Welcome to part three. So far in this series we've been working alongside our friend Dave Tucker
fabricating the custom fuel tank for Nick Sharp's Moto Guzzi cafe racer. Today we'll be finishing
off the tank and getting it ready to send off to Nick. This footage of Dave was filmed by our
friend Cathie on a mobile phone and was sent to us to edit together. Thanks for joining us
let's get started. At last we are approaching the beginning of the end. The main job left to
do now is to flush off the welds and get them all nice and smooth and get the whole thing looking
really sort of generally tank like. Primary weapons in this mission, first of all
the trusty angle grinder equipped with a selection of flat discs.
Moving along the equally familiar electric drill also
equipped with flat wheels very similar system just each getting it smoother as we we go along.
And then once we've we've had a play with the power tools
we finish up with the real high-tech stuff a Scotch Brite pad, just slapped on the traditional
manual fashion and that will give us our final finish on the tank. The only other thing we'll
be looking at so as we go along, I'll just keep an eye out for, is because the metal has seen a
lot of heat during the welding process there may be little bits of distortion here and there so
we'll be just gently massaging a few things back into place probably with a with one of
our panel hammers. Just to just to address that but otherwise hopefully we're nearly there. Gonna
give you a brief demo of, just cleaning up a short section of weld on the tank just just along here.
As before this would normally be done in the grinding bay with extraction breathing
equipment all the normal stuff to keep the the the dust and the muck under some kind of control.
We're just going to do this out on the bench because it does make it a bit easier for filming.
We'll start by just giving a quick squirt of WD-40. We're just using that basically a coolant
just just helps keep the the temperature of the aluminium under a bit of control.
Then we'll come in with the first tool which is the angle grinder
with the first of the flat discs on.
All right that's just skimmed off the weld now we make hopefully very very quick change of disk.
A little more oil.
Now this is the smoothest of the three discs from on the grinder.
That's just done with the angle, we now move it with the electric drill
Again another squirt of oil, keep it cool.
Now we're coming in with the smoothest of all the wheels just give it a final go over.
And that's blended
that section quite nicely now we'll just give it the the go with the the Scotch Brite pad.
And why not smooth grade pad.
Now the fingertip test is it smooth, yeah that that's really not too bad yeah happy with that.
Now, as ever, just the rest of the tank to go so we'll see you in a bit.
Before we get to the grand finale of the Moto Guzzi tank build, we have a few inquiries
about what else we get up to, and there are fair few bits and bobs. These for example
are again aluminium fuel tanks so so similar in some ways but very different kind of motorcycle
these are tanks for Greeves. In this case the DD and the DCX.
These are being made for Gary Bamford at British Bikes 1970, Greeves specialists.
Now the purpose here is to actually we've built these as as we can perfect replicas of
the Greeves original tanks but they of course were fiberglass whereas these are aluminium
the the reason for the switching materials being that the the problems are being encountered
with the modern fuels with the with the ethanol in. Right now for something completely different.
These are a bit of a trick back to the roaring 20s in that they are 1929 patent
Sunbeam oil tanks. This one as you see is virtually complete this needs a bit of tidying up
and here we have the assembled componentry of four more of them, just waiting to to be completed.
Now these are as Isaid something completely different in that they are mild steel construction
and they're actually soft soldered together rather than using any kind of a welding process. The
great day has finally done the tank is physically finished and it's not looking too bad really.
Quite happy with how it's come out. Obviously it has taken a little bit longer than we planned
and there are a number of reasons for that most of which I won't bore you with. Well there is
one cause of that delay which I would like to draw your attention to and that is in this area here.
The aero style cap which Nick has selected for this this tank doesn't feature its own vent its own breather
therefore has to have a separate breather. Now that's not ideal for the aesthetics
of the tank so rather than make what would probably be a bit of a half-hearted attempt to
hide the breather, we've actually gone the other way and made it something of a feature by
making this little mount for it with the the ring of bolts to match the arrow cap and as sort of
the icing on the cake we've had it anodized to match the finish of the cap as well and
that sort of brings us to a mention for some some guys who who helped us out a lot with that.
Teigh Metal Finishes, they really did go above and beyond when it came to to matching the anodized
finish as closely as possible. So yeah a big shout out to them.
You probably noticed earlier that I refer to the tank as being physically finished and yes it is.
The one thing it isn't, or hasn't done as yet, it hasn't passed a leak test and I cannot over stress how important
leak testing is for fuel tanks, particularly new ones. The various different methods people use
for leak testing. My personal preference is just get the tank doing what it's designed to do.
Fill it with fuel, in this case petrol, right to the brim and then leave it for as long as
possible, ideally overnight. Now that aspect of it might seem a little bit over the top.
You might say if it's going to leak it's going to leak in the first 30 seconds and yes that's
perfectly reasonable but the only thing the extended test can help or is it if you've got
a porosity in a weld or something like that. I have a one instance where the extended test
did find that out we had a tank that took a full 12 hours to actually start leaking and the test
you know say save that tank from going out before before it could be rectified.
What we do, as I say, brim full of fuel then once it's suitable time I check it
and someone else checks it once we're both happy that there are no leaks then it can be,
it's past the test and it can be drained and yeah we can go forward from there.
Well there we have it, it's passed its leak test so it's all over. Really all there is now is just to remains to
thank Nick for allowing us to film his his tank build. Thank Cathie for doing the filming.
Thank Alex and all the guys at The Classic Motorcycle Channel for putting this together
and putting it out there and finally thank all you guys for taking time out of your your day
or your evening or middle of the night whenever you're watching this to watch me bluster on about
what it is that I do. Very much hope you've enjoyed it and hopefully we'll catch up soon.