vodaphone mclearn aerox project *FINSHED*

Here is my 2003 Yamaha aerox project I brought this back in June but only getting two days a week to work on it plus it benign my first time working on a scotter and learning along the way. My paint scheme for the bike is going to be a McLean vodaphone race scheme.

When I brought the bike I was told it was running but had been sitting around for a couple of months so when I got it home I striped the body work that it did have on it off and after seeing all the mud and dirt on it, it was worse then a speedway bike after a night of racing. We first charged the battery to see if it would take any charge and filling it up with battery acid and to are surprise it did so I got to work on trying to get it started and after trying all the things I knew i.e checking for a spark and changing the spark plug ,check for the compression and making sure all the wring was ok and was in working order and after writing on here I decide to stripe the top end of the engine off and saw that the piston and rings where no good I put my order into adrlineing pedstop which I think is a very good company and would recommend them to anyone. That’s it for now I will put more up soon on how the project progressed.




here is the bike when i first went to see it.





When i got it home and striped the body work off it has you can see from the frist pics the bike was in abit of a mess.

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Here is the picture of the piston when I got it out of the engine has you can see its pretty bad also here is the bike with out any of the body work on and this is after the first clean up on the frame and engine has you can see its still very dirt and I put a lot of hard work into clean it up to this stage I also couldn’t believe how much grease the exhaust had on the end can you could hardly see the Kevlar so at this stage I was thinking of getting a new exhaust system but will show more later on what I decided .

On striping down the body work I notice that a lot of the black interior plastic trim was cracked so I sent that off to one of my mates to be repaired with filler and with the body work it wasn’t in the best of conditions and as I wanted to get the bike back to the great condition it once was ive decide to order a brand new body kit for the bike.


you can see the piston and the top end casing have got corsion all over them.


From this picture you can see how bad the exhaust is and the water casing looks very rough also if you look carefully at the head of the engine and you just see how bad it was.


From this picture you can see the paint on the belt casing staring peel and starting to rust. If you look at the frame you can see the dirt build up and the bit of rust on the bike. But generally how bad bike was in.


Here you can see the forks are not in the best of conditions and the front wheel looks very tacky.

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While I had the engine out of the bike I thought I would make a start on cleaning up the engine cases here are some pictures of the cases after I had cleaned them I used a lot of bio wash on the engine to get it to this stage and also used sum wet and dry to break thought all the grease and dirt that was on the engine and here is the top end of the engine has I still wasn’t happy with the way it looked after cleaning it up I decide to spray the whole engine and has you can see from the pictures it looks really good .


Here is the top end casings before spraying




here is the engine before spraying


Here are the water pump covers already sprayed and the v belt cover i had to put some filler into it and smooth it out and get it ready for spraying .






That is how the engine come out after spraying it .

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For the next update on the project. I noticed when I first got the bike that the rear wheel paint was starting to flake so instead of trying to do a touch up job on the bits that had had flaked off I took all the paint of the rear wheel and re sprayed it and I must admit I was even shocked how well it had come out but when I put the Lacquer on it reacted to the paint and striped the paint off so I had to rub down the wheel again back to bare and re spray it again and lucky this time the Lacquer reacted fine with it must have jus been one of those things.



This was the rear wheel after i had rub it all down.




This is how the wheel come out after spraying and Lacquering it.

While I had the bike striped down I decide to strip the front end down so out come the forks and I could see that the carbon sheet on the forks was peeling off so I ordered some new carbon sheets and the forks had some water corrosion on them so I rub down the paint on the forks and re sprayed them .


Before spraying



After spraing.

Also up to this stage in the project I had rebuilt the engine with new piston , ring kit plus all the engine gasket put in with new oil .The engine has had a de-coke with a new drive belt and air filter. the water sender unit had been snapped off the bike by the last owner so I brought a brand new one form Fowlers Yamaha plus a Yamaha sticker for the engine , double water hoes clip , new exhaust gasket , Speedo cable and new rear pads , the front ones had new pads already In.

When i got the bike it was missing some Interior plastics and I brought a battery cover and lower seat inner panel of eBay and got them looking brand new again.


lower seat panel from the ebayer.

