Metal dreams

Gone are many of the old-school repair skills once the grist for the mill in paint and panel shops. And thanks to TAFE closures mostly gone too are the opportunities for the general public to gain these necessary skills to restore or customise their cars or motorcycles.

But there is hope for Sydneysiders wanting to learn old ways of fettling metal with the MotoRRetro training centre/workshop opening in the north-western Sydney suburb of Seven Hills. Here, students learn what are overall rapidly disappearing skills in a workshop fully decked out with tools and expertise.

MotoRRetro was conceived by Vaughan Ryan and Georgio Rimi, both of whom qualified in traditional automotive restoration skills back when you still could in the late 1980s. Both went on to teach automotive restoration courses at TAFE colleges.

More recently, Ryan taught an automotive restoration course at the North Sydney TAFE until it closed last year. It’s that closure which provided the impetus to start a business that took the best of the TAFE course and expanded on it.

“There are lots of enthusiast are out there who want to be able to work on their projects. When we notified the night students that the college was closing, most of them said, ‘We still have these projects, we still need to go somewhere, what are you guys going to do after TAFE closes?’.”

As Vaughan and Georgio discovered, there wasn’t anywhere for the TAFE students to go.

“Not many workshops allow people to come in and work; there’s health and safety, insurance problems and so on. Guys want to be part of their project. But because we sell blocks of hours, students buy those hours, then they’re allowed to be in the workshop, they’re insured to be in here.”

The way MotoRRetro works is that it sells students 24 hour blocks of workshop time for $660. Consumables are not included (grinding discs for example) or personal safety equipment (boots and overalls) but hammers, dollys, spanners and so on are supplied.

Students start using these hours to attend structured classes (held on Tuesday nights and on Saturdays) and later to work on their projects in the workshop. If students want to keep their project at the premises, they can rent a bay for $220 a week.

Ryan said that once the students have done their first 24 hours of tuition, they are usually ready to work on their own.

At that point, Vaughan says, “They can start to bring in their little projects, such as a rust repair in a lower guard section. We just give guidance, demonstrations or suggest whom to see about parts… What parts to get.”

Rimi said that the whole idea was to learn to use the skills, rather than focus on theory.

“We can usually get everyone welding within the hour, teaching the dos and don’ts rather than the theory only. In fact, soon we’ll do a women-only welding class — lots of my female friends have asked me how to weld.”

MotoRRetro also sells the machinery needed to shape metal the old-fashioned way, as Ryan explained.

“A couple years ago, we looked at the re-manufacture of rare skill machinery, like the bench-mounted wheeling machine we do for Hare and Forbes.

“Most car and motorcycle work you only need to shape a foot, a foot and a half — a bench-mounted piece of equipment is more than adequate. We’ve done 26 machines so far.”

When the pair are not teaching, they do commissioned work, such as the BMW R9T custom motorcycle built in collaboration with Deus Ex Machina for BMW Motorrad.

One of MotoRRetro’s students, Bob Stevens, is a builder who is constructing something of a very different nature at MotoRRetro.

Stevens is working on his 2007 Moto Guzzi Vintage California, which he said, ”Is a really nice bike and I really enjoyed it, but after having it for seven years  — with panniers and camping gear — I wanted to thin that down a bit.

“I love the engine, I love the feel of the Moto Guzzi. [Rather than replace it], I decided to do something with the bike I liked. I looked around, I couldn’t find anyone — and then I found these guys — Vaughan and Georgio. I wouldn’t be able to do anything like this if it wasn’t for what they did.”

Stevens rolled his motorcycle into the workshop last October, and has nearly finished modifying it. It looks nothing like Moto Guzzi conceived it, with modified suspension, new mudguards, hidden electrics, a USB port, iPhone mount, heated hand grips, clock and a custom fabricated tail section for storing wet-weather gear.

Another bloke working on his project was Allen Hyde, a retired electrical engineer. Hyde bought is 1959 MGA coupe in 1968, crashed it in 1972 damaging the chassis and front end and it has been off the road since, waiting for the day it could be returned to its original state.

“I started doing this at TAFE in St Leonards, that’s how I met Vaughan. Progress at TAFE wasn’t that fast. We all enjoyed going to TAFE — it was like a men’s shed in lots of ways — but the progress on the car wasn’t what you’d hope.

“This is a much better formula, because the car is here permanently, you don’t have to take it back and forth from home, you can work at your own speed, it’s totally flexible.

“We discuss how I’m going to tackle it, so I don’t do further damage, then they go away and do their work until I’m at the next stage. If neces-sary, I learn something from them, they teach me, then I do it.

“It’s a terrific thing that they’re doing. I couldn’t have sent it to a panel beater. It would’ve just cost too much money.”

Ryan said that the traditional methods work well for restoration but for customisation MotoRRetro uses modern technology.

“We get the restoration guys, who just want to return it to original. That’s fine — you know the outcome, you know what it’s going to look like, it’s very simple. The customising side is a little more interpretive and that gets a little tricky.”

Here the old art of shaping metal is assisted by modern technology.

“We looked at modern engineering such as 3D printers. To product-type a prototype part, we can go to a design engineer, he comes in, we’ll do a design with him and he’ll convert that with us and then we go to print.

“We then make a wire former, a 3D wire former — it’s a wire skeleton that forms a shape, like a dressmaker’s manikin — and fit the piece to the motorbike and then the customer can see it and go, ’Oh okay, I like that’.

“We can modify it, and go from there. One of our catchphrases is, ‘If you can dream it, we can build it’.”

See more at MotoRRetro Facebook