ITS ACTUALLY F*CKING DRIVING!! - (Motorbike Engine Swapped Piaggio)

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]Now, this crash motorbike was the fattest production bike of all time in the late '9s, and it's faster than a Ferrari, the Ferrari, and faster than a McLaren P1. And I'm going to take the engine out of this motorbike and put it in this, a Pagio port. Now, in the previous videos, we have already stripped the entire motorbike down, and we've also stripped the Pagio down, including cutting the roof off. Now, we've got the engine out of the Pagio, and we've already installed the motorbike engine into the frame of the Pagio. Now, in the last video, we made a shifter cable to convert our PIO manual gearbox into a sequential shifter onto the motorbike. And today, we're going to be doing a bunch of jobs to get this thing driving, including making a clutch, making a throttle pedal, and getting this thing up and running and driving for the first ever time.

[00:00:54]>> Now, we're back with the motorbike engine swatch. Pio, I'm very excited for today because for the first time ever, we can actually start this engine and get it running properly and hear what it bloody sounds like. And today, the plan is to get everything working with the Pad, which means we're going to be changing gears. The only thing we can't do in this video is drive it because there's one part, unfortunately, is our outstanding.

[00:01:19]So, the plan for today's video is to get the completely ready so that when that part does come, we can throw the prop shaft on and drive it. So, today is arguably one of the biggest videos we've done so far. So, the first thing we want to do is actually get a working clutch.

[00:01:34]Now, I took the whole clutch assembly off the motorbike. So, this is the slave cylinder here, and then this is the basically the clutch cylinder or the master cylinder. So, when I pull this, the uh the the the sle is going to pop out. It's almost just like a bra uh like a a caliper. It's exactly the same thing. It's just a brake caliper. When you pop the brakes, it's going to push that piston out, and that's going to engage and disengage the clutch. Now, we can't just reuse this because the line's not long enough because we've got the clutch over here, and we want it to be inside the car. So, we're not going to be able to reuse the whole thing. But we can reuse this side with the pedal and we can reuse this side of the slave cylinder. First of all, we got to mount the clutch inside the car. So, we're going to have this on our foot pedal.

[00:02:20]So, this here is the standard clutch pedal. Now, right now, it's not actually connected to anything. So, right now, I'm thinking I'm going to keep this clutch pedal and just use that to press down on the bike master cylinder or we're going to get rid of it completely.

[00:02:32]The one worry I was having is that I didn't know if this slave cylinder well it's actually mounted like this in the car. I didn't know if it had to be mounted sideways cuz obviously you've got the level there. Now on some slave cylinders they won't work tilting upright and that's because if you point it upwards it might be sending air through the line instead of sending fluid through the line. So we need to find this out before making a decision.

[00:02:56]So, we're going to take it apart to see exactly where the fluid is being drawn through because we cannot have air sitting in that area. I'm going to have to get this in a bloody vice.

[00:03:09][ __ ] Jesus Christ.

[00:03:14]Let's empty this fluid out and we can start mounting this inside the car. So, I thought I could undo this nut and just slide off the clutch pedal, but unfortunately that bolt goes all the way through all of them pedals, and I don't want to mess with the other pedals. So, we're going to get the grinder out. I'm just going to chop it off. So, as you can probably tell at this point, I have properly committed to cutting the original clutch pedal off and completely just using the one from the motorbike somehow.

[00:03:42]>> Okay. So, we can actually have this mounted sideways cuz if you look inside there, that's where the fluid comes in and out. So, all we got to do is just make sure that the fluid, even if it's mounted upwards, it needs to be higher than these two holes. Uh the fluid needs to be up to like here. And then it should be fine cuz there's no air going to be getting into those holes. So, that means we can mount it upright somewhere like this. And we can just weld a bit of metal from here to here. And that way we can still unbolt it. So we can bleed it outside the car or lift it up outside the car. And then we can mount it here and we can lift it on and off. And that's going to be our clutch pedal. So we need to start thinking away where we can mount this clutch pedal. We need to think of three different things. One, it actually needs to work. We need to comfortably be able to press it with our foot. Two, we actually need to be able to remove it afterwards. So, we need room above to slide it up and off. And three, it needs to be in a position where we can comfortably get in there with a welder or whatever to actually mount the damn thing. And since I've cut that handlebar in half, that gives me a nice L bracket to mount it to one of the frames on the car. So, we're going to take those two little pieces of handlebar, and we're going to weld them at a 90° angle to each other, which is going to give us that L bracket, which I talked about a minute ago. And that should give us a nice strong way to hold this clutch pedal in the position that we want it.

