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.

This is a picture of the struts mounted on the bike. Once the struts were on I could mount the mudguard. The mudguard was made from a cheap steel trailer mudguard, which I cut the sides off, and bent in a bit to give it a more rounded profile. The strip down the middle is a piece of 8mm round bar that I cut in half lengthways and carefully welded on to give the appearance of a ribbed pressed steel mudguard from the 60's. It'll look better when it's been fillered and painted. The mudguard mounts are brass plumbers pipe brackets, they're about £2 each, and add a nice brassy touch. I'll try to get some brass dome nuts for the suspension/strut mounts to continue the look a bit. You can see the bike was previously painted bright yellow and then black where the paint is flaking off the wheel. I'm going to sandblast that all off to bare aluminium to match the front wheel.

I'm replacing the rear suspension units with solid struts so I can slam the bike down at the back end. The ride on a hardtail bike can be pretty rough going so I decided to try softening the ride by putting rubber suspension bushes in the struts and rubber mounting the seat. It's not going to make it ride like a Goldwing but it should take some of the harshness out of the ride. It's a bit of an experiment and might be a terrible idea and destroy the bushes in no time. It's common practice to reduce the rear tyre pressure a bit to soften the ride but that reduces grip and tyre life, and tyres are expensive, so if I can get the same effect while keeping tyre pressures standard I'll be happy. If a set of bushes last as long as a tyre I don't mind changing them at the same time. I got the bushes from Pete at Bike Shocks Bristol. He's a really nice guy and can supply shocks at really good prices, including lovely shrouded shocks with different lengths and spring rates. The bushes for both struts were only £7. Bargain. You can find him at http://www.400s3.com.

Here's a picture of one of the finished struts. The tube is 1" which matches the tube used on the seat rails.

This is the bike with the extended swingarm, and some handlebars from a Yamaha FS1. Along with the new tank and bigger front wheel/tyre combo, I think the bike has a nice stance now.

I bought some cheap pre-bent 1" tube, cut it up and welded it together to make a nice curved end to the cut off seat rails. Once this is welded onto the frame, I can work out what to do with the rear mudguard and the struts which are going to replace the shock absorbers.

The swingarm needs exstending to give the bike more of 60's bobber chop stance. I cut the swingarm half way up each side. Having the swingarm out also showed what was going on with one of the MOT failures - a massive rust hole in the bracing by the swingarm pivot end, which I cleaned up and plated over with a piece of sheet metel.

I made up some spacers on the lathe from some round bar I had. I cut smaller diameter section at each end of the spacer to fit snugly in the swingarm tube. This aids fit and allows for a nice big weld without danger of blowing through the tube. I exstended the swingarm a bit over 1.5". I would've gone for a bit more but the swingarm would've been so wide at the axle plates that I would've needed a longer wheel spindle.

I could've made a jig to hold everything in place while I welded it up but I opted for just being careful, welding slowly and measuring many times instead. It was slow going but after much swearing and hammer action I got it weled up nice and straight.

The good thing about cutting an old tank in half is you can see what's going on inside. This tank is pretty clean, with only light rust, and cleans up well.
Once the tank was cut down the middle I cut two strips of thin sheet and shaped them to fit the contours of the top and tunnel of the tank.
These were tacked on, then the other half tacked in place.
I offered it up to the bike and it fits in place a bit tight, but some gentle reshaping of the tunnel with a hammer should sort it out.

It's wider than I would've liked now, but it was quick and easy and that's the point.

This tank is from a mid 70's Honda CB125 and I think it's pretty cool. I'd hoped it would fit without too much hassle but the tank is made for a skinny single top tube frame, and the GSX has a triple top tube frame which is way too wide. I considered having a go at the frame so I could keep the tank as it is - nice and skinny, but serious frame mods like that mean stripping everything off and I want to get this done quickly, so I'm going to widen the tank to fit the frame.

I've removed the seat and cut the rear sub-frame off past the shock mounts. I've also put the 19" front wheel from a GSX550 on in place of the standerd 18" job. I think tyre/wheel size make a big part of how a bike looks. The 3.50 x 19 Mitas tyre at the front has a lot more rubber than the original 100/90-18 job. And that ugly tank is gone.

OK. First post. This is a picture of the Suzuki GSX400 I bought as an MOT failure (2 pages of adviseries, on top of the 3 or 4 fails!) from my friend Oli for £100. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I can't be the only one that thinks this thing is butt ugly. Anyway, I want a bike on the road quick for Summer while I'm finishing the Duc, so this is getting a makeover.