Monster 900Sie 50000mile refresh.

[900Rebuilder]

No worries I've got the parts list ready but from memory it's about 300 notes all in so not urgent. I did contact Redfox but whilst they sell them they didn't have any stock or could tell me when more would be manufactured.

[Mr Gazza]

Sorry to say that this project has pretty much stalled due to having so many things to do!
I'm hoping I can get back to it soon, otherwise it will be a totally Monster-less Summer. The longest lay-up since I've owned it.

The last thing I did was dismantle the Mandarina Duck panniers and scrub them within an inch of their lives. They came up quite well considering the all year use they get.



They had become a bit unpicked and frayed in places, so I dug out my Dad's Palm and needle to do some heavy duty stitching.



He used it for repairing sails and anything else with really thick material. it's basically a thimble but you push the rather large needle through the material with your palm, engaging the eye in the very hard dimpled pad. I always pull a face when I'm pushing as slipping would be unthinkably horrendous! But it never has.

I swapped out the broken zip pulls for UKMOC keyrings and set about remaking the handles.
They only had one between them when I bought them and that was held on with a cable tie.

I machined up a couple of lengths of Indian Rosewood that I had squandered away for a very long time.




Bejesus it's hard stuff! I managed to shape a couple of handles replicating the original plastic one as closely as possible.



I couldn't help making the connection between Indian rosewood and guitar finger boards, as it happened I had some pearl dots left over from a recent guitar restoration. So I couldn't resist the temptation to add a couple to the handles to make them a little bit special.



A few coats of sprayed lacquer brought them up quite nicely and I like them a lot.

I've just got to replace the temporary steel crosshead screws with some ludicrously expensive slotted stainless ones and the job is complete to my satisfaction.

Well worth the effort as these are the way best of my extensive pannier collection and apparently unobtainable now, and I have been looking.

[Mr Gazza]

Another little bit of progress of sorts has been to acquire Kato's old compressor.
Sadly the couriers threw it off a lorry or some such and quite extensively damaged it.
This was UPS by the way.
The basteds wouldn't even pay any compensation despite Kato making a full account of the damage with evidence supplied by myself.
That's UPS by the way. UPS.

Even before they (UPS) had refused to stump up for their negligence, I had cunningly repaired all the smashed parts and gotten it coupled up to my original compressor to make a much better set up with a total of 100ltrs of tankage and Kato's super powerful V-twin pump.
I've renovated my old regulator/moisture trap and mounted that into the system too, so all should be good to spray all the bits.. But when??

[yellowfever]

Wow, love those wood handles, beautifully done and great to see these paniers repaired and brought back to life…

[Mr Gazza]

Just had a little trip down the road to see local upholstery magus Clive The Seat.

I'm very pleased with what he's done with the material I've had stashed away for years to do this job.

Hump is Alacantara and the seat pad is from the original seat, retained as it matches the Mandarina Duck panniers.

Photo doesn't do it justice. I'm hoping this will spur on the project.

[WAH]

^ very nice!