My 1st Trials Bike (part 2)

In the last instalment, my home grown trials bike was converted from a Greeves roadster with a 225cc 2-stroke villiers engine and Ariel telescopic forks.
The next major change to the bike came about because I aquired a 250cc BSA C15t 4-stroke engine with a broken gearbox, but with insufficient funds for the repair I managed to find a local bike dealer who was prepared to supply me with the replacement parts for the repair, in exchange for the 2-stroke engine, (who said the days of barter were over.)
The next job was to shoe-horn the engine into the Greeves frame whilst keeping the gearbox sprocket in line with the rear wheel sprocket. This was achieved with more hack-sawing and grinding of the ever diminishing engine plates, the lower engine cradle now acted as an integral bash plate to protect the sump. The interesting thing was the fact that in spite of the taller 4-stroke engine, I managed to maintain, if not, slightly improve the ground clearance. There was an airbox / battery box in the centre of the frame which also doubled as a structural member of the frame, so this was done away with and a bespoke oil tank was fabricated to take it's place. There were other things to make, like an exhaust system, an air filter, a battery holder which was mounted behind a plate sandwiched between the fork legs, underneath the top yoke, and so on.
If I had my own welding gear, all of this would have been so much easier to do, however, the truth of the matter was that all of the mods required had to be mocked up and prefabricated before I could get to a friend of mine who had the welding equipment.
It was the little things that took the time, like cutting out fashioning a rear brake lever from a piece of dural plate to make a rear brake lever and connecting this to the hub via a cable
This little beauty ran really well and was trialed for 3-4 years and was quite competetive in a world that was now being dominated by the new wave of Spanish marques.
After a time, I too was won over by the much lighter more powerful 2-stroke machines that were to drive the 4-stroke powered bikes into obscurity. The interesting thing is that now 4-stroke bikes are coming back to rule the roost.
When I think back on this project, I seem to recall that apart from a small selection of spanners, all I had for the fabrication was a hacksaw, a couple of files, one flat and one round, a DIY type electric drill with a few drill bits.
It's surprising what you can achieve with a bit of vision, a few tools and a low budget.