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Hi I thought I would post some more up from the project. I put a lot of time in getting the frame decreased and cleaned and has you can tell its come up good also with the frame having some rust spots I rubbed them down and blending the paint in with the rest of the frame. I took the rear shock off the bike and gave that a good clean on the coils and fitting cuplens and got them looking near enough brand new again. also I found that the brembo callipers where very dirty so again gave them a good old clean and got them looking nice and clean. I gave the wires a new loom and decreased all the cables. I will let the pictures say the rest about the frame.




I got the engine back into the frame here are a few pictures of it. After I had just taken these pictures I was going to try and see if it would fire has we hadn’t had it started yet and to check everything was fine but then the havens opened and stop play so ill will be trying to get it fired next time and I will post and let you know how it went.





You can see how well everything on the frame has cleaned up but I very please with how well the seat had come up.

As I put up before I was debating weather to buy a new complete exhaust system I thought I would give this one a clean up . I decrease the end can and that had come up very clean and I sprayed the down pipe has it was very rusty here are is a picture of how it looked before and how it looks now. So I decided to stay with this exhaust pipe.


Before


After

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As I said on the last update I went to try and start the engine for the first time since I have had the bike and the first time since the top end strip down but due to the weather I couldn’t do this when I put the engine in the frame.

So onto another day my aim for the day was to get the engine up and running and all dialled in and running sweet , so we got the bike out filled the engine with oil put the rad back on after given that a clean up and put coolant in the rad.I hit the starter button and could hear this loud grinding noise coming from the drive belt cover and after a few hits at the button it was still there so i went and got the manual and had a look and opened up the drive belt cover and on inspection and looking at the manual and with the cover off I tried it again with someone looking into the starter clutch and that’s was where the grinding noise was coming from so I took the starter clutch apart and putting it in order has it come off and checked it with the manual I noticed that who ever had it off last and put it back together had put the domed spacer at the back off the cog and the spacer not being the right spacer it was to thick and was pushing everything out and grinding so I machined another spacer to the right thickness put it all back together per has the manual said put the case back on the I just wanted to see if that had cured the grinding noise and at the hit off the button it started straight away I really was shocked when it fired up has I wasn’t expecting it to fire so easy. So I warmed the engine up checked for any leaks, making sure everything was doing its jobs which it was.
I took it out the other day and took it down the road and back and found that I had a small leak from the water pump so I have ordered a new water pump repair kit and will fix that when it arrives.


I thought I would post a picture of how the forks look now with the new carbon on.




Here are the new grips i have brought for the bike also got carbon ends

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Body Work Fitting

Part one : Belly pan

Right so onto to fitting the belly pan from the new kit. The first thing I noticed when sizing the belly pan up to the bike was the side stand was going to be a problem because who ever had fitted it had welded the fitting bar on top and not on the bottom off the mounting plate. The body kit does come with a hole for the side stand to go thought but because of this problem it ment that when the stand comes up it would hit the belly pan. I had put some masking tape on the belly pan where it was hitting and draw around it once I got it right I took the belly pan off and started to take a little bit at a time off the hole making sure I didn’t cut it to much and make it look untidy so after having the belly pan off and on about 6 times getting it right which was a big pain as the side stand had to come off every time i finally got it just right and it went up with out touching the belly pan. so the next step was to make it into a nice shape and to make sure the hole wasn’t just a hole to do the job but make it suite the design off the body work so more masking tape on and draw a nicer shape in and cutting , filing and bending it into the hole that had been cut out by the manufacture. Here is the picture off how it come out .Also has the mounting bracket sticks a little bit out of the belly pan I decide to paint that sliver so it blended in with the body work and was harder to see.



Onto the next part off getting the belly pan to fit. on the floor board at the back where the belly pan fits on to had been broken off ,after trying to repair it with plastic weld which didn’t work I come up with a design and for a bracket and to make it out off ally. To get the design , I got abit of card and used the floor board and belly pan to get a tracing of what it should look like and after going round it with a pen and cutting it out I had to get it to the right size so after some cutting around with card , I got the template to work so the next step was to trace the template onto the sheet off ally I had. With it all traced out and getting the right size holes for the screws I cut it out using a metal saw once cut out I drilled the screws holes to the right size and de-burrd it I tried it on the bike and it was just a little bit too big so after abit off grinding it fitted.so got abit of sanding paper and uesing the grinder to get the egdes smooth.
This is the final product



Into postion



And with paint and all screwed down with colour coding screw and bolt



The belly pan all fited from both sides.




