Aussie ingenuity.........good and bad

[YUMASTEPSIDE]

   It never ceases to amaze me.........bush mechanics come up with the most amazing feats of engineering mastery to solve the seemingly unsolvable....and then there's these............



    Those are tek-screws holding the guard to the seat!




    I have actually seen a bloke who cut the plastic number plate off an IT headlight and tek-screwed it to his helmet for a peak !!!

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[firko]

You've got to love the rubber front guard. That bugger would never break on ya. You'd have a shitload of bush remedies like those in that amazing yard of yours wouldn't you Roger? Anybody got any more?

[mx250]

I de-coked a DT250 piston as part of a tune up. Hit the top of the piston with the wire wheel of the bench grinder and 'what this grey stuff under the black'  . There was a  hole in the piston as big as a 20 cent piece filled in with yucky putty of one type or the other  .

Not my bike; put it back in. Run fine. Couldn't pick the difference. I know it run for many thousands of k's of trail riding without faulty.

[vandy010]

i wonder if that front guard is available in different tread patterns?

[Tim754]

What pattern ya want? Sporty ,Winter, Off roader, Truck, Slick, any one you like*! just send me $500.00 each* and I will  post back for free. ( Please allow couple of days for me to visit dump, source correct style and manufacture........* Knobbies $1000.00 Surcharge  Tim

[Freakshow]

Truth beknow they are all Rogers creationns-  right roggy

[LWC82PE]

i hate this stuff! i gotta fix all those sort of bodgy jobs someone once thought was good at the time. im sure everyones had the old gearlever/kickstarter welded to the shafts problem but they are certainly not the worst you can come across!!!

[mx250]

im sure everyones had the old gearlever/kickstarter welded to the shafts ......

or the counter shaft sprocket 

[Doc]

had an RM125 with the exhaust and engine mounts welded to the frame.. that was a goody..those dang bolts are always falling out..had a screw driver for a rear mount too..it was hammered in there nice and tight 

[GMC]

I don't know whats so funny about the tyre mud guard, I had one of those on my Honda Dream back in 75. It was always a drama keeping it running on both cylinders but that rear guard never gave me any trouble. More unbreakable than a Preston Petty


My dad was one of the best (worst?) for bush engineering with his countless projects. Ever since I can remember we had this BSA engine (M20 I think) in the back of the shed that he had turned into a stationary engine. It had no other purpose in life than to brought out into daylight every couple of years, started up & left to vibrate it's way around the floor for 15 minutes then put to the back of the shed again.
Hasn't been running now for a couple of decades, must start it up & tell my son it's a family tradition.


One time he wanted to build a sidecar for his Goldwing as he had this thing for sidecars that only Tim could understand
He couldn't build just any old sidecar though, his had to have a steering  sidecar wheel. He pieced it together from old car tie-rod ends for linkages, a stub axle from a car & whatever else was laying around.


Complete with leaf spring.


Then he had  to reduce the "trail" to help it steer.
"Finesse" & "state of the art" were not words I ever heard in a sentence with my father.


One day his false teeth broke, the plate broke in half, & he had a quote of a couple hundred dollars to replace them (this was decades ago). Bugger that  he said, I can bloody make my own for much cheaper.
A few days later I came home to find a Holden bell housing that I was saving for no particular reason out the front of the shed with a piece smashed out of it. Shit, what happend to that I thought as I looked in the shed. Here was dad waving the oxy over a small steel pot on a long handle, he finished of a can of Diet-Ale then crushed it & put that in the pot too. What are you doing I asked nervously, "mahing my mew feef" he said while speaking without teeth.
Seemed he had glued his old plate back together to use to make a sand mold, He poured them a few times till he had a good cast with no porosity cavities(all puns intended) He then sanded them with wet & dry & got them chromed.
We called him "jaws" after the guy in the Bond films, allthough I don't know if anyone called him that to his face
He eventually had to get a proper set as they turned out to be too heavy to keep in place.
We buried dad just over a year ago now but I kept his teeth & they take pride of place on the mantle piece.

[Lozza]

 
"Bugger that I can make my own for much cheaper"
What a classic, with those chrome gnashers he would have been the envy of every wannabe gangster rapper.

 

[GD66]

 Great yarn, GMC, a ripper ! Re the stationary engine, my dad had one identical right down to the fuel tank and the rusty-can style muffler, except he had it hooked up by belt to an enormous saw blade which he would fire up 3 or 4 times each winter for the firewood, you could hear the blade whistling two blocks away as the mighty single roared, from memory it had a butterfly carb with a large, clear sight glass float bowl. Thanks for sharing, brought back a happy grin..

[Hoony]

sounds like your old man was a true aussie character !

[VMX247]

Great dad inventions ,keep them going GMC.
My dad has shorn sheep in WA all his life .When he bought a small property he had no means of shearing his own sheep.As most old blokes do he sat on a drum and rubbed his chin.  Then spotted the whipper snipper.
Don't have photo, but he modified the shaft and attached his shearing head to it.The motor is tied to a post above where he shears.He just has to stand on that drum to start it.

[GMC]

Someone was throwing out an old stationary engine, Bamford I think, so my Dad grabbed it & restored it. It was a water cooled model so he stuck a Mini radiator to it, it sat doing nothing for a while until the motor on the bench grinder shit itself, it was an old school belt driven unit. So he attached the Bamford to a shaft down the middle of the shed & the bench grinder was then belt driven from this. Everytime you wanted to grind something you had to get the crank handle & wind the beast up. The only thing worse than starting it was trying to stop it. You had to press a button on the magneto, but with it's big flywheels it kept rolling on for ages, if your finger got tired from holding the button down & it was still turning over at 0.5 RPM it would bloody fire back into life again. It ended up easier just to grab a file.
The old thumper did sound great though.

he modified the shaft and attached his shearing head to it.

he had it hooked up by belt to an enormous saw blade

Great to hear some other fathers were as bad as mine and I was not alone.