W/E 1st June 2020

Damn it’s hot in England!

The good news is that the Atlas is back on two wheels albeit missing an engine! Got enough bushes, spacers and o rings to build the suspension knuckle and swinging arm and it’s back in place. Put some rough paint on the swinging arm to hold back anymore rusting for the moment. I also saved the brake anchor arm with a few coats of primer and paint. The alloy brackets on the Atlas really do get attacked by road salt – think I will paint the front engine brackets too.

I’m going for a look which means that the bike looks okay from the COVID-19 requiste of 2 metres!

Researching all the suspension knuckle components reveals that while the plain bearings are easy to buy from a bearing factor the spacers aren’t – apparently they are Laverda bespoke spacers. All the more reason to take it all apart and re-grease every six months.

Continuing on the theme of ‘rough painting’ I’ve got the crankcases ready to go on both Atlas #1 and #3. I’d got some satin finish engine block paint and primer which I used on Atlas #3. This turned out to be a mistake as the actual paint turned out to be a ‘crinkle’ finish and rather dull. I had an old tin of gloss black engine paint so just sprayed this over the top. I did the entire job on Atlas #1 with the gloss. Gloss isn’t really the right finish for the cases which came in a kind of satin shine. Still with my bikes it doesn’t matter does it and the main thing is to try and stop corrosion getting in when the winter comes.

So engines ready to go in frames but it’s so damned hot at the moment – how some of you work in hotter climates I don’t know!

Nick 🙂