Honda RC163 - Footpeg Time

The bike came to me with footpeg brackets from some other bike, they looked rather too chunky so I spent a fair bit of time trimming them down and getting rid of the bits I didn't need. My aim was to make them look more appropriate but to retain strength where it is needed. While I was at it a thought came to mind about Mike Hailwood.

On his 1966 500 bike the foot controls were swapped over, I have seen a replica 163 where the controls are also swapped over so the brake is on the left - this is incorrect. The later 500 bike had the controls switched as Mike had broken both his legs in a car race and where they pinned him up he had limited movement in his left leg and so was unable to operate the gears correctly. The team switched the controls over and the job was a good un but when he was on the 163 he had no such problem. So now you know.

I have made my brackets look a lot slimmer by giving them a generous chamfer, the unwanted fixing points have been removed and cleaned up, I think they will look a lot better and it's not been much work. They are still good and strong and do the job nicely, the only down side is that I wanted to make them removable without having to take the exhausts off, that hasn't really been possible as the lower mounting bolt would have to be very short to do that and it wouldn't be strong enough.

A bit of black paint makes them match the frame so they don't stand out like a sore thumb. I did a bit of rearrangement of the gear change  push rod ends so that instead of having a dog leg rod, I now have a thinner straight one, it just looks better. The gear change on this one is pretty sweet, I can do it with one finger but it still hurts to change upwards because the lever has a really sharp edge on it, I need to put a rubber sleeve on it or something, thicker boots may help as well.

Another minor job I did was the steering damper control, which was a fairly prominent feature of these bikes. I bought one off ebay but the quality was shocking, it was a raw casting and had deep pits in it. I hand filed it and polished it, I think it's ok now but by no means perfect, it's another one of those things I will keep an eye out for and hope a better one turns up. Don't tell anybody but it's a dummy anyway, the bike has a steering damper - one of the external ones that will always work better than a pivot brake type one anyway. There is a good reason why they went away from that design in the early to mid 1960's

While I had the polishing wheel going I thought I would polish up the water filler cap, it looks so much better now, you couldn't read the imprinted instructions on it before. I like the fact they are in English and Japanese.

While I am in write it up mode, I would just like to say a few things about my use of the word replica, which seems to have created outrage amongst certain people, or twats, as I like to call them. OK, it's not a true replica and it never will be, I checked the classifieds and nobody had an original engine for sale, the motor museum at Beaulieu were quite rude when I asked if I could have the one out of Mike Hailwood's bike.

Maybe they are right, maybe representation or tribute would be a better word, it's just semantics as far as I am concerned. What really winds me up though is the experts that have never built so much as an Airfix kit criticising the smallest thing. What they are really doing is trying to show the world how knowledgeable they are and presumably explaining how they would have done things so much better, if only they had actually ever built something, obviously.

At the end of the day I build stuff because I love doing it, I don't do it for other people's enjoyment but it's always nice when people appreciate the work and effort.

I remember a time when I was showing a steam engine I had built at a model engineering show, everybody was enjoying it and most people thanked me for bringing it. Then there was this one guy that spotted something I had done wrong, in his opinion. At first he mentioned it to his mate and then to me - you could hear the glee in his voice that he had spotted a deviation to the published plans. He then stood there for what seemed like hours telling everybody that came up what he had spotted, his voice getting louder and louder each time. I had to tell him what I thought of him in the end, which got me banned from the show but by then I couldn't have cared less.

If anybody wants to send me a message about any of my projects, please do, I have a contact button so you can do so. If, however, you just wish to criticise, please don't waste your time, I only delete such messages.