[00:05:09]Now, we're not going to fully welded it in. We're just going to tack it in a few places so it's strong enough for us to press the clutch, but we can change it if we need to. So, it's welding awful to that little bracket on the car. I'm not sure why, but anyway, it's solid. I'm not going to fully weld it all the way around just in case we have to take it off. Uh, but that is our clutch pedal pretty much sorted. So, now we're going to take it off the back. Hopefully, we can get to them 8 mil bolts. Think about that. take off the back and then we can start running our clutch line to our slave cylinder on the engine.

[00:05:41]In this box from Orthodox, we've got some very important stuff to get it running and driving. First of all, we got some copper brake line. Now, trying to actually find copper brake line is really annoying. Most places online sell steel copper coated lines and they're rubbish. They're not copper at all. So, they're really hard to bend. They're really hard to flare and steel rust. So trying to actually find copper line is really difficult. So you got to watch out for that. So Orthodox do copper line. We also have some motorbike oil as well. Tin W40 Castro oil because for the first time we can put oil in this engine and actually start running it. And we've got a bunch of brake pipe unions as well. Bunch of M10 by1 because we're going to be making our own clutch line for this car. Somehow we're going to be using the motorbike clutch in the van.

[00:06:29]We need to figure that out today. So it's going to be a big job. Now, I just get everything from an autoopot because they just sell everything in one place.

[00:06:35]Like, one shop sells this, but they don't sell that. Another shop will sell this, but they don't sell that. And you find yourself driving all over the place just trying to find what you need. So, I don't even bother looking anymore. Just go straight on Autodoc. Put what I need in. And I actually have my own discount code, which is Lee 5 as well. Uh, and it just saves me so much time and so much money. And that's why you see me using Autodoc in pretty much every video now.

[00:06:55]Now, the biggest downside to Waterdock was that sometimes their deliveries a few years ago used to take up to a week.

[00:07:00]But with their updated factories, I never wait longer than 2 to 3 days. But when I'm saving over £800 buying parts from Autodoc rather than the dealer, it makes absolutely zero sense to go anywhere else. So head over to Autodoc, see how much you can save. And don't forget to use my discount code leaf 5.

[00:07:15]Now, before we start making the clutch line, uh we're going to start getting the throttle cable done cuz it's right here. It's staring at me. Now, my plan is to reuse the original throttle cable and the original throttle pedal and just mount it to the throttle cable which is already on the motorbike. So, we'll show you how we're going to do that. So, this is the throttle pedal already on the pad shell and that comes to here. Now, in a perfect world, we'd put that straight to the bike engine, but it's too long. Now, I could order a universal uh uh universal cable and just make it ourselves, and we can do that, but I don't want to wait. So for now, we're just going to make it work. So this is the cable coming off the motorbike, which comes to here. So if we can join this to that and just make one cable. If we can just join these two together, just make a mount there, then we have a throttle cable, which works. So you can actually buy cable clamps, which will make this a hell of a lot easier. But I don't have one. So we're going to stick to what we do usually. We're going to find stuff around the unit and make it work. So, I'm going to use a nut and a bolt to make this work for the time being. So, first of all, we're going to use a grinder to cut the cable ends off of each side of the cable. Now, these are literally just big lumps of solder.

[00:08:31]So, we could have just soldered them both together, but the way I'm going to do it is going to be a hell of a lot stronger. So, my plan is I'm going to get a bolt and I'm just going to just file a flat edge as we're going to be drilling a hole through it. So, having that flat edge is going to massively help the drill bit stay in one place.

[00:08:46]And as we've got a hole which is just about big enough for both of the cables to go through, we're going to tighten down a nut. Now, that cable is never going anywhere. It doesn't look as clean as a cable connector, but trust me, it is way, way, way stronger. So, it's not the cleanest thing in the world, but it is going to work. And look at the rest of the car. As long as it works, it'll be fine. But right now, this is just a floppy cable, and it's not actually going to pull the throttle open. So, we need to make something similar to what we did here that's actually going to hold that cable in place like this or something like this. Um, so we need to make some kind of bracket so we can bolt this to. So, my plan here is to get a nice thick washer like this which has got the internal diameter over the thread. So, we want to be able to tighten it down on that washer. I want it to be removable. For it to be removable, we're going to just chop a couple of the ends off so we can slide the cable inside of it. And once we confirmed that the washer is the right size, we can just weld it to the frame of the car.

[00:09:43]Now, I've jumped the gun a little bit here. So, this is all good right now.

[00:09:46]But this bend is kind of killing me. I'd rather it be a straight. But since I've clamped that down on them blinds, it's going to be really hard to get them out and back in again cuz all the they've all frayed out. Ideally, I want to heat this up and just pull it straight. But I'm worried that I'm going to do it now.

[00:10:07]If I take these cables off there, I'm never going to get them back through that bar. I know it looks messy, guys, but it's going to work. So, I've done the same thing with the same thickness washer. And I've actually cut a little bit of a of a nut out like this as well.

