Ian

Very nice for the price

It's Nigel's.

Nice work Chris, I like the contrast between the freshly painted wheel and Bap's faded oiled bodywork Are you going to paint the front wheels and wheel weights?

A cool find Chris, sometimes it's nice to have a break from "The Red" and do something different..

This wasn't a planned thing, but as we had 5 Wheel Horses in our workshop we thought it would be nice to see them all lined up

" polished to a mirror finish "... That's a bit of an understatement to say the least Very shiny indeed.. Great signs Neil, looking forward to seeing where you hang them.. Dare I ask how much they cost you? One would look great hanging above my workshop doors

A very nice machine, not something we see over here at MOM so thanks for posting it Tank I love the shape of the front axle, the wheel camber looks a bit radical! Can I suggest you fit your grandson with longer legs so he can reach the pedals and sit on the seat at the same time

Very nice

Nice work Norm, yeah cleaning wheels up has to rank as one of the worst WH jobs to do!! I had clearance problems when I fitted the big AG's to my ole 312 years ago.. Had to raise the fender pan by an inch and cut n shut the foot plates to make the tyres fit.. The wheels look great by the way

Thanks Iain, it was painted with enamel. Neil's RJ is so close to being done I can almost taste the first test drive A few detail jobs, the points cover was missing a gasket so I had to make one... The exhaust was missing a clamp and little doo dat that clamps between the exhaust and frame... Sorted The foot pegs didn't have the optional? foot rest thingys (I don't even know if RJ's could be ordered with them?) so Nigel put some rubber shrink wrap stuff over the pegs to give a bit of grip and stop the paint wearing away. Sorry Neil, a change of plan for the wheels... We thought gold would look much better and Nigel had all these cans of wheel paint kicking around you see.......... Only kidding A second coat is needed at this point.. As is first coating the other side Wheels second coated and bolted back on...... I can't help but grin every time I look at the RJ

Yesterday the little RJ started going back together, lift cable first followed by the engine. I put a couple of bit's of inner tube on the frame before dropping the engine on.. It makes it easy to line the bolt holes up and stops the frame getting scratched while moving the engine about. Cleaning out the grease nipples in a little petrol Pulleys and drive belts on. Front axle and steering on. The crowning moment..... The tank isn't fixed under the hood yet, but we just had to have a look Not much left to do, the paint for the wheels and the fuel tank sealant should arrive tomorrow, and I need to sort the carb out now the rebuild kit has arrived..

Really moving on with the RJ rebuild now, the frame has been cleaned up, primered and the underside has been top coated hence why the frame is on it's side Is this strange two part valve arrangement a USA thing? We had never seen it before! It turns out that the strange two part valve is to make it easier to ballast the tyres. Thank you Evanloock on RS for the answer Top coat time, Meanwhile I find this old WH rear wheel with bolts welded through from the outside (not by me I should add)... Makes a perfect tool to hole the RJ's front wheel for a clean up. Note the crack in the paint... Well, the crack is actually in filler!! Someone did like the ol bondo in the past! And to bring this build thread up to date, lot's of freshly painted panels and parts

Glad your enjoying the build Neil, how could we not do a thread when there are so few RJ's over here... It gives me something extra to make a few video's about as well More progress.. Getting the knackered tyre off the front wheel rim was fun, the tube put up more of a fight than the tyre! Does anyone know what the random hole in the wheel rim is for? It doesn't seem to line up with anything on the RJ and I'd of thought it would have two holes for bolting a wheel weight onto! I wondered why the paint off the bottom of the gas tank had been stripped, someone has done a solder repair.. What's Nigel spotted in the tank? Nope, it's not a mini star system but quite a few holes instead! Some detail brought back by cleaning up the pull start casing.. Cleaning up the rear wheels.. Someone at some point had flattened the paint back to a beautiful smooth finish and then for what ever reason gave them a quick (very quick) spray with grey primer.. The odd rusty bit cleans up very easily The other rear wheel decided it wanted to leak water on my bench! 10psi later and water was pouring/bubbling out all over the place! I'm not looking forward to popping the tyre off the bead to clean the water out and see how badly rusted it is inside! I must remember to take a photo of the tyre valve tomorrow as I've never seen one like it! A hint of things to come Not forgetting of course

