Sassy with the chassis!

In this very issue you can read about our ride of Allen’s Super Six Zed! Here, he’s getting on with bike number two!

- Allen Millyard

Work on my second super six Classic Motorcycle Mechanicshas been progressing slower than normal. The 1522cc engine is finished and ready to start, but for now I’m concentrating on building a complete rolling chassis for the new engine.

With all the parts away for painting and plating, I only had a few bits of the bike remaining at home to work on, like the rear wheel hub, forks, clocks and electrical bits. I usually send the alloy parts for vapour blasting, then polish where required, but this time I decided to clean them myself at home with wire brushes and wet and dry paper, finishing off on my vintage buffing machine.

I started with the rear hub which was in fairly nice condition and seemed to have missed the corrosive output from the rodents’ nest, so the first thing I did was to remove the wheel bearings and spacers from the main body of the hub and also the sprocket carrier. Then I washed all the parts in the utility room sink with hot water, detergent and an old washing-up brush, not the good one from the kitchen! I find that this method works really well to remove years of dirt and brake dust, using some steel wool to help the process.

With the loose dirt removed the hub looked quite clean with only light surface oxidation, so I set about abrading the surfaces with 320 grade wet and dry paper while the hub was in the sink full of water. I find it nicer to abrade aluminium parts wet because there is no dust. The inner iron drum was quite rusty but this was easily removed with a scraper, and then I abraded with 280 grade wet and dry paper, rubbing around the inner braking surface until it was smooth and rust free.