a  picture  of  the  OSSA  BYRA 1000  built  in  Barcelona  by  the engineer Fernando  Batlló  (who  also  built a  three  cylinder 525 cc before that).  The  bike  raced  in  the  24hrs of  Montjuich  in  1972  but  crashed. The engine  gives  115  HP  and  the top  speed  is  240  km/h  (not  bad for 1972???!!!). The  bike  can  be  seen nowadays  in  the  motorcycle  museumof Bassella,  on  the  road  to  Andorra from  Ponts,  Lleida,  Spain."

This is at first glance a fairly typical for the time race bike. It's all purpose and anger. Oh....and 1000ccs worth of 4-cylinder 2-stroke psychosis. Gimme......

That's a lot of 2-stroke fury staring back'atcha.....

"Umm.....Fernando....perhaps some brake development is in order......" All joking aside, this pic was taken moments after the rider one Mr.Cufi died from a high-speed collision with a tree.

Nifty tip-up body work...

A few work related updates....

Swapmeet Louie: Your material showed up this afternoon so I'll be hacking away at it in the next few days. Oh...shoot me that pic for the thing you were talking about. Nobody will see THAT shit coming!

BoJangles: Your box-o-bits arrived this afternoon as well so I'll spend some time this weekend trying to pile them up into something that looks serviceable

Rob: Your rearset plates are done and boxed up. I'll likely get them out tomorrow but if not then no later than Monday.
 
Bob: I've got your head casting all filled up with silicone, once it kicks I'll dig it out and cast the dummy. I'll do my best to take pics.....

Max: A pair of clip-on brackets went out to you via USPS on Tuesday, let me know what you think when you get'm.


...and a pic dump....

WTF is that?

Beauty, purely functional

....also beautifully functional.....

Drive fast take chances

She did....she did.

Been a little busy this week.....

I'll have more real content shortly but in the meantime here's a couple videos of bikes going fast to tide you over.....

Camel Glow......

So....I dig leds as much as the next kat with a soldering iron and frequent flier miles to spend at Radio Shack. I love a fine looking woman in a skimpy 'swim' suit. I love'm long time! Put the two together and it's a win-win!

Without further adieu I'm pleased to present.....The Camel Glow

...complete with low light aim assist...

Bearing the fruits of my labors......

Ok, so last installment got us thru the 'work' part of making the motor plates. 

Now Let's take a look at the pieces after final appearance machining and surface finishing.....on the bike. It's really starting to look like a motorcycle now, I also took the time to mount the freshened up CB360 swingarm that my friend Kiley gave to me for the build. It's a few inches longer than the stock 450/500T swinger and should enhance the long lean look I'm working toward. I also got another aspect of the build all but dialed in and we'll take a quick tour of that as well......

So let's see some pretty pictures!

Here are the front motor plates all finned up and looking sharp if I do say so myself! I replaced the softer than butter OE hardware with some nice beefy stainless hex caps.....at what point does a screw become a bolt? These are burly. You can see on the front faces, the M6-1 drilled and tapped holes that are there for later use. I have more plans.....

Here's a shot of the rear motor plates in-situ, note again the M6-1 mounting holes on these as well. I'm currently making an aluminum battery tray that will bolt to this and locate the battery with a brass buckled leather belt. You can also see the dressed up cam chain tensioner....if you haven't picked up on it yet I'm detail oriented...hehe

I decided that I didn't like the original way I did the starter so I went back and made solid brass spacers rather than the flimsy tube I used before. This is much more solid looking and feeling. I also dressed up the mounts. I'm not entirely happy with the wrinkle paint on the starter body but I'm not going to worry about it as there's another.....element.....to come that will cover that bit.

Profile shot! Oops....let the cat out of the bag didn't I? Here's that 'other aspect of the build' I was talking about at first. I wanted this one to stand out and have a timeless quality to it. I'm not trying to make this looks like an old motorcycle, just infuse a little something into it that perhaps isn't too common these days. I don't like suicide shift bikes, especially foot clutch setups. Having ridden one around a bit I found it clumsy and not all fun. I do however like tank shifters and decided to fab my own setup with the clutch lever incorporated. How about a closer look?

Still need to nip off the excess screw length and add lock nuts. There are reamed bronze bushings in the small pivot points.

note to self: work on the blend.....

