jbond's blog

Ken Leaman

jbond — Sun, 24 Jan 2021 16:38:38 +0000

Dear FF community,

As we approach the first anniversary of the passing of Ken Leaman, on behalf of Malcolm Newell’s family, I wanted to say a few words of appreciation and recognition. Ken, a former aircraft engineer, through much hard work and hassle, helped develop, define, and produce Dad’s vision of the Quasar. Although coming from “totally different worlds”, both men were on the same creative wavelength. While their formal Quasar relationship finished in 1981, their friendship continued. When Dad died suddenly in 1994, Ken had been “waiting to get back” to the project.

Gavin Newell

(via email to julian.bond @ voidstar.com)

Steaming Mango in MCS

jbond — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 06:17:30 +0000

February 1987 article in Motorcycle Sport about the Steaming Mango, Gold Wing based, Phasar.

Attachment	Size
SteamingMangoMCSFeb1987.pdf	3.2 MB

Westminster Parking

jbond — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 18:50:00 +0000

The protest to try and combat Westminster Parking Charges for Motorcycles gathers steam.

Now we've got banners!

Here

Motorcycle News - Grand Designs PDFs

jbond — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 11:28:18 +0000

Here's PDFs of the Motorcycle News article on weird and wonderful PTWs.

Attachment	Size
Grand Designs page 1.pdf	4.64 MB
Grand Designs page 2.pdf	5.15 MB
Grand Designs page 3.pdf	1.93 MB

Mexican FF

jbond — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 19:36:03 +0000

Here's a good one. I particularly like the illuminated skull.

Quasar Meetup

jbond — Sun, 04 Sep 2005 06:23:20 +0000

The 2005 Quasar outing will take place in Hastings over the week-end on September 10th/11th. The format will be similar to previous years with us meeting up on St Leonards sea-front on Saturday afternoon from around 4:30pm onwards and moving on to Bo Peep pub for supper. There will be a ride-out on Sunday morning and we'll finish up at the Six Bells at Chiddingly for a late lunch.

All Quasar owners, Quasar enthusiasts, or owners of other Feet-first machinery are invited to join us.

Adding a Volvo seat back to an AN400K3

jbond — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 14:00:03 +0000

I've posted a load of pictures to Flickr of my attempt at adding a Volvo seat. Click on each picture and you'll see lots of annotations describing the detail.

After much hacksawing, cursing and abuse of power tools, I now have a Volvo seat
mounted on my Burger400K3. Lessons I've learnt:-

- I'm crap at this metalwork stuff

- I should have listened to Royce, the Volvo 340 seat is the best. I was seduced by the fake leatherette of the seat from a bigger model but it doesn't work so well in this application. The problem is the mounting mechanisms on both sides are a good 4 to 5cms lower relative to the seat.

- At Uni they told me not to design mechanisms when what you want is rigidity. But I'm still doing it and relying on doing the nuts up really tight. The seat has a metal frame inside it. I've made angled plate brackets that pick up screw holes into the frame and support the plastic seat sides from underneath and inside. But the Volvo brackets are an inch or so outboard of these with long bolts and spacers. The adjustment side really needs a much longer square tube running back down the seat and another angled bracket to stop all the flex. I think it's ok at the moment as a test but one too many road bumps and London potholes and it's going to bend something.

- Measure twice, cut once. But a round file comes in handy when you don't.

- Dumpster diving round the local industrial estates is fun. You can find all sorts of scrap bits.

- As if I didn't know already, adding a seat back and positively locating your lower back changes everything. When you can't move your body weight around and have something to push against you're much more positive with counter steering while at the same time more relaxed. The whole feel of the machine improves
dramatically.

- The Burger suffers from the same problem as all the megascoots with this type of conversion. You end up with cramped legs, back too upright, and bars too far away. And the seat is still too high. This can be solved as on the C-Max but only by cutting up or discarding a lot of the bodywork and building new structures. Hence the title of this email. If you're 5'8" and built like a monkey with short legs
and long arms, it's almost possible.

- With the seat back in the right place there's no longer room for my trusty top box behind it. Late last night I thought I'd remove the original pillion backrest only to find that it's also the seat catch mechanism and supports the side rails. So I can't neatly attach the top box to the seat and either adjust the backrest lean or open the top box.