With the side stand looking tacky i rubbed it down and sprayed it sliver to match and covered it in bubble rap so it doesn’t get scratched.

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Body Work Fitting

Part Two; Rear End

The seat that come with the bike was in good condition with only a small rip in it so instead of buying a new seat cover I decided to repair it so after a tripe to the local furnishing shop to match the seat vinyl, I got a free sample witch I used to put over the rip also some of the sponge was missing so I put some new sponge into the seat to pad it out as you can see from the pictures it worked a dream and you can hardly see the repair. Also I gave the seat a good clean and polish.


Before


After

I was going to buy some rear carbon indicators but decided to keep the original ones I gave them a clean and a bit of polish to bring them back to life , the original rear light that was on the bike had one of the mounting points broken off , I looked around on ebay to see if I could pick another on up but as time was getting on I still hadn’t found a decent one so I brought a new Lexus light and was planning on taken the Lexus lens off and putting the original lens back on but after putting the Lexus light on the bike and seeing how clean and smart it made the rear look I decided to keep with the Lexus one. When I got the body kit I was surprised to see that it came with an under tray as I wasn’t expecting it so i put that one on to keep it colour coded. With the number plate and L plate I just gave them a clean and got them looking like new and did the same with the mounting board.



With the seat panels I thought they would need some work doing to them to get them to fit which turned out to be right.Where it curves at the back it was hitting the rear light so out came the grinder again to take a bit off each side and giving just enough room so it wasn’t hitting the light and putting pressure on the seat panels ( as you can see from the above picture the lines where just right around the light).Also when I put the grab handle and bracket on I noticed that it was hitting the seat panels as well , not a lot but enough to put pressure on the panels which I didn’t want so after some filing and cutting it around the grab handle bracket I got it to clear the rest of the seat panel went on nicely.



I brought a new carbon tail piece as it goes with the theme of bike and gives the rear end a more racer look but this did need some work doing to it as it didn’t clear the grab handle properly so it then wouldn’t seat right so I cut it around the grab handle but making sure I didn’t cut too much off so doing a bit at a time which does take longer but you get a better look which I have archived has it just seat over the top of the grab handle so it looks like one now. Am now thinking of putting some carbon sheeting over the filler cap to blend it in , but more on that when I do it.



The engine cover was about the only piece that went on with out having to modify it to fit lol. When I first looked at the panel I wanted to fill the air vents in with ally mesh so I done this and I think it just set it off and again goes with the race theme.







Complete rear end

The screws that am uesing are ally button head ones brought from screw fix as i find they look nicer.

I havent got time atm to wirte about the front end and the rest of styling but i will be posting that up in the next few days just bare with me thanks.

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Body Work Fitting

Part three: front end

The front end body pieces went on a lot easier then the rest of body work, only having to shave a bit off the middle panel of the fairing so it went nicely against the interior panel.



I gave the front head light a clean and got it looking like new again, before refitting it to the front fairing piece. When I got the bike, the inner air grill on the front fairing was painted red and white so I used wet n dry paper to rub the paint off with and then I sprayed the panel black and got it back to new again. I was going to spray the side bits of the inner panel red so it would show through the vent holes on the side of the front fairing but after covering it with a red vinyl sheet just to see how it would look, I went back to the first plan and got some ally mesh and applied the mesh to the body panel which gives it the clean smart look.


Without


With

I brought a pair of new grips and also brought a carbon dash to match with the rear pillion panel and I also took the clock panel off and refurbished it to look like new again. I’ve kept the standard indicators which go really well with the front end. For the mirror I didn’t want to have a fat one so I went for this carbon F1 look a like mirror to give the front end a nice clean look. I cleaned up and sprayed the tops off the brake reservoir and cleaned the screws up as they were rusty, also I fitted new screws to all the panels and cleaned all the controls switches.





