CFD: The Redevelopment of a Derbi GPR 50 R

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Well not really!

Things went pretty well yesterday. I made it over pretty much every obstacle sent in my path, except maybe time.

Brand new Malossi intake manifold. Initially this leaked. It was the only leak in the system. I usually don't use sealer here because it kills the gaskets. I much prefer using grease as a sealer, but it didn't do it here, so it was sealer time. That fixed the leak and the top end was sealed up.

The major jankiness of the rear brake was over come. I was able to find one of the busing parts for it, and Speedy donated a really nice toe pedal from one of this parts stashes. It's not perfect, and I didn't have the sealing O-rings, but I used some nice water proof grease, so it should hold until the other parts can be ordered. Feels very nice.

The Leak down test kit in its ever evolving state.

The squish test came in really tight. It's a bit less than a mm, and I'm thinking it might be a good idea to add another gasket.

Spring Session M--when you do these mods you have to swap out the clutch springs. Because I had been stashing up parts for the Silver bikes I had lots of things available to appropriate for the CFD.

Seriously I don't think Kelso had ever changed the oil on this bike--it looked quite dirty in there!

The Malossi springs are much stiffer than the stock ones, but they don't feel too bad on the bike.

Prepping for the pipe with a bit of copper gasket sealer.

Carb time. I had to do a bit of fiddling around to get the proper noodles in play for the choke and throttle cables. I have a bunch of noodles from old mopeds. Well had is a better description as they have pretty much been exhausted now. It's good to have a supply of this stuff though. Without it I would n't have gotten the carb in play last night. But I did and it worked nicely. Still need the air box and all those little things yet.

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There were bunches of goofy stickers on the side panels. The heat gun and some lighter fluid made short work of them!

The Kelso did so many nasty things to this poor little bike. Here's another example—that air box mounts were all bent up—this about a straight as I could get them—some adjustments were later made when fitting the air box.

The bike was missing the proper screws for the throttle.

This faring mount was all bent out of shape. It went back well enough though.

The front brake switch was completely missing.

More just random incorrect bolts. They seemed to be everywhere on this bike.

Things coming together.

To get the right throttle length I had to modify one of the noodles.

To index the plug I marked it, then checked it, and then rotated the inner head piece to the proper location.

To get the bike to the campsite we had to leave off the plastics—it was the only way to fit it into Ed's van with his RS.

I then set out the parts and started putting them on the bike. I wouldn't get done until it was pitch black, and I was assembling by brail. Chris really wanted a silver GPR—I thought I might have enough parts to make that happen.










It seems that once I got it all completed I forgot to take a bunch of photos of it. Guess I was just too tired! It seemed to work well. The Italkit top end is really strong, and well matched to the 21CP carb, and Metrakit pipe. I didn't get an opportunity to really test ride it before it headed off to San Diego. One thing I did notice that was very strange—this bike sat much higher than the other two 2003/4 GPRs that I brought to the camp. That's something I would have liked to have worked out. But there just wasn't enough time to get to everything...

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While it didn't get here quite in time for GPR Camp we had ordered a fender for the CFD bike. Kelso has absconded with one of my 16" wheel fenders which doesn't work with the 17" wheels. He pretty much wrecked that fender by doing so. Derbi fenders are rather expensive, but with the RS50 parts on sale at AF1 we figured it would be worth an experiment. The fender just showed up today.

I'll have to make some brackets for it of course but that's not too difficult. The big issue that's going to be a challenge to get around is that the RS doesn't have inverted forks. So the space for the tubes to travel is considerably less. I may have to either mount it a bit forward, or trim the fender. I took some photos, but didn't really have much time to consider the options.