- If I remove the seat completely and build a new lower seat, Volvo seat back support structure, luggage cover, faired top box. It's still going to be a struggle to fit my legs in and I can't work out in my head how to integrate the luggage area and top box so it's as convenient as my first hack. And see the first
comment. I'm not confident in my ability to do all that.

- I've used up every mm of room and I just can't get the base of the seat back any further back. And even if I did, the reach to the bars would then be too much or the seat would be too upright.

So if it's not raining on Sunday and I make it up to Monty's I'll leave the bike as it is now so people can see it. But after that I think it's all coming off again for a rethink. Perhaps via one of Colin F's TMax conversions.

Fitting a Volvo Seat on a Burgman

jbond — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 17:05:50 +0000

As you can see from the photo, it is possible to fit a Volvo Seat on a Burgman!

This is the next stage in making my Burgman more of an FF. I got the seat from the Volvo Breakers on the A1 near St Neots for a mere 25 quid. It's a leather seat so won't need recovering. I had quite a choice and eventually plumped for an early 7 series instead of the usual 340 seat because of the leather, the filled in head rest and the fact that the lumbar adjust and the rake adjust are both on the left hand side. Not only that but it's got a heated back and seat base.

I've got an idea of how I'm going to mount it, but it's going to need a small amount of welding. Hmmm. I figure I'll make a wood frame to start with to check everything is going to work and then duplicate it in 10 or 15mm box section steel tube. The plan is for a U shaped piece with the base of the U just in front of the luggage compartment and the arms picking up the current pillion handhold bolts. I've got all the seat mounting gubbins including the runners, so it may be possible to use them to provide the two positions of solo and pillion.

I've already separated the seat back from the base and propping it up on the Burger it looks like it's almost exactly the right width.

Steering links on a FFE

jbond — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 19:36:10 +0000

Here's a PDF sent in by Andrew Gibben on steering linkage layout on Funny Front Ends. (FFE)

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FFE-Steer.pdf	151.82 KB

Fitting a Malossi CVT kit to an AN400K3

jbond — Sat, 29 Jan 2005 16:13:49 +0000

I've just been fitting a Malossi kit to my Suzuki AN400 Megascoot. The first stage is to remove the lower left body panel. This has an astonishing number of little plastic nubbins that hold it on. The foot rest rubbers also have a very large number of bits that plug into the bodywork and you have to get under them to reach some of the fixings. Eventually you get the bodywork off, and the next piece is the CVT air filter cover, and then the plastic CVT cover. That gets you to here.

The next piece to remove is the inner cover. This is ally and has two dowels that eventually get stuck, bottom right and top left. The cover has an outrigger bearing for the clutch mechanism. Sometimes the shaft spins in the bearing making a nasty screech at very low speeds. You can safely ignore this as I'm not sure how to fix it if it happens to your bike. With the ally cover taken off, we have this.

The belt and two pulleys are now visible. We need to get the nuts undone on the front and rear pulley and remove them. I used a Halfords 12V hammer socket driver. Piece of cake. Way easier than cobbling together crowbars and using old bits of belt to try and lock the front socket. The nuts are 24mm so you may need to get a 24mm socket.

The front pulley assembly now comes off. There's a bent spring washer behind both nuts. Make sure you keep everything the same way round so the spring washer goes back on the same way.

You need to remove the oil splash plate to get the centre slider out as we need this for the Malossi kit.

The centre slider has 4 plastic locator pieces which we also need. Assemble the Malossi replacement with it's 8 rollers, slide the centre bearing shaft into the middle, put the centre slider piece in o top of the rollers and mount it back on the shaft. You need to hold whole thing together with your fingers round the back as you slide it on the shaft to stop the rollers falling out. Put the outside pulley on and the washer and nut. Just finger tight as we'll be removing it again.

Now the scary bit which is changing the spring in the rear driven pulley. Remove the clutch drum and then the whole clutch pulley assembly.

The problem is that we need to undo that big nut, but it's holding spring pressure behind it and there's no easy way to hold the whole assembly still while you undo it. Of course there's various factory tools to do this which cost large amounts of money and nobody has them. So here's the trick.