The main pivot is supported by dual sealed ball bearings because that's what I had on hand. I could have ordered a more suitable nice wide roller bearing but like I said, I have a pile of these on hand. The pivot itself is the black oxide grade8 bolt and the piece of brass hex is there as a bearing spacer and visual element. The handle itself is 2pc, the part that bolts  to the base is machined from solid and the handle portion is 1"d x .125"w aluminum tubing. I spend a lot of time filing and sculpting these pieces once the critical machining steps were done. I rather like the way it came out!

 

A detail shot of the linkage arm I made. It's just a piece of 1" x .375" 6061 that I machined some coved slots into and narrowed to suit. The slight arcs were added at the last minute to take care of a couple things. First, I miscalculated the length needed by an excess .130" so the handle arm and shifter arm on the bottom were slightly out of phase. Not a huge deal but I don't like it. I was all set to re-drill one end and then thought that it still needed...something. In a fit of angst I randomly bent them to the shape you see here and accomplished both desires without making any hard changes to the arm. I think the arcs add a little grace to the piece? What do you think?

This should be a decent indication of what I'm doing for a clutch lever on this bike. This is just a ganky photochop but it gives and overview. This is (see above) just an old Honda lever taped on as a visual aid. Ultimately I'll be milling a lever and base from brass to interface with the internal clutch cable. This too makes me happy. Ok...giddy like a school girl but whatever..... For general info purposes; the throw at he highest point is just a hair over 1" so it's got a nice tight action and should still allow relatively quick shifting.

Here's a quick peek at the high-tech cardboard seat shape I'm working on dialing in. I racked my brain trying to decide what to do for a seat as my initial effort was less than satisfactory. This is close to the final shape I think though I'll add just a bit of 'loft' in the front and the sides will fall over the frame rails. I'll fab the pan from .187" aluminum plate (because I have a pile of it here) and have a real live upholstery shop carve up some foam and stretch some nice leather across it.

As you can see in these last two pics there's a gap between the back of the tank and the seat. The plan as it stands now is to make a compact "dash panel" that'll live down there holding switches for the turn-signals and hi/low dip. I have yet to settle on a design but whatever I do will flow with the rest of the build.

Makin' shit...again

As I stated in my previous post, I haven't had much time to devote to the stuff  I need to do right now but I did get some time to chip out some more pieces to the puzzle that is Sakura. Keep in mind, I still suck at taking sequential pictures. I am way more about making things than taking snaps.......

So here's the engine lightly setting in the frame with just the bottom bolts holding it in place.

Here's the beginnings of the rear motor plates under construction. Basically I traced the relevant shape on the material, pre-drilled the mounting holes and cut away what wasn't the part. The two cap screws you see are there to keep the pieces aligned whilst hacking away at them with the spinning death machine. If you've observed that the piece is canted in the vice you'd be correct. Notice the sharpy line though, it's vertical. I'll be using a rounding bit to create that nice curved end and it lets out on the vertical plain. So...there you have it....

Here I'm using a slitter the wrong way to cup off excess material at the bottom of the work piece. You can also see the same two cap screws from the above pic used to align the work piece in the machine.

Again, being bad at sequential picture taking.....we jump forward to the front engine plates. As you can see I've already got hem cut out and the over all shape and mounting holes finalized. What you're looking at here is the first relief cut to allow the stainless cap screws to inset a bit for a nice 3 dimensional effect once the final machining is done. That brass bit off to the side is a go-nogo that I turned up on the lath to assist in the process.

One Go-NoGo (GnG) ready for business!

Here you can see the GnG in-situ showing the purpose of the little groove. This allows me not only to align with pre-drilled holes but also to set depth repeatably since there are a few tool changes for each hole.

Here it is in position above the hole and really it's just a matter of jogging the hand wheels until it drops in without rubbing.

Here it is juuuust slipping in so now i know it's aligned for this hole. I cut the GnG to suit the collet size needed for the cutter so it's a simple matter of.......

Swapping the bit in and......

...hack-maim-destroy-kill! Ok, maybe not....how about we just cut that relief? Just plunge to depth checking against the groove gut in the GNG and Bob's yer uncle....

Here's the plate with four M10-1.25 stainless caps screws (tough to call these screws...these are BOLTS!) in place to show the inset. I've started these out of 1/2" 6061 aluminum plate because there's a good bit of surface milling to be done yet and they certainly don't need that much thickness.....

So what you're looking at here is a reference cut being made across each one. It'll be used to align the individual pieces to the machine for final surface milling.

Hardly glamorous, but needed for the build just the same......I had to fixture and cut the reliefs shown here so these four ginormous nuts will seat into the front motor plates just a wee bit. But.....you'll have to wait to see how until the next installment. hehe.....

