Attending to Tomos #1: chain

If it looks like this you'll probably need a new one

You can be pretty sure any machine that's sat around for a while unloved will have need of  serious chain maintenance and my little Tomos was no exception. The secondary drive chain was stiff, dirty and seized in several links.

Off it came and, after a wire brushing to remove the worst of the crap, into a bath of bubbling hot oil for twenty minutes. Putoline chain wax (the large dishes you heat on the stove) is the best stuff (or make your own cheap alternative with melted candles) but I'm using up a stash of chainsaw oil which is almost as viscous, warms to a thin oil which creeps into the links and cools to a thick coating that doesn't drip.

On this occasion though, no go. Despite freeing the chain it was pretty clear it was worn beyond redemption and fit only for the bin. Fortunately, the Tomos uses a moped-standard 415 chain which is super cheap. I bought a Triple-S 415H for less than a tenner on eBay. Out of the packet it has 120 links and a split link, and the idea is you shorten it to suit the application.
 

Moped motive matter: the ubiquitous 415 chain

Tomos A3s and A35s have 90-link drive chains so you end up with 30 links as a useful back-up if any seize in use. ’Course, with proper maintenance that shouldn't happen and nor should you mix and match new and worn bits of chain but make your own mind up, for this application I'm happy to salvage wherever I can…

To shorten the chain, count backwards by the required factor, mark the link to be removed with chalk and set to with a link splitting tool if you have one. I don't cos I don't like them. I use the old fashioned method of file and punch (or in this case, the slightly newer fashioned method of grinder and punch).

The best kind of chain splitting tool

File or grind the heads off the two pins of the link you want to remove and use a punch to drive them below their link plate. As you do so the plate will spring off, freeing the link and splitting the chain. It's far easier to do than describe.

At the machine, remove the spark plug, wind the new chain over the rear sprocket and towards the gearbox sprocket until a few links engage then use the kickstarter to rotate the sprocket and chain until it reappears beneath the bike. Join the now dangling ends with the split link provided.

Everyone knows this of course but… be sure to put the retaining clip over the link with its closed end pointing in the direction of drive.

Split link: closed end in the direction of travel

Chain sorted and with the bike still on the bench, I crimped a new 2.8mm female spade terminal to the rear brake light which previously, was shorting and stuck on. I also drained and refilled the gearbox.

Rear brake light switch required new terminal

This latter requires 220ml of transmission fluid. Out of the box, the Tomos ships with Type A. I use  Type F as do many other aficionados. Cheap, easily available and fine for purpose. Your experience may differ…

Good enough!

Grandpa goes a-courtin‘

Aboard (what I think is) an early-1920s 'Baby' Triumph LW, my wife's grandparents kickstart the dynasty. With a following wind the leviathan flat cap added welcome oomph to the available horsepower…

Bored? Racer!

Scrap frame, sprung saddle and a Villiers motor (here in 2F autocycle guise),
and you're well on the way to a midget board racer. This one spotted (not by
me) at the Hotrod Hayride

I know, I know… it's a bit old-hat this midget board racer building. Pretty much everyone with a set of Poundland  spanners and their grandma's old Atco has knocked one together in the 10 minutes between arguing over football formations and ordering the next pint (do football enthusiasts discuss formations anymore or is that just Arthur Askey in The Love Match? Super movie by the way and stage play before it, especially if you like steam engines, 1950s Britain, Shirley Eaton and Danny Ross aka Alf Hall. "What's yer name lad?" "Alf ’All", "I'll catch yer if you do…" being typical of the exchanges therein. But I digress).

I've got a motor or engine, depending upon whether you get hot under the collar over what motorcycle power plants are called, and a sprung leather saddle. I've also got a hankering to build a board racer.

Not much to start with, admittedly.

The thing is, I like board racers, I like building stuff and, as detailed above, I've got a motor and a saddle doing not very much to earn storage space beneath the bench.