Put the assembly in a vice with a cloth or bits of wood and tighten it down, being careful not to damage the fins on the back by resting the vice jaw against lots of them. Then use a large C-clamp to take up the tension on the other side. If there isn't one already, put a mark on the nut and centre with a felt tip.
Now you can use a big stilson wrench to undo the nut. Undo it until it's almost off. Now release the vice pressure leaving the C Clamp holding everything together, pick what's left up and put it on the floor supported on a couple of blocks of wood. Now with your foot holding the top down, remove the big nut, release the C Clamp and gently let the spring expand. If your vice is big enough, you could probably do all this in the vice rather than on the floor. There's quite a bit of preload but once the spring is an inch or so free, you can hold it down with your hand and gently release it.

The spring and roller on the right came from an AN400X (MkI). The spring and roller on the left are from the AN400K3. It looks like Suzuki now use less preload and an 18gm roller instead of the original 21gm. More on this later. The Malossi spring is lighter but about the same height as the stock AN400K3 spring. So fit the spring, hold the clutch part down with your hand or foot and finger tighten the big nut in the middle. Now take the whole assembly back to the vice, put on the C Clamp and tighten the nut down with your stilson. The official torque is 105 Nm which basically means as tight as you can get it. A tip here is to get your felt tip marks to line up again so the nut is in the same place and will probably have the same torque as when you started.

Now put the whole assembly back on the rear shaft with the belt in the pulleys, Put the clutch drum back on and then put the spring washer back on the same way round. This is with the outside edges against the clutch and inside edges against the nut. Now do up the nut with the electric hammer socket. The torque setting is 85Nm so you can try a proper torque wrench and something rigged up using the holes to hold it still. Easier is just to give it a few goes with the hammer driver. I put a drop of loctite on the nut threads as well. When everything is done up tight with the belt in place, use a bit of wood and your hands to lever the pulleys apart which lets the belt drop into the centre.

Now take off the front outer pulley, put the belt around the shaft and replace the outer pulley, spring washer and nut. The washer goes the same way round as the other one. You need to make sure the belt is free and not being pinched by the pulley as you finger tighten the nut. The torque on this nut is 105Nm. Holding the pulley still is not easy. Don't be tempted to wedge a large screw driver in the fins as you'll just break a fin off. You can feed an old bit of belt between the pulley and casing to wedge it solid but easiest is just to give it a few goes with the hammer driver. Again a drop of loctite on the threads is good for peace of mind.

Now check over everything, replace the inner and outer cover, and the air filter and air filter cover. This is a good moment to clean the air filter. Suzuki now use yellow foam so it's easy to see the muck. Finally re-assemble the lower left panel putting all the plastic nubbins and screws back in. Done!

Now I've only had a quick run up the road, but you'll find that under hard acceleration the revs have risen in the mid range from 5.5K-6K to 6.5K-7K the engine is pulling a bit harder and the gear ratio has dropped. And the end result is quite a bit more acceleration between 25 and 60.

Now some alternatives. The Malossi kit is not exactly expensive at about Â£120 so that's the easiest way to go. If you fancy an alternative, the stock AN400K3 rollers seem to be 18gm where the old AN400X were 21gm. The Malossi set are 16gm with a lighter spring. So it seems highly likely that you can get almost the same effect by using the stock spring with 17gm rollers. Malossi don't make 17gm but Taffspeed apparently do have 17gm rollers from another manufacturer. As an alternative you could use 4 Malossi 16gm with 4 stock 18gm (spaced symmetrically) to give an average of 17gm. Rollers are cheap. But unfortunately I've now gone for the full Malossi so somebody else will have to try this.

I think what's happened is that Suzuki have made the CVT a bit more lively and also reduced the spring pressure, but they haven't gone as far as Malossi do. This ties in with some drag race testing that Paul Blezard and I did between a new AN400K3 and my old AN400X-Malossi. The X was consistently faster up to about 45mph no matter who was riding. But the K3 then pulled back and started to catch up. One guess here is that the Injection model is inherently quiter and more efficient and so Suzuki didn't have to try quite as hard to put a hole in performance to get past the noise tests.

