Hello all

I've recently joined the forum and have been reading with great interest (and at times no small amount of confusion and wonderment) a lot of the articles. There are some interesting bikes and builds been happening lately and obviously some members with incredible skills and experience and so hopefully it may provide some guidance for my humble little project.

I only started racing about 5 yrs ago and have had a 1962 Honda CB72 and a Drixton framed Honda CB500 to date. BUt given that all my other bikes are bevels then I have wanted a Ducati racer. SOOOO I bought a Pantah 500 racer... I've raced it once and compared to the Drixton it felt really heavy and really slow, which is not great for me cause i'm slow anyway and so a slow rider and a slow heavy bike means....... Well at least I get plenty of time to take in the scenery...

So I've been madly collecting bits and pieces from around the world (Belgium, Italy, UK, Germany, USA, Oz) and am about to turn it into a TT2 replica which should be a fun journey.. Not least of which because Plan A is to have it ready for a race meeting in Mid July and at the moment it simply resembles several boxes and a million pieces of which I can probably identify 50%..

So stay tuned and I will try to post some photos as I progress as well as probably more than the odd naïve question..

Cheers

David

Welcome David,
This is the best forum to learn and listen??? to the best gents whom happen to know a few things TT2 & F1.
I'm not one of them!
So, whatever I say, take it with pinch of salt on your pasta....
Now, looking at your lovely machine.... I'd seriously consider turning it into a No. 8 replica!
Seriously, MikeV did an amazing job on his tribute to Tony Rutter's / Sig. Pat Slinn machine....that it makes me want to turn a spare Pantah frame I have lying around in to one!
Read up on it....viewtopic.php?f=25&t=180
It's and amazing journey.

That's my salt for the day.
Good luck whatever you decide, it's all about fun, friendship and passion!
Cheers,
Steve

Hi Steve

Thanks for the suggestion and for the link.. That is a gorgeous looking bike however i'm a little too far down the TT2 road to turn back now.. Though as you will see from a couple of pics below I do now seem to have a spare Pantah frame so who knows what will happen down the track.

So here's another update: The only time I raced the Pantah it was jumping out of gear so I decided to strip it down and put in a 6 speed gearbox that I had and had been told that it would fit.. Turns out I was told wrong.. It doesn't.. But the upside was that the gearbox looked fine anyway and was probably just shimmed wrong. However upon pulling the heads I discovered that I had a wonderful set of 10 piece rings... No drama I thought, I'll just get a new set of rings, re-shim the box and put it back together whilst I collect the rest of the parts to run it into an angry TT2. That was until I found the price of a set of Mahle rings. Times it by 2 and I was somewhat dumbstruck. So given that a set of rings for each cylinder was half the price of a set of hi-comp pistons I just decided to do it all there and then..

So since then i've madly been in parts accumulation mode so once i start to assemble it i'm sure i'll have a thousand questions and will welcome the collective wisdom.. In the interim, here are a few more pics to keep people amused...

Cheers

David

Fantastic project, look forward to following it. I'm about to start overhauling and freshening up one I picked up of ebay and doing a ground up build on a TT2 replica frame I bought from Roy Thersby in the UK two years ago. Just need to find some spare time.

Ed

Hi Ed.

Congratulations on the pickup. Was that the one for sale a little while ago down at Johns River in NSW?

I'm off to the shed shortly to try to turn a powdercoated frame into a rolling chassis..

Cheers

David

Looking forward to following this. What colour will it be?

Hi there Shmokica

Funny you should ask that question as I agonised over the colour scheme for ages and drove myself crazy.. Lots of friends kept saying that if I was building a TT2 replica then it should look like a replica and therefore be red/yellow. I even had a female friend get excited about it being red/yellow and looking like a packet of twisties.. But at the end of the day I decided I wanted something individual and so red/yellow went out the window.. Kind of..

I briefly toyed with the idea of just clearcoating the frame because I loved the look of it so much, but common sense won out over that idea. I even thought about adding a gold tint to the clear but worried it would look like the local neighborhood Pimp's bike, or a reject from the set of Goldmember..

So following on from all that it's going to be Black and Gold. I've always loved the 1980 900SS in Black and Gold and I remember years ago watching the Black and Gold JPS Formula 1 cars and so that's what I decided to do.. You cant really tell from the dodgy iPhone photos but the frame has been powdercoated a Dulux colour called Onyx Pearl. It is a really dark charcoal just short of actual black and it has a lovely pearl fleck in it and i'm going to have the bodywork painted the same colour. And i'm going to use the factory type yellow highlights except i'm having them done in gold. So it will be the red/yellow scheme except the red will be Onyx Pearl and the yellow will be gold.. And instead of a black pinstripe around the yellow bits, I will have a gunmetal grey stripe (similar to the engine) around the gold.. In my head it seems to work just fine, but I guess there's only 1 way to tell for sure. Having spent a lot of time today staring at the frame I have to say I love the colour and so hopefully all will work well.

Will post some pics of today's progress shortly..

Cheers

David

A few snaps from todays progress..

hi David, gothe black frame / orange colour scheme similar to Bob Browns Kevin Magee TT2 racer. I saw that in the flesh and thought it looked tough!
Cheers,
Steve

David,
What type bolts are at the front of the engine to frame? They look hex head? They look like the original pantah special bolts that have a machined shoulder to zip tie the wring harness to....
Can you use M10 x 30 SHCS...I think from memory...
Cheers,
Steve