Villiers 1F: small, beautiful

The motor's a Villiers 1F which, frankly, is an easy way to begin cos the tinsy 98ccer is a complete two-speed, hand-change, unit construction power plant that's an eager performer in an attractively small package (a bit like Konnie Huq without the power plant stuff). Alternatively, I have a selection of Villiers mower engines in a variety of guises and configurations but then there's the difficulty of jury-rigging a clutch, no gearbox…and on and on blah.

The saddle is leather, sprung, and looks about right. Sitting down and moving forward then, are sorted. All I need now are frame and forks, wheels, white balloon tyres and upside-down handlebars – shouldn't be too difficult…

Sitting down is sorted…

Actually the greatest obstacle is not having any pipe-bending equipment which means adapting a frame to look right will be a matter of welding up odd bits of piping cut at angles to get the required curves. Not ideal, but there's not a lot of stress on the components and if it breaks up at 20mph going round the B&Q car park after they've shut up shop for the evening…well, it's hardly the Los Angeles Motordrome and I've probably had worse spills on my bicycle.

Watch this space.

Fifty years of Sparky and CowBoy

Charles Ritter and Irvin P Dunsdon aka Sparky and CowBoy 1965

I was eight when I first saw this picture and it had been around for a while by then.

Shot by Danny Lyons in 1965 while gathering materials for the project that would become Bikeriders, the picture shows Charles Ritter and Irvin P Dunsdon of the Rogues motorcycle club of Gary, Indiana.

'CowBoy', by the way, is how Irvin writes it and he should know.

The pic came to me as a seemingly random inclusion in a book detailing the '…rich kaleidoscope that is photography' or some such bollocks. It reached down from an upper book shelf in the hallway at home and I reached it down hoping for a bit of naked tit (I was an inquisitive eight-year-old and photography manuals were a great way to satisfy curiosity). Instead I found Sparky and CowBoy and I knew then as I know now that I had embarked on a lifelong love affair with things motorcycle.

Assuming that Sparky is on our left and CowBoy is on his left, this antediluvian duo – by ’65 even Americans were taking to grease-free, combed forward hair styles a la Beatles – spoke to an only child as only a symbiotic pairing can and what they said was: pomp your hair rockabilly style, join a patch gang, ride a cycle ('sickle'), find a brother.

Slightly comic now but beautiful, anarchic, leathered mayhem then, with their Maltese crosses, upside down badges and bits of chain diligently attached to cut-off jerkins over Perfecto leathers. Think: Sparky had to sit down with a needle and thread and make a conscious decision to sew that chain to his cut-off thereby confirming his devil-take-the-hindmost macho: "How cool will I be with this?"). Or maybe his ol' lady did it for him. Or maybe CowBoy.

But… no cheap-swipe swastikas. Groovy.

It would be another two years before I actually got to ride a bike and that was pillion on a banana yellow Puch VZ50 which belonged to a friend's older brother. My father couldn't understand why I wanted to cut the sleeves off my blue corduroy jerkin (the nearest thing to a Levi denim that could be found) but then, his inability to comprehend was the point.

A further six years passed before I had a machine of my own. Until then, I had to scratch the itch with my now sleeveless blue corduroy complete with bits of chain astride a Raleigh Chopper.

Looking back, I looked a douche. Like Sparky and CowBoy in truth. Studied, mannered and calculated does not equate to cool. But whatever. That photograph still has the power to ignite restlessness.

Where are you now Sparky and CowBoy?

NB You can find out, and read the backstory of Charles and Irvin here

CZ Owner's Manual Sport 250 350 Models 471, 472

Here's an owner's manual worthy of the name. What doesn't feature in CZ's 46-page A5-sized handbook isn't worth knowing (unless you're embarking on a total strip and overhaul) and while the English makes for an occasional giggle it has a gloriously jolly yesteryear ring to it that is highly appealing. Enjoy…