I wanted to go over the ignition system to make sure everything was  tickety-boo. The HT leads looked pretty old, which means they could be 30 years old and in dire need of replacement. Unscrewing the plug caps revealed some fairly dark and corroded looking copper core. I just happened to have enough cloth covered vintage stylee HT lead left over from the ducati so off we went. As I'm sure you're all aware the HT lead usually screws onto a short screw on the coil. So I attempted to unscrew the HT lead. It was pretty stiff, but I just thought that was the corrosion and age hardened insulation, so I turned harder. And the lead came out. But rather than there being a screw visible to fit the new lead to, there's a deep hole that goes all the way to the back of the coil. And the end of the old lead showed that it had been soldered onto the coil terminal.

Well WTF Suzuki? I'd never seen this before so I had a quick Google, and it seems that yes, some Suzuki HT leads from the late 70's, 80'sand even later are not replaceable items, without replacing the whole coil. Why would they do that? Arseholes.
I'm not having that so I cut the coil through the HT hole and at the bottom there was a tab with the end of the old HT lead still soldered on. I have no idea how they managed to solder it on there, unless the coils body was molded around it. So I soldered the new HT leads copper core on there and sealed around it with some silicone sealant. I gapped the plug to the upper limit of the specified gap and a quick visual check turning the engine over showed a fat, bright spark. Lovely.

I've done some research into paint systems and decided to go with quality aerosols, rather than buying all the spray equipment (although I do already have a couple of compressors) or, heaven forbid, paying someone to do it.
You can split the painting process into three layers. Filler and primer, which will effect how smooth it is, the colour layer, and finally the clear coat, which effects petrol, scratch and chip resistance.
This lot - some sanding paper, a sanding block, some disposable gloves, filler, etching primer (to grip to the metal), high build primer, a tin of candy blue paint, and a tin of clear coat - was £62. That should be enough to do a smallish tank and one mudguard, so it's not cheap. But there's nothing worse than a paint job that looks cheap and has big petrol runs from where you've inevitably spilt some filling up. I got all this from KGC in Bristol, who were friendly and helpful, even though I went in when they were trying to get their deliveries out not even knowing what colour I wanted. You can find them at www.kgcbristol.co.uk. I'm going to lay this lot down then finish with some white pinstriping - Nice!

Ok here I'm going to bestow a bit of advice I saw on a Ducati forum but it will apply to any old bike. And it has special relevance if you want to get cheap performance by increasing the compression on your bike, but more of that later.
The ignition system on your bike is built to give a good spark. It's built with enough power that it can give a decent spark over a range of conditions, and can cope with some ageing of the components, especially the spark plug, and still do the business.
But this bike I'm building is 30 years old. That's 30 years of corrosion and deterioration of the components in the ignition system. It starts and runs, so there's no major faults, but it doesn't start too well, and it runs rough.
This might be a familiar story to you - you have a bike, it runs OK, maybe a bit hard starting and rough, but who cares, it starts right? But then it develops a miss-fire, or becomes a complete shit to start. So the first thing you do is check the spark plugs, and they look like crap, so you splash out on some new ones. Job done! it runs great! But not for too long, soon the rough running, and then the miss-fire comes back. So you take the plugs out and clean them. And that cures it again. But it keeps happening...
This is because the ignition system is struggling to cope with all the degradation of the electrical system. With a new spark plug it's OK, just about doing the job. But it's not a real strong spark, so carbon can easily build up on the plug tip, and soon there's a mis-fire.

The HT leads are often a major culprit, and they are (usually) easy to change. But there's way more to it than that - there's degradation of the ignition performance at every step:-
The alternator and reg/rec connections are often corroded, and the wires ageing, so the alternator's not putting out full voltage. The battery and starter motor connections are corroded, the starter cables are undersized, and the battery is weak, so starting reduces battery voltage excessively, which means the charging system spends all your journey trying to recharge the battery, which reduces power available to the ignition system. Then, when you trace the route the power to the coils takes you find it takes a torturous journey around the bike, with a number of points of resistance to pass through - the key switch, the kill switch, and half a dozen connectors, all 30 years old.
Coils are voltage multipliers, the more voltage you put in, the more comes out. So ideally there's the full voltage from a strong alternator going in, but what you've got is a lot less. The chap on the Ducati forum had checked the voltage drop through his bikes electrical system and found that although the alternator was putting out 13.9 volts, only around 9 volts were going into the coils. So by going through the electrical system and cleaning it up, and maybe if necessary using a couple of relays to cut out any problem spots like the kill switch and key switch, you can increase the spark power dramatically.
Of course if you've got an Italian bike it'll be in a worse state after 15 years than a Jap bike will be after 30, if it hasn't already caught fire due to the state of the electrical system.

Then there's another factor that can increase your spark power - the spark gap. The bigger the gap, the more powerful the spark, up to the point that the ignition system can't cope and you start to get a mis-fire. So to get maximum ignition power you need to play around with the plug gap to get the optimum setting. Service manuals give a specified setting, but of course this is very conservative to give a working spark even with a weak ignition system. So this should be considered an absolute minimum. Iridium spark plugs allow for a bigger gap and so a stronger spark too, but again the maximum useable gap will need to be dialed in.

Add all this together and you can get a super strong spark that will cope with big increases in compression, give easy starting and smooth running, without having to spend more than a few quid on a couple of iridium spark plugs, some new leads and maybe a relay or two. Sweet!

This is the number plate holder and rear light. It's a side mounted job which attaches to the end of the swingarm. The back plate is made from an offcut of aluminium sheet left over from the seat pan. The mounting bracket is some flat mild steel bar with some sexy lightening holes drilled in it. I've positioned it so that a full sized numberplate will need to be offset a bit to clear the wheel, but a cheeky slightly smaller one will fit just right.

And here it is, minus the numberplate. I'll also need a reflector - I'll probably just use a cheap stick on one stuck to a corner of the numberplate.

I've made the seat base from a mixture of neoprene mouse mats and heavy foam. The mouse mats make a very heavy bottom layer, much heavier than any foam I've seen. This was covered with a layer of thick foam and covered with leather. I pulled the leather tight and riveted it in place. It worked out pretty good, without any wrinkles.


 Here it is on the bike. There's going to be a small passinger seat behind the main one but I've run out of foam and I want to press on and get this finished so I'll have to come back to that.

I've been making the seat for a couple of days. I made the seat base from 3mm aluminium sheet, which I cut and bent into shape. I want this seat to be rubber mounted to give it some cushioning, so I've fitted a hinge at the front  for it to pivot against. I drilled holes all around the edges for the rivets which are going to secure the leather cover on.

When I fitted the base to the bike and sat on it it was clearly flexing quite a lot and could permanently bend if I was sat forward enough and hit a big bump. So I made a strengthening bracket and bolted it to the base.

Before I finally fit the seat I wanted to relocate the electrics so they're hidden from view. Originally they were mounted on the side of the bike, so I moved them so they're under the seat, between the seat rails. Luckily all the electrical items fit between the seat rails while mounted to their original mounting plate so it was just a matter of making a couple of little brackets and I'll have to make some longer battery cables to the starter relay too.This'll make the bike look nicely clean and stripped down with a big old space under the seat.

Legend has it if you look into his eyes while watching this and say his name 3 times Lemmy will come around to your house and kick you in the nuts/fanny.