Tomos carrier update

Tomos carrier: just needs a rub down and paint

Quickie update with a pic or two of the (almost) finished Tomos carrier. I’ve been super-busy of late but short of filling, filing and a lick of paint, the rack is finished.

Six quid saved, hurrah!

You can see what a mess the flux-cored welder makes…

Attending to Tomos #2: fabbing a carrier

Ever seen the secret stash chamber on a Tomos A3?

Hidden catch reveals ‘secret’ cache

Reach behind the saddle, tug on the catch and lift the seat to reveal it. Big enough for a flick knife, length of string, pet mouse, gum, porn mag, bong and all the other appurtenances a two-wheeled Tom Sawyer likes to carry around, not quite big enough for a helmet (unless you have the opposite of hydrocephalus), fuel can, or anything else even vaguely useful (that is, if you have no need to stab, tie up a parcel, grow an ear, chew, wank or huff).

Big enough for small stuff, too small for big stuff

The answer? A rack or carrier.

I have a welder, some scrap metal, a bench and an hour or two of free time – by an amazing coincidence, almost the exact ingredients for making one. Given I could’ve bought a factory example for six quid on eBay recently the exercise is admittedly pretty pointless, but I’m stingy, like making things and have an aversion to fattening eBay’s off-shore bank account so homebrew it is.

The remains of a school chair will soon become…

What I don’t have is a pipe-bender so a project such as this requires careful planning in order to use pre-existing bends or else cutting and welding to get the necessary shapes. Here’s an example of what I’m hoping to copy:

…a copy of this, the OE Tomos rack

First step is to cut out suitable lengths and cross pieces for the main part of the carrier. Next, is to turn ‘slugs’ on the lathe to strengthen the joints and provide something substantial to weld to. The alternative is to sleeve the joints but slugs have the advantage of being invisible once the welds are ground down.

Careful cutting and welding preserves the bends and obviates the need for a
pipe-bender. Now all I need to do is lay out the pieces on the bench, toddle off
to bed and wait for some hungry elves to come and make it into a rack

Turning solid steel ‘slugs’ to strengthen pipe joints

With the cross pieces shaped to match the diameter of the sides, the slugs turned and the various pieces held in place with a clamp I broke out the welder and set to. At least, I tried. No wire feed. Hmm. Nothing would persuade the wire to emerge from the torch.

My welder is a cheap(ish) Clarke 130EN Turbo which I use gasless with flux-cored 0.8mm or 0.9mm wire. Working back from the tip to the liner, everything seemed fine so time for a strip down and look-see. With the insides exposed I put a meter across the wire-feed motor which showed DC present. So far so good but other than ‘clicking’, it wouldn’t shift the wire.

Reflecting on the problem over a mug of coffee, it struck me there’s a gearbox fed by the motor which has (as you might guess) plastic pinions clotted with grease. Maybe the gears were seized? Though the whole shebang can be removed as a unit I thought I’d try a little heat first to soften the grease. Using an old hairdryer, I heated the gearbox and pulsed the torch trigger while twisting the speed pot to and fro. Half a minute or so of not very hopeful heating, pulsing and twisting and… success! It began to feed. Either the gears were gummed up, or there was dirt on the speed control track or something else equally minor yet devastatingly terminal. Anyway, here it was working again.

Unless it’s in the hands of a pro, a flux-cored gasless welder produces a strong but messy result. I’m no welder but I don’t mind ‘finessing’ the weld afterwards. However, and as is its wont, having sat for a while the flux-cored wire was blighted by moisture resulting in ugly, weak porous welds. You can counter this by maintaining a >3/4” wire length at the tip. Heat from the weld evaporates the moisture before it reaches the joint but it’s even harder to produce a tidy job.

However, welding difficulties aside, the rack began to come together:

Next morning…

…and the elves have done their work

I want to attach side guards as per the OE rack to keep a pannier from fouling the wheel, there’s some cleaning up to do and paint obviously, but pretty much the rack is together. I’ll post an update when it’s in paint and finished.

Now there's just this piece to weld in place, two brackets to make to
support the carrier behind the lamp cluster, a spruce up and some paint

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!

From the sublime to the…Tomos

1988 Tomos A3 MS as advertised

What is it about motorcycles that you can own examples which, by any standards, rank right up there with the classics – a ’53 sprung-hub Thunderbird and a ’56 Panhead are good for admiring glances pretty much wherever they go, even among the sports bike fraternity (and sorority) – and yet also stable a machine which, when new, was the butt of every possible joke and has done little to redeem itself in the intervening years?

And yet… I like my Tomos moped. In fact, I love it! Mind you, I did once own a CZ Sport 250 twin with a home-brew sidecar and pretty much anything is a step up from that.

Clean, but there's one or two jobs to do…

Tomos! Even the name is naff and any machine manufactured in the dour Yugoslavia and sold through branches of Woolworths for just £219 is unlikely to win over the funky moped brigade and yet that's just what it does. Fantic, Garelli or Yamaha Fizzy it isn't (or even Malaguti or Puch) but the plucky little Tomos with its cheerful decals, simple and sturdy design and willing motor wins plaudits to this day.

Mine came from a private ad on an autocycle club website and is a replacement for the 1951 98cc James Comet I was riding on club outings but sold in a rash moment. I miss the James but its departure made way for the Tomos, a machine I've always liked and would've bought new had I not been a penniless student in London at the time, riding to and fro to uni on the CZ when I could afford fuel or my bicycle when I couldn't.

Prepping for 'action'

There's a few jobs to do – inevitably – but this one's pretty clean and will be campaigned vigorously once it's back on the road. Look out for reports of its exploits posted here…