Malcolm Newell's FFs

jbond — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 20:51:32 +0000

Here below is a fairly definitive list of machines built by Malcolm Newell. (words mostly by Paul Blezard) This was not easy to compile bearing in mind that most of the machines had the same trade number plate on them when being used by Malcolm, probably no chassis plate and certainly no "official" Malcolm-applied serial number. This list is quite old now. Can anyone fill in more detail?
Malcolm also paid the bills with some work on customs and choppers. On one of my visits to the cottage there was a trike with a wacky open sidecar. Any others? None I can think of, unless there was another Suzuki Quasar. Are the numbers right? Not far off. Malcolm definitely made in excess of 20 road-going machines after 1980-ish when he ceased working on the original Quasars with John Malfoy at Romarsh in Calne. Not bad going, especially when you consider that most of them were built between '80 and '88. Plus he also put Mark Crowson's original Reliant Quasar together in '85 from 'spares'!! There was also the 'conventional' VT250 Honda to which Malcolm added his own patent leg-protecting bodywork and ridden by his kids Gavin and Michaela on the road and pranged by at least one of them!
Malcolm Newell died tragically early, aged only 53, in 1994. He was buried in his own garden at Field Cottage, just yards from his FF workshop. Paul Blezard (PNB) wrote a three-part tribute in the August, September and October '94 issues of Motorcycle Sport.
JB Jan05

See also the definitive Quasar Directory

Yamaha LC250 THS Steve Scruton's long wheelbase two-seater.

Yamaha LC350 YPVS THS *Two machines built: Chris Baker's and Bruce Reed's. Chris Baker's is the one that I took down to the Bol and back in September 1986 and wrote about at length in the Dec '86 issue of SuperBike magazine. Lobbed it at Paul Ricard when the rear tyre deflated and the arm of the twin head steer lifted the front wheel off the deck. No harm done. Lobbed again in Tours when the instructor at the advanced riding course I attended locked the front wheel and foolishly put his hand out, breaking his wrist. Still no harm done to the bike. Also pranged by Chris Baker when his sleeping bag got tangled up in the rear wheel. STILL no harm to the bike! Very peaky though - always felt as if the YPVS wasn't working properly. Also only did 30mpg despite the improved aerodynamics - a bit heavy for an LC, but very comfortable at speed. Bruce Reed rode his to Le Mans one year - 86? I'm back in touch with Bruce (Jan 05) so must find out what happened to his Phasar.

Yamaha SR500 THS Did this ever actually get on the road legally? And if so what happened to it? Ian Kew, for whom it was built , wrote about it in Motorcycle Sport (MCS) and will no doubt be along shortly to tell us more. In 2004 Ian sold his Silver Wing and bought Keith Duckworth's Voyager which he's much happier with than he ever was with the SR Phasar. See the entries for Voyager 03 under 'Royce Creasey's Creations' then 'Production Voyagers' elsewhere in the Bikeweb Image Galleries. PNB

Kawasaki KLR650. Run by David Turner. Sold to someone in Barnsley to be broken for spares for his own KLR. No-one wanted to buy it as an FF.

Guzzi V50 Phasar This is a pic of Monty Billington sitting in his Tait hub centre-steered machine, which is still alive and living in Greater Mancheter. Note the long carb intakes, the panniers and the Flying Banana in the background. I have some nice riding pix with what was then JB's VT500 taken by Neil Murray at the V-twin rally in Shaftesbury, '86. Fast forward to the Noughties and Monty's V50 underwent some fairly radical rear end re-design in the hands of Royce Creasey. I saw it in Monty's garage in the summer of 2003. The seating position seemed much more cramped than I remembered it being in its original form. Monty subsequently sold it to Rob Ring, who also has the rear-engined Norton Rotary FF.
See Monty's own website for more info on this and other FFs, including the VT500 which he bought off JB and owned for many years. (In 2005 Monty became the proud and happy owner of the ComforTmax created by Andrew Gibbens and Royce Creasey, before moving on to the joys of Carver tilting three wheeler ownership. - see more about the ComforTmax under 'Royce Creasey's creations' www.btinternet.com/~a1.microwave/page21.html PNB

Guzzi Convert Automatic Phasar As featured on the front cover of MCN with Terry Snelling aboard. It subsequently got stuck in low ratio for quite some while. What on earth happened to it?

