Sundial Moto Sports

I have this project detailed on a local Aussie website but thought I might share the major parts here too..

I can see this is probably going to be quite a long project, but as they say, you should always start with the end in mind. So this is something like what I am aiming for. A TR500 replica circa 1972 (the air cooled version) eligible for Period 4 historic racing in Australia.



Back in 1971 I briefly raced the 250 version and for years have wanted to relive those "glory" days! Talking to the marital control board about it, she questioned whether I would be happy with only a 250 after racing a Supersport bike so after some careful thought (about 3 nano seconds) I agreed that a larger cc might be more enjoyable. I briefly toyed with the idea of a TR750 replica, even a widowmaker Kawasaki, but kept coming back to the 500 as a more doable and cost effective project as they had proven reliability and reasonable, if not outstanding, performance. So bang for buck, a 500 it was.

As I am living in the US at the moment I decided to start my quest here as parts seem to be quite cheap compared with Oz. Of course I will have to add the cost of freight back home when the time comes, but I think it will still work out cheaper. And so to ebay where I have spent many lonely hours scouring for bits. Got to shop around as prices vary significantly!

As a start I have bought a T500 frame and swing arm ($75US),

a rear wheel ($45US),

front forks and triple clamp off a GT550 as this gives me the twin disc setup ($122US)

a GT550 hub (already drilled for 2 disks, $60US)

The discs themselves ($50 the pair) have come off a GT750 water buffalo and since this photo have been to a machine shop for 36 hole drilling which is essential for wet weather stopping, this set me back $110US.

A set of calipers off a GT750 for $35US (have a rebuild kit for them) completes the front end. I will probably mod the forks with racetech emulators and better springs at some stage.


The guy I bought the frame off just happened to have one and a half T500 motors also which I picked up for $200! I drove from Vermont to north of Detroit, Michigan to pick it all up - I was exhausted by the time I got home!


I have a new aluminium flanged rim for the rear but trying to find a WM3 with spoke angles drilled for a disc hub is proving more difficult. Current searches are leading to the UK. Michael (Mercury) Morse of vintagebrake.com has supplied the racing brake pads.


There seems to be endless information on converting the road bikes to a racing spec and interestingly enough, an Aussie site seems to be the most acclaimed and is hosted by none other than Perth based Murray Barnard. So already, some motor specs are starting to be thought about. My neighbour here in Vermont is an ex motocross tuner so we are having a great old time discussing porting and expansion chamber design. In fact he has got right into the intricacies of chamber design and I think we might be able to come up with something fairly special. I think many beer fueled discussions will eventuate before we settle on the final specs! Also thinking about investing in one of the Tuning Simulator packages that are out there.

I will do all the rebuild back in Australia next year.

Some extra barrels and heads also came of evilbay as well as this nifty exhaust gas temp gauge.


A nice pair of completely reconditioned Koni shocks followed


As well I have stocked up on numerous items such as bearings, seals, master cylinder etc to the extent that the wife is starting to cringe every time she sees the UPS, Fedex or USPS truck in the street! In fact the USPS lady just leaves the stuff on the front deck now instead of me having to collect it. Bargain!

more to come....

I have started to get the frame delugged with my $20 grinder (yep, off eBay!) as this will save a few pounds and space in the crate. It looks at this stage like it will cost me somewhere in the region of $6-700 to get everything shipped home. This is much cheaper than if I had tried to ship bits individually or tried to buy them in Oz.



I also popped open the motors to see what I am dealing with. Obviously it will be a total rebuild when I get home but I was pleased to see that they are both standard bore so I have ordered some nice Wiseco 20thou oversize pistons which will slip into the rebored jugs.

Not so pretty was this rod...


I am suspecting a big end failure. Through the miracles of this very forum I have already located a replacement. Thanks LexPaul!

Nice start to your Wanaroo special. Is John Woodley still making TR replica chassis? Back when I raced in VIC he was the man for TRs or Michael Pettifer.