More of an RJ update for you chaps, let's have a look at the hood/bonnet shall we.. Interesting, a repainted gas tank with no fuel tap (Neil did mention it leaked ) and lot's of paint cleaned off the bottom! What's going on under (or is that above?) the tank? Soooooo... Someone has ground back the filler smoothing out the underside of the hood/bonnet to weld on new fuel tank straps! I'd guess when the hood was painted no tank straps were fitted.. It so happen that the strap welds are in the same place as the filler cracks above! Who ever did it thought something sucked as that's what it looks like has been written! No idea why when I upload this photo it turns it sideways! Oh, and the top of the tank never got painted! Out with the grinder and a workshop full of filler dust later it was good to see the rust was surface rust only, and only where the filler had cracked... And a random pop rivet! As the bonnet/hood has quite a lot of ripples under the filler, there was no point in taking it all out only to replace it.. So with the surface rust carefully cleaned back to bare metal the first layer of filler went back in.. Easy sand no pin holes filler eh! At least the easy sand bit was right.. No worries, a second skim will sort it. Meanwhile I catch Nigel dancing with some masking tape and a bench full of RJ parts! Some parts like the gear (I'm not sure it should be called that!) lever had never be repainted, so here it is with all the thick surface rust cleaned off awaiting some red oxide primer. Some parts in the "need to to have the paint flattened back to give the primer a good key" Que Some primed parts hanging about the place. The hood now looks good with a fresh coat of red oxide primer, I'm happy with the overall shape of my filler work, there's a just a couple of little spots that are annoying me.. I will sort them tomorrow.

Paint chat now had, he (I keep going to call him her!) will look stunning with fresh paint. Glad you like the vid's, Part two will be along in a mo.. It's a shame about the cracked filler, but the rust has been caught in time before it chews holes through the hood.. Lot's of filler in it, but it had been done to a very high standard.. Just a shame about the bubbling. As promised here's Part 2 of the RJ Diaries..

A few photo's of the hood, fenders etc after they were painted Monday.. They be looking good

Speak with you tomorrow Neil, it's been a long day! Here's a couple of pic's of what's hiding under the filler bubbles on the hood!

It's a pleasure to be helping on such a machine Neil, a great bit of history with it too.. A "he" it is Ta for that photo Neil, it helped a great deal working out how the pulley system worked I'm not sure about the silver steering wheel though, what is the correct colour as I've seen em painted silver, black and red.. It didn't take long to get the belt guard and hood off.. The first job was to have a look at the engine, it has good compression and after a bit of plug and plug lead cleaning it has a spark I expect with a temporary gas tank fitted and a bit of move juice the engine should come to life.. Something to look forward to on Monday The engine pulley is not quite in the right place on the shaft, it should be closer to the engine.. Me thinks the pulley needs to turn a little on the shaft as well.. Having not worked on an RJ or any really early Wheel Horses before this er.. brassy bit on the back of the pulley confused me for quite a while until I worked out it's the reverse er.. cog In fact the whole drive belt system confused me for a while until I disconnected this spring and then everything fell into place.. With the RJ's engine having a good spark the time had come to look at the carb.. An interesting find behind the carb... Me thinks that gasket might be a bit small! Everything moved freely in the carb, so with a new gasket made (your see it in an up and coming video) the carb was bolted back on and a temporary fuel tank lashed up. A few pulls of the cord (steel cable in this case!) and the engine coughed into life and ran for a few seconds before stopping, which was just as well as the carb was leaking fuel from around the float bowl in vast amounts! Off with the carb again, ahhh there's the problem! As luck would have it Nigel had a spare carb which I could borrow to check out how the engine runs.. Thanks mate A few pulls of the cord later and the engine didn't start... One "big" pull later the pull cord came off in my hand but the engine did start, run and sounded very nice until it ran out of petrol and I gave myself a shock from the HT lead! All of which you will see in a video of course I thought I had snapped the steel cable pull cord thingy (I hadn't seen on either) until a saw how long it still was and checked the (not so) snapped end! As it turned out the nut that holds the end of the cable on was loose and the steel cable had simply pulled out! Phew While we have the pull start assembly apart let's turn it over and have a look..... What the??? Pull the cord and the center changes into a hexagonal shape! Which grips on a hexagonal shaft on the flywheel! I've never seen a pull start that works like that before... Me likes Then this happened This is a good point to put up a RJ Intro vid, the first part of "The RJ Diary's" should be up later today