The front mudguard was a straight fit which just needed 4 new M6 button screws which I bought from Screwfix.

With the interior it was in a pretty bad state when I got the bike, the floor boards had bits snapped off which I said about in the last update, the Battery cover had a big hole in it where someone had tried to break into it, so I got that repaired with plastic filler but it didn’t work very well and a crack appeared again after a couple of weeks with the new crack going along the side of the repair so I repaired it again this time using glass fibre body filler, so far this has held and to finish off I got all the interior panels spayed in a black plastic type paint, this same paint is used in the repair of plastic bumpers as fitted to a lot of cars. They have come out really well as you can see.



This is the bike with all the new body work with the mesh missing off the air vents. These pictures were taken before the mesh went on





The next update will include the design work I have done so far for the bodywork.

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Design part one

On the first day

So after getting the body work on the bike it was time to start designing the paint scheme I had done about 3 designs before finally getting the design that I liked and suited the bike. With the design all finished and on paper it was time to start making templates and getting the sizes for the vinyl. I got some thin tape and started going around where the red vinyl is going to go, the good thing about using thin tape like this is that it is easy to work with and you can change your lines without having to start again. I had brought two Yamaha sticker’s off eBay so I put them in the position where they will go and then started to size up the swirls which are also going on the belly pan.







The next step is to make the templates, So I got some tracing paper and traced around the blue lines which wasn’t the easiest thing to do as with the curves on the seat and mudguard kept creasing the tracing paper even though it was stuck down with masking tape but finally getting a good trace I used some thin cardboard and placed the tracing paper over the cardboard which formed my templates. The seat template came out right first time, same with the front nose panel, but after having a look at the mudguard and the side panel template they didn’t look quite right but I ran out of time so I had to leave it till the next available day.



On my next day off work I got the bike back out and wanted to redo the mudguard and the side panel templates. The side panel didn’t need a lot doing to it just the side closest to the front of the fairing side. I wanted to pull it in more which I did by taking away the old tape and putting a new piece down then re traced it and put it onto cardboard and it looked fine. With the front mudguard that proved to be more of a pain when I first done the lines I found that it was too narrow and wanted to spread it out a bit more. I took all the blue tape off the mudguard and started from scratch , I re laid down the blue tape this time spreading it out more and traced it again onto cardboard and then when I went to make sure it fitted around the lines ok, it kept pulling in along the straight lines and without seeing this before, I saw that the mudguard had a double curve on it, so after deciding what to do I re traced it again but just the right hand side this time and cut 2 pieces of cardboard but flipped over one piece to make the left hand side then put them onto the bike and joined them up at the middle and with a bit more tweaking to the template I finally got the template right.

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Design

Part two

Having made all the templates for the aerox, the next step was to size up the spaces that the stickers will go into, which would give me the sizes I need for the stickers.
I then took it one step further and printed off the logos on my computer to size, on normal paper, and then i blue tacked the logos to the bike where they would go so I could get a good idea of how the bike will look



This proved to be helpful as it showed that some of the logos had to be moved about and re-sized and saves the printing company time on having to size it all up





This is the contact sheet that the printing company provided to me so I could ok the sizes for them to go ahead.



At the moment am wating on delivery of a new water pump so hopefully by this weekend the bike should be completed .

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Hi guys sorry for the lack of update just been really busy this week. I picked the vinyls up yesterday and also the new water pump was delivered yesterday so I put that on yesterday have decided to go back to a standard air filter as I didn’t want the hassle of re jetting and it setting it up on the dyno. I bought a second hand unit and gave it a clean and check over plus a good polish to bring it up like new. I also had to re- tuned the carburettor for the new air box, it ticks over nicely and the throttle response is very good and picks up on the throttle really well. Afterwards the bike was taken out on the road today by my dad, he come back with a big smile and said it rides like a brand new bike and it goes well, which pleased me a lot.

I started to apply the vinyl to the bike this afternoon but this does take time and I didn’t want to rush it so I have only done one side apart from the seat unit which hopefully will be finished tomorrow. I wasn’t going to put any pictures up until it was all finished, but you guys made me change my mind, so here is just a little peak of what has been done so far today and what is to come. I hope you like what you see.