 

More filler......

"Things" have been pretty nuts round the ol'milling machine lately. ODB's been off his game and that's taken some adjustment. As such, not nearly enough has gotten done that needs doing, including uploading a mound of pictures and updates on Sakura though hopefully that'll come together soon. There's been some real progress which is nice so stay tuned you faithful few....I may not be able to dedicate hours a day to the build but it IS progressing.

Also needing completion is the feature piece on Troy Helmick's astounding 'Willow' build. I've got access to the pics again and Troy was kind enough to humor me and my crap "interview" questions too, so perhaps there'll be some kind of decent content there. 

A friendly acquaintance from the toobs Leon has given me the go-ahead on a feature of another bike that I like a lot; The Badger. It's a neat Enfield racer that I watched come together online. I've got some info from him, as well as what I could get off the toobs so will be crunching that into something soon as well I hope.

In the mean time here's a pic that kinda sums up my reaction to the last few weeks of bullshit:

.....WTF!!??!

For those that don't know, the Eminent Mr.Fishburne 'made the bills' on PeeWee's Playhouse whilst becoming truly famous. Can you dig it?

IMDB.com

Sha-ZAM!

So I debated posting this for a long time, like.........2.7milliseconds.

Nearly an eternity when presented with the sheer awesome of Ms. Johansson in general. 

She could eat ALL the crackers in bed and then fart and I'd be just fine with it.......

edit:
Apparently it's all of our fault that Ms.J can't keep her phone secure or you know....just use a digital camera for the booty shots. So she's got a 'legal team' scouring the net for her boobs and anyone who's even glanced at them will be prosecuted and sent to Sing-Sing to break rocks.

So, here's something to tide you over.

Apologies to those looking for Ms.Johansson's bits.

Why I don't swim in the sea....

'Hey wow, you can see really far in th............'

Dear Mum

I remember

Yesterday was a tough one for me. I had intended to post a 9/11 bit reminding you all to remember those who gave all and those who lost all on that terrible day. 

I just couldn't.

I couldn't because I DO remember. 

I remember beers with you when you were just as wide eyed and goofy as I was with all the freedom of college dumped in our laps.

I remember getting tossed out of Sam's Hofbrau in P-town because you HAD to do your Patrick Swayze impression and well......you couldn't dance. Knocking into the DJ's mixer? Not appreciated. It was 'get tossed' or 'get lynched'.

I remember when little J was born and your old man said he looked more like me than you. Long laugh over that one, huh?

I remember when they put your remembrance in the ground without you. 

I remember.

Lean angle....

Rudi Bauer dragging case.....on a supermoto!

'Nuff said.....

Duke Axial Engine concept

I saw this on The KneeSlider and thought you all might like a little peek at what could be the future. If you haven't been to The Kneeslider you should check it out, it's a good general bike blog with loads of good info and none of the self stroking BS you get from some others out there.

For the Deep Poop on the Duke Axial Engine, head on over and satisfy your internal combustion geekery: Duke Engines

Oh and for a totally different kind of internal combustion, here's a boobie or two stunningly attractive young woman....

I rightly got creamed recently for poor terminology. Obviously she's MUCH more that just a pair of boobies and I will endeavor to be better. Sorry mom.......

Nick Cave

My great friend Troy reminded me about Nick Cave earlier this year when he introduced me to the music of the incomparable Camille O'Sullivan who you all owe it to yourselves to listen to. Watch her videos on youtube as well, worth the time spent.

But, since we're talking about Nick Cave this morning, here's one I'd not heard in a LONG time:

Red Right Hand

Actual motorcycle content....no....really!

Well.....more or less anyway.

So it's hotter than a whorehouse......it's hotter than a Jesus-freak on a....umm...well it's really friggin' hot outside the app on my spiffy phone says it's currently 98* outside and if i walk back into the shop it's....122*!!!!!!!!! So, as you might imagine, too hot to accomplish much past say....10am until around 8pm when it'll cool back down a wee bit. In the mean time I play with spare parts and plan for the other frame just like this one:

Sakura with the old Triumph short course tank and a random Sportster seat that actually REALLY works pretty well with just a touch of rework. I like the way this looks, screams Brands Hatch to me. I WILL build this version someday soon.....

Doesn't everyone use channel lock pliers to remove valves? Me neither.....In this case the owner wasn't worried about the shafts because........

