Hamish

Hello All,

Hamish’s Monster 620 passed its MOT last week after a full rebuild from 4 crates containing 1000s of pieces, which had been lying around for several years.

A huge thanks to Gazza & Dave for all their help and advice over the last year of hard work. Hamish has a design background, not an engineering background and he has found the full rebuild very interesting and he has learnt a lot about rebuilding motorbikes, which was the aim for the project. I thought his favourite part of the rebuild would be learning about the TDC markers on the cams and how to replace the cambelts, but his favourite part was using a large piece of cardboard to make a facsimile crankcase to keep all the crankcase bolts in the right order.



When Covid -19 is all over, Hamish is keen to take the Monster back to his house near London, and I’m hoping he will tax and insure it from 1 July 2020, so either he or I can bring it to the next UKMOC meeting, especially if it’s going to be at Wendling & Beston Airfield Memorial. If it is there, I might even ask my wife to come along in a car with some thermoses full of piping hot tea & coffee………and of course some biccies for Lord Gazza.

Just in case anyone is thinking of doing the same sort of project, here are some notes from the last 9 months:

We bought a Haynes manual, which proved very useful.

We slowly built up the frame, added the forks, then the swinging arms and wheels. The chain had been cleaned in brake cleaner (Gazza’s favourite) and left in a bath of fresh oil over the winter 2019/2020.

We bought and replaced many nuts and bolts, including those for the handlebars, rocker covers, swinging arms and crankcases.

The exhaust pipes were cleaned and new O rings and new stud nuts fitted.

Both brake calipers were stripped, cleaned and rebuilt with new pads.

We removed the rocker covers and checked the valve clearances, which were all good, so left them alone. We also sprayed lots of fresh oil around the rockers & cams, as they had been dry for over 6 years.

The engine was fitted to the frame and she started to look like a Monster.

We did an oil and filter change using Motul 10w40 Ducati Motorcycle specific semi-syn.

We replaced the cambelts, plugs, air filter, exhaust studs and fuel pipes.

The fuel injectors were badly gummed up, so when Gazza & Dave visited us, Gazza took them away and used Utopia’s ultra-sound gizmo to clean them. (Thanks also to Utopia)

We had a look at the wet clutch to find it very worn and it had a crack on the inner drum webs. We found a Ducati dealer online who was clearing out old stock and bagged a brand new clutch drum at half price. We also renewed the seals on the clutch operating rod.

We bled both brake systems and the clutch, ensuring all the 6-10 year old brake fluid had been fully flushed out.

We fitted a new battery, switched on the ignition and were amazed when most items lit up for the first time in over 6 years.

The old Datatool alarm/immobiliser was past its best and kept sounding off randomly, so it was removed.

We had one leftover wire and no neutral light, so made a quick call to Gazza, who advised to look at the back of the engine. After close inspection of the engine, we found the connector covered in grey duct tape. The light works fine now. The indicators were intermittent, so we took off the handlebar switches, dissembled them, cleaned them and all good now.

Various relays looked grimy, so we removed them, cleaned the posts and re-assembled.

Both tyres had lost pressure whilst standing idle for 6 years so were inflated and date checked. The front tyre was date marked 25 12, and the rear was 03 13, so both about 7 years old. It was decided to keep them on, just in case the MOT revealed some other expensive faults.

to be contiued........