Gold Wing Phasar *5 Tim Brown's Grey one was the best because he spent the most time on it. As seen at the FF stand at the BMF in 1987 and written about in MCS by PNB. He sold it on before he was tragically killed, and the buyer recently popped up with an informative post on the FF discussion group. No doubt someone will add more info some time soon. Then there was Andy Tribble's 'Steaming Mango' GW Phasar- as featured in MCS when Andy wrote his own highly entertaining story about it, illustrated with my pix. (That story is now available to read elsewhere on Bikeweb). Andy bought it from Andy Rabagliati, but whom did he sell it to? Richard Baughen in Coventry had a red one which I once rode and photographed, and one of my pix of it appeared in a one-off Honda-only German magazine. Then there was the one that the short Scottish chap bought. He was actually at the birth of Royce and Ingrid's first offspring, along with his brother - that might have been the first Gold Wing Phasar. Last seen by me languishing in a shed in Edinburgh in 1985. One of the problems with the WIng Phasars was that although the seat height was low, you needed longer-than average legs to get your feet on the ground because they had to bow around the horizontal cylinders, rather than go behind them as on the standard Wings. Not sure if there was a 5th Gold Wing Phasar. Anyone know different? Was there perhaps another one that went to Scotland? PNB Jan 05

VT500 Phasar, aka 'The White Shark' Pictured here on the inside of Monty Billington's V50 Guzzi FF going around a roundabout during the 1986 V-twin rally. This photo was snapped by Neil Murray, who wrote an article about the V-twin rally for SuperBike. This photo subsequently illustrated some words by me for the original London Biker newspaper which I never got paid for! The Shark was built by Malcolm for Julian Bond in a weekend and taken to the IoM TT in 1986 and trail ridden by Julian up to Creg Ny Baa following me on a standard Honda VF500, during which the VT 500's rear sub-frame broke! Featured in both SuperBike (Nov 86) and, in my FFs at the TT saga, in MCS (Dec 86) . We have lots more pix of this machine. The Shark was undoubtedly one of the most effective 'quick and dirty' FF conversions anyone has ever done, although the subtle mods to the back end seemed to me to give it a slightly disconcerting feel in some situations. Tragically, it was broken for spares in the early Noughties after Monty Billington failed to find a buyer for it in FF form. See his website for more info. www.btinternet.com/~a1.microwave/page21.html PNB Jan 05

Leaning Trike Malcolm's last project, with Chris Baker. Two leaning wheels at the front, with a modified Formula3 racing car body behind, slug-style. This machine never actually made it onto the road as a legal vehicle. We're not sure if it ever even ran under its own steam - does anyone know different? Malcolm told me he was very impressed with its handling when he was towed in it around the local back-roads! Roy Gardiner's nearly-built nArrow tilter is a clear descendant of this machine. PNB Jan 05

Sports Quasar (better known as 'The Slug') This is a picture of Malcolm sat in his amazing GPZ1100-powered creation on the track leading to Field Cottage. There are some pix of it under construction on Tony Foale's website, taken when I took Tony to meet Malcolm in the mid-80s. The Slug's first owner was Glyn Sparkes who rode it around East Anglia for quite a while in the late 1980s. It currently belongs to Tudor Thomas and is alive and well and living near Wisbech. Tudor has ridden it to several FF gatherings including, memorably, the Malcolm Newell Memorial run of 2000 and even more memorably to the 2009 TT. There was at least one other Slug built with a Z13 engine but it was never completed and was last put on public display in a sorry state at Chris Baker's during the MMM 2000 run. A photo I took of Tudor's Slug appeared in my story about the 2009 TT in The Rider's Digest Magazine. That photo can also be seen here on Bikeweb at: http://www.bikeweb.com/node/1828 PNB

Sports Quasar Avon Prototype This was just a plywood mock-up, but it looked bloody good and very convincing when originally displayed on the Avon stand at a Motorcycle show in the late 70s, surrounded by sexy dolly birds. In contrast, I have a photo of it sitting forlornly outside the Field Cottage workshop, where it lay for many years.

