darmah side covers

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gavin
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darmah side covers

Post by gavin »

the doohickys that push into the rubbers in the frame are coming out of my side covers,being not pulled out straight and 30 yrs old wouldn`t help. anyone had any similar issues,there is not a lot of meat around them , so i thinking devcon or glass wont be too good.
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ColinS
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Re: darmah side covers

Post by ColinS »

Same thing with one of mine. I am planning to clean and degrease the "aperture" and the peg, thoroughly, and try a 5 minute epoxy. It may work or not but surface cleanliness and ensuring that each surface is properly wetted by the epoxy is key to good bonding.

Regards

Colin
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Craig in France
Paso 906
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Re: darmah side covers

Post by Craig in France »

ColinS wrote:Same thing with one of mine.
@ Colin: Try having a word with Tony Brancato. I know/am pretty sure he has a fix.

@ Gavin: yeh, 'tis common. Maybe Gowie can advise?

And report back here, will you guys?

Ciao

Craig
Spagjet
Mach 3
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Re: darmah side covers

Post by Spagjet »

I have just been through what you are talking about with Darmah sidecovers, I bought the Darmah only about 9 months ago but have known the bike very intimately for the last 15 years (it was my ex- fiancees bike), the left sidecover would never push in far enough and the peg had come out so was just left in the grommet and the sidecover was held on by the other top peg and the bottom screw. I always assumed the front peg drama was caused because the Ram-flo air filter on the back carby was holding the sidecover out just too far to be able to get the plug in the grommet so never really bothered trying to fix the pulled out peg.
Once I actually owned the bike (which was then stripped down to bare frame with engine in place for BIG BIRTHDAY) I had a much closer look at the whole sidecover arrangment (because that always gave me the shits even though it wasn't my bike) and dicovered that the front grommet mounts were actual set 5mm too far in on the frame tubes from factory (on both sides of the bike). There was just no way the pegs could be pushed far enough in to engage properly in the grommet. I ended up very carefully cutting both front grommet plates off and moving them out the 5mm and welding them back on. It was a bit harder than you'd think because for one the weld is only on the inside of the plate and the actual frame tube was a different curved shape 5mm out from where they were because of the combination of curve of the frame tube and the angle of it. I ended up having to weld a little tringular peice of steel on the grommet plates that was 0mm on one end and about 4mm on the other then shaping the edge of it to neatly fit against the frame tube as there is no outside weld so had to be a very neat fit. It was a very delicate operation to pull off but I got an enginnering woody when for the first time in the history of the bike all four of the grommets popped neatly and easily into place and both sidecovers were solid as a rock. I reckon the plates were in too far from the start as it would have been the easiest bit of the frame tube to weld them to. You could see before I did it that people over the years had tried to bend the tab out and the rubber grommet was rooted (cracked and hard) from the big part of the plug being in the hole rather than the smaller neck of the plug.

I bought four new rubber grommets and scratched the hole in the sidecover clean on the peg that had pulled out and then cleaned it out with a bit of acetone, buffed the crap off the hexagonal end of the peg then and then stuck it in with Araldite (Epoxy)

then I discovered the right hand cover was a bit skew-iff so had to put a round drift the same size as the hole in the grommet plate and tap one up and one down a couple of mm, that distorted the holes a bit out of round but got them in a better position, carefully rounded them back up again with a round file, the bottom screw hole then lined up for the first time in the bikes history. Now all I have to do is glass up the elongated bottom hole where it has been rat-tailed out 10mm to make it fit with the grommet tabs in the wrong place. they must ahve had the apprentice welding the sidecover tabs on the frame that day.....

by the way if you put new grommets in get a pin punch once thery're in (takes a while, it's a tight fit) stick it through the hole and work the groove in the grommet right out tot he steel, then put a bit of rubber grease on the grommets. The sidecovers wouldn't go on at all until I did the pin punch/red grease thing, after I did it they all popped in easily with a very satisfying little thunk....
machten
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Re: darmah side covers

Post by machten »

The problem I experienced was the uneven dimensions of the seat base on my 78 Darmah, not the side covers or frame. One side of the overhang of the seat base was near 5mm longer than other. I used to make surfboards, so was familair with f/g and sorted that out to get an nice even 5mm gap. Even with that, the tank end points were not totally symmetrical either.