For the disk, another alternative is a floating RG500 style from Manta in Melbourne. They are much lighter, legal and work better - but more $$ of course.

Try MOTA from Ian Williams in SA for a simulation package or EngMod2T from South Africa - the other SA. We use MOTA and Bimotion to get a head start on pipe and port configuration.

WM3 flanged and drilled for a disk hub is a harder proposition though. Mid 70s TZ came with non flanged WM2 front 3 rear IIRC, XS650 had a WM3 flanged rim but drilled for an 8" hub. Do MikesXS have anything in the size you are looking for?

Rod looks like it has been bent and rubbed on the flywheel. I have a multi-piece TZ rod like that. It probably hydrolocked.

Thanks for the tips. I believe John is on a much different track now. http://farmforestry.com.au/jw.html

I have looked at various bits of software and keep coming back to EngMod2t as probably the most useful. Mota doesn't seem to want to work with 64bit OS's so it rules that one out.
I tried MikesXS but no joy. Hagon in UK seems to be the hottest lead at the moment. There's lots of really neat stuff available for these old girls, but $$ are unfortunately somewhat restricted!

How ironic that John Woodley - king of the smokers is an actual tree hugger. Good to know. We may need some carbon offsets.

I run MOTA on a 64 bit Win 7 laptop but it's running in XP mode to run all the legacy apps. You could set up a second partition and dual boot into XP on that second partition. I hear good things about EmgMod2T but it seems like it needs even more data than MOTA and the first time you run MOTA you cannot believe how much data it needs.

How much power are you looking for? With the right porting and pipes it's possible to get very large numbers (in theory at least). We designed a pipe for a guy with a mild set of ported barrels that will hopefully give him a big fat powerband at relatively low RPM. In theory that pipe made almost 10HP more than and XR05 1,000 rpm lower. In time we may get to see what it actually does in the real world.

We modeled all the pipes mentioned on Muzza's site and managed to screw one of the sets of dimensions up and that error made more theoretical HP than any other we tested at the time. Interesting to see the differences between different pipes on the same motor.

Hi ChrisK,

Best wishes on the project, I got my Seeley TR500 spec. to the track this Sept. (OK I lunched a piston and am now re-building the engine ). You are correct in thinking $$$, a race project will constantly challenge your wallet. My build has run to £8 - £9k GBP, at least £1500+ being mistake and experience gaining costs. Certainly a lot of fun however.

You can see my build photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zunspec/sets/72157631643417466/

Cheers Geoff

Thanks. PM coming your way.

WOW! What a cool looking bike Geoff, some very nice work done on that and a great credit to you. I am of course instantly and insanely jealous! It has given me a few ideas though so I'll be poring over those very good pics in minute detail trying to shamelessly steal a few of the ways you have done things!

What forks are you running on that? Modified? Also the ignition system. I'm leaning towards the fully programmable Zeeltronic but totally open to suggestions. Not sure how the regs work in the UK, but what class would that run in? We have 10 year blocks and mine is being set up for the '63 to '72 so I probably wouldn't get away with that sumptuous looking disc rear.

Ignition options go from simple DYNA S, Newtronics, through MSD 6AL to Ignitech, Krober, PVL, HPI, or Hitachi/Motoplat/Femsa from a TZ.

HPI in Belgium do a nice self generating ignition but if you are happy to use a small battery, there are lots of options.

Hi Chris,



The forks are replica 35mm Ceriani from Maxton (with latest GP internals), they slide into a set of yolks made by Minnovation provided by Mr Pete O'dell (as was the replica Seeley frame). I am using a self generation ign. system made by Powerdynamo, It isn't programmable but does have a factory set ign. curve. I am running it in the CRMC 500 Air Cooled class (January 1st 1973 to 31st December 1981). It has a genuine period Seeley tank, although I would have like the "coffin" Seeley tank but couldn't find one. 38mm Mikuni carbs mounted on a set of inlet manifolds (also from Pete). My race at Snetterton in Sept was really only a shake down run and it was running damn well. Unfortunately the dummy mechanic ran it under jetted and it holed a piston, when I find that Zunspec fella he's going to get a right slapping .