....because I'ma gonna cut'm up on the lathe! Quick first pass.....

Here they are after a few passes on the lathe, a few more passes in my home made swirl polisher and now needing only to be lapped to the valve seats. For general edification: Thinned stems for more flow, blended the tulips for improved flow, back cut the intake valve faces for some small bit of anti-reversion and the hard to show radial seat blend. yeah...they'll flow a bit better than stock!

Hobo Nickels

...which is not a name so far as I know, but in fact a form of art.

So a little background is in order:

When I was a kid, around nine or ten years old I was involved in nothing short of underground child combat as was practiced by our grandfathers and likely theirs before them. Probably as far back as there were round smooth rocks to be had near the local river bank. Our weapons of choice: the Dauber, the Rolly, the Smasher, the Nik and several that....as an impressionable ten year-old perhaps I shouldn't have even understood the terminology: names like the Tittie Slapper or the Beaver-Cleaver.

We had our own language and terminology, our tender little cherubic faces screwed down to that of grizzled old steely eyed generals and blood hardened gladiators, squinty-eyed and lips drawn into diminutive snarls of nearly unbridled prepubescent aggression. Many hours were spent honing craft and skill, attack after attack drilled until the sheer precision, the Zen like simplicity and utter destructive fury of each brought gasps from onlookers and sisters alike.

I was a boy warrior.

I played with marbles.

(What're YOU laughing at Bub!!?? This was serious business 'round the school yard and in dim garages)

My granddad was a crusty old cowboy turned merchant marine and back to cowboy, he smelled of cigarettes and beer and leather and sun and horses. He wasn't the 'hand out cookies to Xmas carolers on the front porch' type of grandpa. He didn't wear cardigans and fur lined slippers. He wore Hickory pull on work shirts with the sleeves cut off and acme ranch boots that had more horse shit ground into them than any five rodeo stars on any circuit anywhere. He taught me to shoot the 'ought-six' (Remington 30.06 caliber rifle) when I was 6 and how to hit my target soon thereafter. He taught me to land a punch so the other guy didn't want to fight anymore....even if he was bigger, meaner and had buddies. He taught me how to hunt the big elk that ghosted thru the high forest on the ranch and how to clean the kill, though he did the dragging and hanging. I liked that old guy. When I was really small and got night terrors he'd sit on a stool in front of the old stone and brick fireplace, hand me a glass of milk and play funny old cowboy songs on his harmonica and sing until I felt better. Grams wouldn't let him play the old sailor songs....

How does this tie into marbles you ask? What the hell does this have to do with Hobo Nickels? Well, it's all down to an old man's gift to a little kid.

One day the old guy tosses me a nickel, not like it was unusual for him to do. He'd fling me a nickel or two bits to hump my Huffy bmx up to the corner store for gum or a candybar that he'd sample to make sure they were safe. This time however it was different. This coin whizzed just a little as it tumbled thru the air to my outstretched hand and landed in my little palm with a notably different feel. Examination told me that here indeed was a true gift handed down from on high, for in my hand rested the coolest damned nickel I'd ever seen. One side had all the appropriate letters and numerals one expects to find on a piece of US currency. However rather than some dumb old building....there was an intricately carved graveyard scene. On the other side along with all the prerequisite markings was what looked like George Washington's grinning skeleton coiffed with his still fetching and timely powdered wig. That 'killer nickle' as it came to be known was the tipping point in many a battle. When you whipped out your tossing coin to determine who threw first, mine always caused a stir. Any kid across the ring from me who saw that either thought it was cool and wanted it or got a little freaked out by it. Often that was all it took. I won a lot. I had a lot of marbles.

Then I lost my marbles....well....interest in them anyway. I soon thereafter discovered that girls really WERE interesting and that my older cousin Keith wasn't so weird for always wraslin' with Nancy. I learned that there were "different kinds of hugs ways to hug a lady" from my learned cousin, but that....is a different story for another time.

Oh yeah....Hobo Nickles. Cool huh?

http://www.appalachianhistory.net/2010/04/hobo-nickels-2.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobo_nickel
http://www.thefriendlyfish.com/fun_coins.html
The Hobo Nickel Society

I have no idea what this one is sitting on, could be some kind of setting or perhaps a belt buckle?

My favorite of all the one's shown here. I imagine this coin is thinned down quite a lot, notice the box around the year marking.

The same piece in what appears to be a specialized carving fixture. neato! Apparently there's a quiet following and even a society for nickel carvers.....