Image

The finish when new was pretty ordinary. Here's an original tank I have that has never been put on a bike. Check out the pin striping detail at the top of the stripe loops...

Image

Must have been after some lunch time Chianti

Kev
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BevHevSteve
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Re: darmah side covers

Post by BevHevSteve »

If any of you guys are missing the pins I have found some in my Domiracer inventory purchased, you can find them in the DOMIRACER section of my website.
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Steve Allen (925)798-BEVL[2385] Ride'm, Don't Hide'm
Ducati/Euro Spares -> https://Store.BevelHeaven.com
Spagjet
Mach 3
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Re: darmah side covers

Post by Spagjet »

Hey Machten, interesting info about the seat base on your Darmah (very nice clean unit by the way, what a pearl). The seat base on my '81 SD had both seat mounting points stripped and broken as well as one of the boot lid hinge points rusted solid (as well as the upholstery being split in about 10 places with many, many layers of 100mph tape over it all. There's just no way of getting to the mount points so I ended up stripping it right down to the bare fibreglass base and starting again and really beefing up the mount points and hinge mounts while I was fixing them. They were just little plates about an inch long with two rivets holding each one on with 6 x 1.0mm holes for the actual mounting screws, now they are about two inches long, half again as wide and made from a bit thicker steel and now have four rivets each and are glassed in solid so they can never rust again and have got 8 x 1.25mm holes for the mounting screws (like most fitter/turners I favour the overkill method when it comes to re-engineering). Anyway, the reason I am even mentioning the seat is because during the process I also found my seatbase to be quite assymetrical, I had to take a good 10mm of one of the front edges to make the space between tank and seat the same both sides before re-upholstering and also move one of the boot lid hinge points back and up a bit so they were both in the same place relative to each other. Even now the gap between the seat edge and top of the sidecovers is not as good as I would like. I had to remake the rear tank mount from scratch as someone in the past had put an old engine mount off something there instead to make the tank sit higher as the coils were mounted a bit high and were rubbing on the underside of the tank. I must have dropped the back of the tank and front of the seat by nearly an inch in the end which really made a huge difference to how the seat edge and sidecovers fitted together. Typical old Ducati, had to completely re-mount the coils at the front of the bike to fix the seat, ha ha ha.

They really are hand made things these Ducatis. One of the (many) things I like about them is that it's possible to improve them yourself in so many ways (both big and very small) because of it, if you're prepared to put the time and thought into it without really spending a million bucks.
gavin
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Re: darmah side covers

Post by gavin »

wow did not realise how long it was since i posted this and have only got round to fixing but Craig i am finally reporting back.i fixed the pins by using a dremel and shaping the parts the pins sit in like a bell internally, much the same as a dentist does with a filling, filled it with araldite(hopefully not what the dentist uses) and put the pins with nuts back in,i left the top part which is still shaped from the nut mostly as it was .it has worked very well,i did have to widen the holes on the frame that the rubbers sit in as they do not line up hence the pins coming out,so the rubbers all have some movement on the vertical plane (about 5mm) but everything lines up beautifully now covers go on and off a lot better.Now i have to get the seat base to sit properly.....in the next year or two :-D
jockduck
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Re: darmah side covers

Post by jockduck »

I have to agree about mounting bits being mis-aligned on Darmah frames, I found cover screws that would not fit if the pegs were in the grommets the two bottom female thread plates were not in the same position, also found the two thready bosses that the front seat pan screws into were not at the same height so gaps to the cover tops were different on each side. Gee do you think Guido lost the frame jig?
Jockduck
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