Red Rocket: 2012 Red Derbi GPR

[toratora]

Hey RJ,

Much more to come. I expect Wednesday, or Thursday to be the beginning of a flood of build photos.

[Rj_666]

Looking forward to you documenting this awesome adventure !!

[toratora]

I had found two bikes. One in Sendai that was in fantastic shape with only 520 KM on the ticker, and another one in Aichi with a lot more. I asked to have the one in Sendai purchased, but somehow the one in Aichi was purchased. This bike needs tons of work so my schedule has been hit hard—to say I was depressed about it would be an understatement. I always seem to end up with the neglected bikes. I guess these bikes are lucky I'm the one that comes along. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Here are some of photos as I have been working on it.

[Rj_666]

Sorry to hear about the purchasing fubar, Tora... But I know you'll Adapt and Overcome !

[toratora]

Thanks RJ!

[toratora]

A whole bunch more photos. In an effort to bring the bike back to a decent level I've had to take it apart much further than expected. But even then it's not going to be the bike I had wanted to build. There's just no way to recover the sun damage, the rust damage, and the bad care without replacing parts that even if I could afford them are unavailable.

Some interesting things include that the Euro3 engine has the balancer on the outside of the internals. It now sits behind the stator plate. This means that I'll have the customize the plate for the Power Dynamo ignition. Another interesting item are the claw like marks inside the cases. I've seen them on the plastic parts too. I wonder if these have been put there for strength.

The output shaft had a lot of rust on it at the sprocket end. I thought I had cleaned it off well enough, but I was wrong. It pulled the output shaft bearing right out of the cases! This means that I'll have to replace the output shaft bearing.

The corrosion doesn't end there though. It pops up all over the place. I've been able to clean up some of it, but there's no way I'm going to be able to attend to all of it while I'm here.

Another interesting thing is the 318 scribed on the inside of the intake of the cases. I have no idea what that's all about.

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[Rj_666]

The balancer setup is super interesting !
The claw marks seem like an 'Easter Island' sort of mystery, along with the '318' marks !

[toratora]

Yeah they are really weird marks. As is the 318. More photos soon.

[toratora]

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Finally escaped from the mountain. John came up with his Super Subaru K Truck to rescue me. Packed up all the stuff, and brought it to the shop. Then He dropped me off with at a local campsite with my gear and a scooter to ride back to the shop in the morning.

Lots of photos from yesterday's wrenching soon to come.

[toratora]

It was so awesome to work at the shop. John is a great mentor. He educated me on how to run the tire changer, and balancer. So with his help I was able to fit the Savas from Treats that arrived the same morning. I was also able to start putting on the parts that I had media blasted, and painted on my previous visit. The bike is really starting to look good.

Treats did an awesome packing job with the forks/tires. Those cats are on it. The old stock tire valves were all cracked so it's a good thing that I had gotten the new KurveyGirl valve stems. The look great on the wheels even if they don't stand out like they do on Red Wheels.

While I was putting the rear wheel on the smaller rear pad fell out of the caliper. Can't say I'm a fan of this rear brake caliper, with the exception that it loos like I might be able to replace it with a Brembo someday. The front brake started to come together too. There might be an issue with the caliper bolts being too long, so I might have to deal with that, but the pretty new forks are on, as is the new font rotor—which is really hard to photograph and get the color correct. It's a very bright red bordering strongly on orange. On the bike it really pops.

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