I hope you like what you see.

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I got my local printing company to print all the vinyl logos and to supply me with a sheet of red vinyl so that I could cut out the red background myself using the templates that I made earlier; this helped in keeping the cost down as my budget was running out fast.

With not wanting to rush doing this stage as it was my first time working with vinyls, my Dad helped by showing me the best way of applying the vinyl’s. I started applying on Friday afternoon to the belly pan, first by prepping the surface to make sure the bodywork was clean and then spraying soapy water where the stickers were going to go. By doing this, it allows you to still move the sticker about when it still on the transfer paper. You can then start to place the sticker in position, apply them and getting the water and air pressed out by using a plastics scraper, then remove the transfer paper, making sure the sticker has stuck to the bodywork and has not come back off with the transfer paper. Its quite funny when doing this because you need it wet underneath so the vinyl can move around but 9 time out 10 when you got it in place and go to apply it, it moves then you got to start again LoL .



I only got one side of the scooter bodywork finished by Friday night so I got up early Saturday and was outside by 7.30 am to get the rest of the scooter finished. I started by measuring each of the stickers positions and transferring these measurements to the other side of the scooter and then the fun started with lining each of the little devils in position so that I could apply them. I finally finished knackered but happy late Saturday afternoon.



When I first started this scooter project, my design brief was to achieve a McLaren F1 team pit scooter and not a full custom McLaren scooter. I have a lot to learn about all aspects of scooter / motorbike mechanics and customising but for my first scooter project I think this has turned out very well, I haven’t the expertise or money to do a full paint job yet, this is why I decided on using vinyl’s as you can cock up and start again with little cost to your pocket plus it is a hard wearing material and should take a lot of abuse. I’ve just brought an air brush kit and will be learning how to air brush over the winter and then I can start doing nicer paint jobs on further scooters in the future.

Thanks to everybody for looking at the project and I hope you have all enjoyed watching the bike transform from a pretty beat up example to a nice Aerox scooter. I have just got to take the scooter for its M.O.T and then the scooter will be up for sale, so anyone interested email me.

 

Re: vodaphone mclearn aerox project

Can tell it's going to be a minter mate, hopefully the rings will sort it all out. All the best.

 

Re: vodaphone mclearn aerox project

Cheers for haveing a look i will be puting a load more pics up of the bike so keep a look out

 

Re: vodaphone mclearn aerox project

Here is the picture of the piston when I got it out of the engine has you can see its pretty bad also here is the bike with out any of the body work on and this is after the first clean up on the frame and engine has you can see its still very dirt and I put a lot of hard work into clean it up to this stage I also couldn’t believe how much grease the exhaust had on the end can you could hardly see the Kevlar so at this stage I was thinking of getting a new exhaust system but will show more later on what I decided .

On striping down the body work I notice that a lot of the black interior plastic trim was cracked so I sent that off to one of my mates to be repaired with filler and with the body work it wasn’t in the best of conditions and as I wanted to get the bike back to the great condition it once was ive decide to order a brand new body kit for the bike.


you can see the piston and the top end casing have got corsion all over them.


From this picture you can see how bad the exhaust is and the water casing looks very rough also if you look carefully at the head of the engine and you just see how bad it was.


From this picture you can see the paint on the belt casing staring peel and starting to rust. If you look at the frame you can see the dirt build up and the bit of rust on the bike. But generally how bad bike was in.


Here you can see the forks are not in the best of conditions and the front wheel looks very tacky.

 

Re: vodaphone mclearn aerox project

While I had the engine out of the bike I thought I would make a start on cleaning up the engine cases here are some pictures of the cases after I had cleaned them I used a lot of bio wash on the engine to get it to this stage and also used sum wet and dry to break thought all the grease and dirt that was on the engine and here is the top end of the engine has I still wasn’t happy with the way it looked after cleaning it up I decide to spray the whole engine and has you can see from the pictures it looks really good .


Here is the top end casings before spraying




here is the engine before spraying


Here are the water pump covers already sprayed and the v belt cover i had to put some filler into it and smooth it out and get it ready for spraying .






That is how the engine come out after spraying it .

