74-Z Imperial Speeder Bike

greenyone

greenyone

New Member
Post #1 for this thread. I picked up up this 1987 Honda Elite 150 for dirt. It has no title and will never see the road again so why not try and figure out a way to fabricate and place an imperial speeder bike body in it and have some fun!

First order of business - get it running reliably and then strip all the Honda plastic off and see what we have to work with.

New To My Fleet.PNG


http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/74-Z_speeder_bike/Legends
 
Post #2. I started tearing into this thing. Pretty much all of the original plastic fairings have to be removed to do any kind of maintenance to this thing. The previous owner said it idled fine but bogged down when giving it gas. The tear down revealed years of neglect that I'm hoping a carb rebuild and tune up will rectify.
TearDown2.PNG

While waiting for parts I began to sketch up the bottom portion of the platform...or the foundation on which the speeder body will be built. I "vector-ized" a rough schematic I found on the legends page.
Top And Size View.PNG
And took some rough measurements of the scooter frame in order to resize the "foundation" before I being cutting it out from 1/2 plywood.
Vector Drawing Rough.PNG
 
Post #3.

I'm pretty sure gasoline is not supposed to be this color. A tank cleaning will need performed too. Anxiously trying to get this thing to run before starting fabrication of the speeder body.

BrownGas.PNG
 
There was a WIP thread made several years ago on a speeder bike from scratch! I think it was a girl possibly that was working on it...might be worth looking into for references!
 
dGenrald said:
This is going to be interesting! I know Honda's are pretty tough, looks that one needs more TLC.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it only has 1000 miles on the clock. The plastics are pretty beat up and ugly, but they are going in the shizzle-can anyway.

New carb and starter installed this evening. It seems to be running great now (albeit hooked up to a small gas tank from an old snowblower.) Cleaning the inside of the actual scooter tank revealed a couple of tiny pin holes that weep. I'll attempt to weld or solder/braze those shut once I'm satisfied the tank is de-fumed in day or two. If that doesn't work I'll have to source another tank or retrofit some other kind of tank to the scooter. Too bad...somebody left this thing sit with very old watery gas in it for way too long.

I specifically wanted to find a water cooled Honda in the 150cc variety for a couple of reasons. I was worried that the more commonly found, smaller engine off brand 50cc models may not be up the task as far as weight addition goes. I figure a 160lb person (or persons) in biker scout or Endor trooper gear, plus the added weight of the speeder body and greeblies would be a bit too taxing on the smaller engine scooters. And secondly, the speeder will most likely see a lot of very very low speed parade events where the air cooled engine may get too hot with the lack of air flow from forward movement.

I hope it works out.
 
xwingfighter said:
JB Weld works great if the tank is metal!
Click to expand...

I tried JB tank weld on another motorcycle years ago. JB works, but the gas/ethanol eventually breaks down the epoxy. I let Evaporust sit in the tank for 24 hours. It seems to have eaten the rust away but there are a few pin holes. I'm hoping these wide nail heads brazed in place keep it leak free for years to come. I'm going to use a pour in tank liner/sealer too.

Hole Patch(1).PNGHole Patch(2).PNG
 
Had to put this project aside for a few weeks. (some much needed bereavement due to a couple family losses.) Feeling a bit more motivated today though. The patched and coated tank were actually complete but sitting on the shelf. Popped down to the workshop/garage this morning and plumbed everything up for a test fire. After a tune up and a bit of carb tweeking it seems to be purring like a kitten... so next step is to start to figure out how to fabricate and build the structure that will become a fiberglass bike body.

video of it running here:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/7yh2Kh2Pn76ZcggL8
 
Sorry for your loss. Glad to see you're back at it. I love this thread so much. Can't wait to see what you do with it.

Side note
 
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