A little RJ update, she (Is it a she Neil?) has moved onto my bench ready for work to start on it Friday, it's a kinda joint mini project with Nigel.. It's going to be interesting working on such an old and fine machine

The carbs had a quick (very quick) clean up before being hit with some black paint. For some reason the engine when in the trike never had a choke cable fitted, but it was quite easy to fit the original quad cable to the carbs. Carbs fitted. The throttle cable had seen better days and decided to snap! Looking at this "unsnapped" section of it I'm surprised it had held together for as long as it did! Another thing for the shopping list! Tank and seat plonked back on.. The reason for fitting the tank was to work out if I needed to re-position the fuel tap.. As it turned out the original tap position was spot on, it's just a shame someone had cut it out to fit it to Why Not's tank! The plan was to cut this tap off the trikes tank and graft it onto MadTrax's tank.. Well... That was the plan until I found the tank still had some petrol in it! I guess it still is the plan, it will just have to wait a few day for the tank to air out.. Some funky airbrushing.. Looks like a previous owner had a thing for Iron Maiden

Morning all, time for a long over due update starting with a much more detailed photo (that I found buried in my phone) of the captive nut and screw thingy that holds the top of the gauge pods together. Both freshly painted gauge pods were part assembled and bolted back on MadTrax.. They looked so terrible that they came off again, got hit will some filler and then repainted! Me thinks they look much better now The temp gauge and warning lights almost ready to go in the pod. The original bike warning lights would not fit in easy.. So I bought some of these Two extra holes drilled in the temp gauge mounting plate which for some reason doesn't look too happy about it!! A small but worthy attention to detail thing.. The new warning lights had chrome effect surrounds.. That would never do, something shiny!! So.... Fitting the temp gauge and warning lights in the pod was a bit tight... Yes the paints chipped already Ta-Daa.. The rev counter... A new rev counter cable was fitted, which meant the radiator had to come off the engine again! I'm finally happy with the gauges now

Thanks Iain, I did leave the radiator draining for just long enough to see if it had the desired effect... Good to know it did

Looks like you had a fun day Chris.. In the last photo is that a really narrow rear axle with disc brakes at the top of the skip? I don't think it is but that's what it looks like!

Not a great deal to report as I've not been up the workshop apart from a few hours Friday where my body needed a break from all the festive sitting around! Trying to follow a wiring diagram on a smart phone (printer out of ink) was interesting but I did manage to remove a few more un-needed wires from the loom... It's starting to look less frightening now Just before silly season hit I pulled the gauges out of a box to finish them off.. The glass "eyebrow"/top/bit that actually holds the gauges in (the pods were make from ride on mower headlamps remember) needed a little something to stop them from flying apart during high speed jumps/crashes (delete according to taste/fear/bravery). A bit hard to see from this photo snatched from video footage, but there is a small Allen key bolt that screws through a hole in the lip thingy into a threaded insert welded to the pod body. Gauge pod body's and trim/eyebrow top ring thingys hit with the black stuff.. To finish this update off here's the latest MadTrax video where I play around some more with special effects and a few sound effects as well.. I even do some work on MadTrax