KTT 55: The Dry Build

The dry build of KTT 55 followed pretty well exactly the same format as that of KTT 305, detailed here.

There were a few minor differences – chaincases (I managed to find 2 of these on ebay) and although the positions of the centres for the crankshaft and gearbox are a bit less on the tinware - I don’t know for what bike they were originally intended

but they fit reasonably well after some modification and a couple of brackets.

The oil tank did not have the internal tube that eases the run of the clutch cable into the top of the gearbox (it has an original tank so I can only assume that Veloce made that modification between the production of these 2 bikes) and so a gentle bend was fabricated

to achieve the same end.

I found that when trying to set up adjustment of the clutch cable the clutch operating lever inside the gearbox, K-31/2, reached the end of its travel before the clutch had fully disengaged. I had already made a new trust pin (K-30, it’s a ¼” diameter piece of silver steel) when I rebuilt the gearbox but it was 0.050” too short and so another one was made to sort that out. 

I also found that the exhaust pipe, which I had previously bent to fit on the Cammy Special, did not fit so well on KTT 55 (it fouled the stand) and so I had to remove the gearbox and put down some firebricks to make a minor correction with help from a lot of heat from the oxy-acetylene.

All the other bits and pieces – the petrol cap fitting on the tank, steering damper bracket. oil and fuel lines, cables, rear wheel adjusters, number plate, tool box etc were made and/or fitted in the same way as previously and it’s therefore not surprising that KTT 55 and KTT 305 look pretty similar.

KTT 55 will get an identical bum pad to KTT 305 and I need some more period-correct grease nipples that I will pick up from Mark Barker at the next Kempton Park Autojumble in September and little jobs such as filling the small dents in the oil tank will get done when the bike is painted.

And that’s about if for the engineering work on these 2 dry builds - I could put fuel and oil in them and start them up but I’ve decided that I will get on with the last of the dry builds before painting and plating (which doesn’t take long) for all the bikes.

Work will now start on the DOHC 250cc engine that, hopefully, will go into the chassis that I’ve prepared for the Cammy Special.