Good luck with your build, If I can be of any help (like getting parts from the UK etc.) just let me know

Cheers Geoff

Been following you on PSB.
Looking good so far....

Cheers! Only 5 weeks and I'll be back on home soil. Going to be very mixed feelings I think, but it will be good to have a proper workshop back again

small correction my yokes are NOT made by minnovation they are made for me by engineering company round the corner

Hi Pete,

My mistake as Minnovation make some of very similar appearance, I made an incorrect assumption. Pete can offer a wide range of parts for your racing T500 as well as good as it gets engine tuning/preparation etc. Just don't get him too busy until after he's finished doing my engine .

Cheers Geoff

Yes, I hear very good reports about Pete's work, too bad he is on the other side of the world!

Some progress since my last report:

I needed to assemble a crate to ship all my bits and pieces back home. My neighbour here is a real good scout and offered me all his tools, workshop and help.



Measure twice, cut once! Damn, should have measured 3 times!!



On very friendly terms with the USPS lady (not to mention Fedex and UPS). She brings the stuff right to my door now. Her husband is a BMW rider (can't help bad luck).

The latest bits and pieces to arrive are a few new bearing and seal sets as well as some lovely new Mikuni VM34's - $89 from Amazon




And these gorgeous Wiseco forged pistons. These look too nice to be hidden in a motor.


I have had the motors and other generally grotty running pieces off to the local soda blasters to clean them up before shipping and here are some of the results - I'm pretty happy.









All the outer casings of the motors will be buffed up to get a bit of shine on them.

Next task was to get all the bits and pieces crated up for shipping back to Oz. Through the North American 2 stroke forum I was able to get a lead on a guy in Indianapolis who exports classic cars to Australia. I gave him a ring and to my surprise there was another Aussie on the end of the phone. He lives in the States and his daughter runs the Aus side of the business in Melbourne. He basically said "get the crate to me and I'll handle it from there". That took a big load of worry off my mind as I really didn't know a lot about import/export details. In the meantime we had to take a run down to New York to pick up son and daughter who are here for Christmas, so on return it was a rush to get the crate finished and everything packed before the freight company arrived to pick it up.

So, with the help of #1 son, we knocked up the mounting brackets that will (hopefully) keep the frame and motors well anchored during the voyage back home.



When we designed the crate we had decided that the best way to anchor the motors and frame was to use the existing mounting brackets and just run threaded rod through each side of the crate, so that's what we did! I can't think of any more secure way. It all seems pretty solid.





It was then just a case of packing everything around the main components.





And finally, the sides and lid are screwed on and we have a crate! It weighs in at around 510lb (or about 230kg) so it's a big lump to try and manhandle. Luckily the freight company can get the tail lift of the truck right into the garage so we can get it on fairly easily. Which we do.







And off it goes on the first leg of a journey to the other side of the world. Hopefully (fingers crossed) the next I see of it will be when it gets delivered to the door in Western Australia in a couple of months time!

Once I get back to Australia in the middle of January I will start ordering all the bits I need out of Europe (didn't make sense to ship them to the US and then onto Oz), so I'll be looking for a tank, bodywork, ignition as well as a front alloy rim and spokes. Some bits and pieces will come out of Asia and the freight to Australia from that region is usually pretty good. I will use local engineering expertise to rebuild the cranks. Porting and chambers I will do myself at this stage. I have purchased the MOTA software to assist with the design and tuning and that is going to be manipulated by a friend here in the US as I'm not that into crunching numbers, but he loves it! As well as being an ex motocross and snowmobile tuner his real job is a hardware testing design engineer with IBM so he's pretty handy on the calculations.

I'll take this opportunity to extend season's greetings to anyone who has been following this project. Probably the next you hear will be from a searing Australian summer! Take care.