Z13 Cibié SEV This machine was tested by MotorCycleWeekly at over 160mph in its original, shorter wheelbase form. It was also shown at the first NEC show in 1981, near the Booleroo stand. Looking as you see it here, it featured on the cover of MCS with Chris Baker riding it and there was an article about it by Royce within. Chris sold it to one of JB's fellow Cambridge University bike club alumni, Bob Milsom and Malcolm modified it to carry a passenger. Then Bob took it to Australia and pranged it rather heavily; Bob sold it on before his sad demise and in 2005 Mark Crowson bought and repatriated it to Blighty, still in smashed-up condition and with many of the standard Kawasaki parts missing. Getting back on the road will be a major project (as if Mark didn't have enough to get on with already!) but he did get the engine running by 2010, a major achievement in itself. PNB

Quasar MkIIs V50 This machine originally had a roof, but with a standard V50 wheelbase it looked awful. It was built for for John 'One Eye' Golden and left languishing in the front garden of his house near Sunderland for many years. It was rescued and transformed by Eddie McDonnell and now lives near Manchester in this much more, Banana-like form. It looks much more like Monty's Phasar too, and the two Guzzi V50 FFs can be seen together on a CD that Monty has available via his website.

Quasar MkII GS850 (shaft) I think this is the one owned by Alan Eaves; it is much wider than most Quasars.
See Mark Crowson's website for more details. (Click on 'The Quasar Project', left).

Quasar MkII GS1000 (chain) This was originally blue, and it lived, half-finished, at Field Cottage for many years. There is also a Suzuki GS-engined Phasar which Mark Crowson spent a large part of 2004 restoring. See his website for pictures and more info.

Quasar MkI.5 Reliant/Guzzi/HCS I only know of two of these machines. Mark Verden's 'battleship' which featured on the Top Gear prog, with Yrs Trly squeezed in the back after Mark cut the roof off but left the rails. Sadly, it languished in Mark's front garden in Bristol for many years until it became more of an outdoor sculpture than a vehicle. In this condition it featured in the first ever Top Gear magazine before being sold, we believe, to Ed Kaczmarczyk, aka 'Mad Ed the Welsh'. The other Quasar with a Reliant-Guzzi power train is Mark Crowson's 'Quicka Quasar' which I have had the great pleasure of riding several times. The first time was at Nick Roche's funeral in December 2003, alongside Mark riding Nick's own Quasar (which is now owned by Malcolm Newell's son, Gavin. There's a photo from that day of the Quicka Quasar alongside a Burgman 400, here: http://www.bikeweb.com/node/615. The last time I rode it was after the roof had been subtly raised for increased comfort and practicality, at the 10th anniversary Quasar gathering in 2010. Photo here: http://www.bikeweb.com/node/2074
(For pictures of this event, see Mike Howell's motobykz website by clicking on 'The Quasar' at left.) PNB

Quasar MkII VF750 This machine originally belonged to Chris Baker. It was featured in SuperBike Nov 86 with Yrs Trly aboard. It was also ridden by Chris to the 86 Cologne motorcycle Show with Ingrid Oesten in the back and integral panniers fitted and then solo down to Monaco and back. It also took part in the Top Gear TV shoot at Wroughton in April 1988, with Chris Baker riding it. It had a blowing exhaust problem for many years. It now belongs to John Cooper, who got it back on the road and brought it to John Bruce's FF gathering in Wales in September 2011. In the past it was worked on by both John Bruce and Royce Creasey. I remember it being one of the very best of all the Quasars when I rode it in 1986, but I haven't ridden it since. See The Quasar Project for pix of it at the Top Gear shoot. PNB March 2014

Quasar MkII Z13 Known simply as 'The Thirteen'. This machine was featured in Bike magazine's October '84 issue alongside Neil 'Doc' Vass's original Reliant Quasar across a two page spread. There was also a small pic of Yours Truly riding it on the cover and a much bigger one in my July 2000 Classic Bike article on the Quasar. This bike was also thrashed around Goodwood by Royce Creasey in 1984. It now belongs to Tudor Thomas who bought it with the centre of the roof cut out by its previous owner. At the time of writing it is still off the road but it wouldn't take much to get it roadworthy again. It's a very rideable machine - one of the most user-friendly of all the Quasars in fact, but a bit cramped for people of normal stature because the outer cylinders are where you'd like to put your feet. Two slim people can just about squeeze into it as can be seen in the photo of Tudor and wife Suzy here: http://www.bikeweb.com/node/1978. See Mark Crowson't website for more: www.quasarworld.com. PNB