 

Re: vodaphone mclearn aerox project

Woah, that has come along way. Looks really good mate. Full rebuild from the frame upwards all fresh is whaaat I like to see.

Hopefully the paint will last.

 

Re: vodaphone mclearn aerox project

looking good mate keep it up

jeez those aerox engines are really tiny :huh:

 

Re: vodaphone mclearn aerox project

love your project mate looking good

 

Re: vodaphone mclearn aerox project

thanks for the repleys guys and the nice comments it makes it worth doing even more to see other peopel liking what i am doing .

 

Re: vodaphone mclearn aerox project

For the next update on the project. I noticed when I first got the bike that the rear wheel paint was starting to flake so instead of trying to do a touch up job on the bits that had had flaked off I took all the paint of the rear wheel and re sprayed it and I must admit I was even shocked how well it had come out but when I put the Lacquer on it reacted to the paint and striped the paint off so I had to rub down the wheel again back to bare and re spray it again and lucky this time the Lacquer reacted fine with it must have jus been one of those things.



This was the rear wheel after i had rub it all down.




This is how the wheel come out after spraying and Lacquering it.

While I had the bike striped down I decide to strip the front end down so out come the forks and I could see that the carbon sheet on the forks was peeling off so I ordered some new carbon sheets and the forks had some water corrosion on them so I rub down the paint on the forks and re sprayed them .


Before spraying



After spraing.

Also up to this stage in the project I had rebuilt the engine with new piston , ring kit plus all the engine gasket put in with new oil .The engine has had a de-coke with a new drive belt and air filter. the water sender unit had been snapped off the bike by the last owner so I brought a brand new one form Fowlers Yamaha plus a Yamaha sticker for the engine , double water hoes clip , new exhaust gasket , Speedo cable and new rear pads , the front ones had new pads already In.

When i got the bike it was missing some Interior plastics and I brought a battery cover and lower seat inner panel of eBay and got them looking brand new again.


lower seat panel from the ebayer.

 

Re: vodaphone mclearn aerox project

loving your work mate keep it coming!! how close till the engine is back in the bike?

 

Re: vodaphone mclearn aerox project

looking good

 

Re: vodaphone mclearn aerox project

looks good mate, take it your only in Bristol then if you use Fowlers..

 

Re: vodaphone mclearn aerox project

Cheers mate the engine should be back into the bike 2mo so i wil post the pictures up of the frame finally cleand and re sprayed and the engine back in the frame .

 

Re: vodaphone mclearn aerox project

Cheers mate am in Hertfordshire just that i knew that flowers where a genuine Yamaha parts

 

Re: vodaphone mclearn aerox project

Hi I thought I would post some more up from the project. I put a lot of time in getting the frame decreased and cleaned and has you can tell its come up good also with the frame having some rust spots I rubbed them down and blending the paint in with the rest of the frame. I took the rear shock off the bike and gave that a good clean on the coils and fitting cuplens and got them looking near enough brand new again. also I found that the brembo callipers where very dirty so again gave them a good old clean and got them looking nice and clean. I gave the wires a new loom and decreased all the cables. I will let the pictures say the rest about the frame.




I got the engine back into the frame here are a few pictures of it. After I had just taken these pictures I was going to try and see if it would fire has we hadn’t had it started yet and to check everything was fine but then the havens opened and stop play so ill will be trying to get it fired next time and I will post and let you know how it went.





You can see how well everything on the frame has cleaned up but I very please with how well the seat had come up.

As I put up before I was debating weather to buy a new complete exhaust system I thought I would give this one a clean up . I decrease the end can and that had come up very clean and I sprayed the down pipe has it was very rusty here are is a picture of how it looked before and how it looks now. So I decided to stay with this exhaust pipe.


Before


After

 

Re: vodaphone mclearn aerox project

very nice mate, youve took your time and are a good perfectionist

 

Re: vodaphone mclearn aerox project

looks mint mate, time worth sending

lol how can you be a good perfectionist

 

Re: vodaphone mclearn aerox project

thanks for the comments guys glad you all like how its coming along.

 

Re: vodaphone mclearn aerox project

not really a fan of aerox's i must admit but im loving this one cant wait to see it all go together