I’m still surveying this poor old wreck of a Bronco and trying to get it cleaned up a little. The more I look at it, the more apparent it is that I will have to strip it completely. I was going to just stop the decay and preserve it as it is, but I do not think that’s going to fly. The poor thing is just too far gone.
I’ve sanded the rust off the two front downtubes that had been sanded bare and hit them with a bit of Krylon that’s more-or-less the same color of the bike. Good!
Have worked with rubbing compound on the front fender, fork, and the frame main tube. They all look exactly like they did before I started. Bad.
Here are a couple of photos that provide a good look at the thing as it sits today. If you want, click on 'em to see 'em fullsize.
Plus, there is dirt and crud accumulated everywhere – a mixture of mud and grease that probably is 40 years old, at least.
So it’s becoming clear that I’m probably going to have no choice but to strip it completely.
Much of this work I can do myself. But the left footpeg needs the attention of a welder. I don’t have the equipment for that, unfortunately.
See, that footpeg was pointing skyward. Fine, I thought, I know how to fix that. I whacked it with a hammer to try to bend it back into place. It didn’t move. No worries. I got a bigger hammer and whacked it again. Uh-oh. It broke where someone welded it on a previous occasion. So you see, this helps me decide to strip it down and renew everything.
When I move the fork around, I can feel that the bearing races are very loose. So it may just have to come completely apart. In fact, I suspect that in my race box, I’ve still got the stock bearings from the Ducati Sebring I built into a racebike, complete with killer Marzocchi fork and uprated bearings. I wonder if they’ll fit? They might.
There’s an interesting problem with the wiring loom. Here’s the mystery: The engine, out of the bike, has a lead coming from the flywheel area – I don’t know yet whether there’s a magneto in there, or a generator. This lead contains brown, white and green wires.
Meanwhile, a connecter block dangling from the main loom, which runs rearward from the headlamp, is empty on one side, and on the other side, has blue, black, green and red wires running to it. Plus there’s also a second, much longer black wire extending from that part of the loom. There’s also a long black wire extending from the brake-light switch dangling in thin air.
So here’s the question – where and how does everything connect? Fortunately, a fellow Ducatisti has just this minute e-mailed me a PDF of the Bronco owner’s manual, which contains a wiring schematic. So figuring this problem out shouldn’t be too hard. Maybe. The electrics are Italian, after all, which isn’t as bad as it would be if they were British. Quite.
It seems clear that the engine, out of the bike and supposedly at least partially renovated, hasn’t been touched by the hand of man in decades. It’s now superficially clean because I made it that way, but its nooks and crannies sport the same caked-in gunk that I spoke of previously. This is why a can of mechanic’s hand cleanser is our friend.
The “shifting problem” that the previous owner spoke of – hmm, I wonder, could that have been a clutch problem? I cannot see that the aluminum lever on the engine that actuates the clutch rod actually contacts that rod. This suggests that there’s something deeply amiss inside the clutch assembly, which is housed inside the right-hand side cover. Interestingly, the Allen bolts that hold that to the engine’s case look a good bit cleaner than those on the other side. So maybe it’s been off. Maybe this has been apart. Regardless, there’s still something wrong in there, it seems to me.
No matter. All these mysteries will be sorted out.
In the meantime, I’m pondering the future of the seat and tank. The seat looks wholly constructed of leather. And I mean very thick lever, like a quarter-inch thick. I measured. It’s as though the seat’s designer intends the natural strength and springyness of this assembly – a top sewed to two sides – to do all the support.
So I think I might take it over to the saddle-makers in the equestrian area of town to see what they say about bringing it back to life. Or check out an upholstery shop, see what they say. Or maybe I’ll just wimp out and buy an aftermarket racing-style seat.
As for the tank, I’m undecided about what to do. It’s kind of a mess and decent paint is so stinkin’ expensive! At least ProItalia, the big-league Ducati dealership in SoCal, is right up the street – maybe I can just go up there, get some decals, cover the thing in those.
In any case, this clearly is going to take a while. But at least the tires and tubes seem to be retaining air. See, you have to take these bright spots where you find them.
-JFT
Comments