I often get tyred on a Friday

Have tyres, will fit .....
You can watch the videos first or read all about it, or both ;-)

With the rest of my planning coming along nicely, I wanted to get an idea of what work was needed to sort the bodywork to make the tyres fit. Actually, I wasn't 100% certain the wheels are wide enough as they need to be 6" to 7.5" wide for the tyres to fit safely. So up Bub went on to pallets, wheels off and round to my mate's bike training school where there's a tyre fitting machine I could use.

A redneck car ramp!

I won't bore you with details but the old tyres were low profile and a pain to remove but the new tyres went on easily enough. It was only then I realised just how much bigger they were! The more observant will notice the bucket seats casually tossed into the back ... £100 the pair, saving over £150 on new. The masking tape is to help me visualise how much to trim off the back, if anything.

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Little Bro looks on while Big Bro gets fitted

Back to the warehouse and fitted the wheels (boy, wheel bolts are a PAIN) and this is what I got

new and chunky

old and puny

back on the floor

As you can see, the rear needs to be lifted by a decent margin (the driver's side more because it's a bit flat with age anyway), probably 2 splines on the left and 3 on the right. That should give me a slight nose down attitude which what I'm looking for.

The torsion bar on the 1303 sticks out into the wheel well by 6" but the wheel misses it by 0.75" so that is just perfect. There is a tiny amount of adjustment needed to the rear wing where the chrome spat is but nothing major and the hunt starts for a stick-on or bolt-on on rubber wheel arch extension to cover the last 1cm of tread. The front is perfect.

a left handed popeye

Who ate all the tyres, you fat bastard!

For all the photos head to Bub's flickr album
For videos head to my youtube channel