[00:10:19]And that allows us to tighten this nut down without removing the cable. We can slide it over and tighten it down on that washer. And that's pretty much the thing complete.

[00:10:29]So, does it look amazing? No. But is it working?

[00:10:34]very much. So now when we get a minute, I will get a proper cable block just it looks a little bit better. But for the time being, that is working very well, my friend.

[00:10:47]And because we've got the two knots, we've also still got the adjustment. So if if that's not wide open throttle, we can wind this back in. It's going to give us more throttle on that side. So we've still got adjustment on both sides as well, which is great news, my friend.

[00:10:59]Great news. Okay, so we almost had a problem then, but I might be able to fix it. Now, what I was going to do was I was just going to get rid of this line totally and just use some 38 pipe and put it straight into there, which is what you can do with like usual hydro cylinders, but there's one, well, there's two problems. One, that actually is an M10 at the end of there, so I'm not sure what thread that is. And two, there's no um there's no seat. So that needs to be a banjo bolt cuz in there there's nothing for that copper line to actually sit against. So that needs to be a banjo bolt. So we're going to have to either make our own custom line with a banjo bolt which is going to take longer and going to be expensive or this is the old line. Now in the middle there is a hard pipe here. So what we the theoretically could do is we could use this end standard that end use that end as standard and just lengthen out extend the middle with some copper line. Now we need to make sure that it's the same size pipe. It's got this plastic coating and it's going to be steel. So that's going to be really hard to flare out.

[00:12:04]But in theory all we can need to do is just extend this. So, let's chop this line in half and see if it's the right size pipe for a female brake union to go onto. And then we can just extend it. We can chop it and put a little bit of cot pipe in the middle to the length that we need. Now, when chopping any kind of brake line or clutch line, you want a really smooth cut. So, don't use snips. Don't use a grinder. There's actually special cutters like this which slowly just make a clean, sharp cut through the middle of it. Now, this line has a bunch of like rubber or plastic coating over the top.

[00:12:41]Now, we need to completely get rid of that, otherwise the brake union is never going to slide on top of it. So, I'm just going to use a bit of a razor blade and just take my time cutting all this crap off it. And we're going to use a brake flaring tool. Now, because this is a steel line, it's going to be a hell of a lot harder to flare. So, we're going to have to use a big one in a vise like this. Whereas copper, you can just use easy handheld ones. Now, on the steel line, we're going to do what they call a ball, which is basically a male version of a thread, but in brake line terms.

[00:13:12]And then on the other end, we're going to do a uh a female version, which is a taper in what they call well, they have different names in the brake flaring community, but I call them a ball and a taper. And because this is copper, this is actually really easy to do. And then we can put the male and female brake unions together. And you can see we have our extension or the first half of our extension ready to go back into the car.

[00:13:36]Now, we need to know exactly how long our copper line needs to be. So, we're actually going to install the clutch slave onto the gearbox itself onto the motorbike. Now, doing this, I've noticed I'm really worried. As you can see there, the clutch is right in front of the sprocket, and that is where we're going to be putting our prop shaft adapter. And I'm worried that our prop shaft adapter isn't going to fit with the clutch in this position, but we're going to cross that bridge when we come to it. So, we've got the clutch line. It goes from there up to here. And then all we have to do is join that first part of the copper pipe, which we've already done. We just got to make it long enough. We're not going to run it down the perfect route and make it nice and tidy now. We can do that later on. So, as long as we give ourselves a little bit more slack so we can make this as neat and as tidy as possible later, it's going to be fine. And then if we had to take the copper line off to take it back over to the brake flarer and we're going to just make sure we've got the male fitting on there and we make sure it added a flare. And then we can start tightening up all those unions that we've added in. So all the clutch line is now plumbed in. Hopefully I've got it tight enough. So I think we're going to have to bleed it out the car like this.

[00:14:44]So I think we're going to fill it up with fluid from here until it's really close to the top because don't forget we're going to be running it like this.

[00:14:50]So, the fluid, we kind of going to have to guess where the fluid needs to be.

[00:14:55]But, as long as it's covering both those holes, we're going to be fine. So, let's fill it up with fluid, tighten it up, and let's hopefully start bleeding it and see if we're getting a clutch.

[00:15:04]So, we're going to crack this fully off, like fully off, and we're going to start pumping. And hopefully, we start getting some fluid coming out of here. So, since there's absolutely no fluid in there, I'm just going to take the nipple off.

[00:15:19]That's given it the least resistance to get through to this cylinder. And then we can start filling up the master cylinder with a load of DOT four brake fluid. So luckily I can come and move this over here so I can pump. I'll start seeing fluid coming out. Walk it over here. Walk it like I want to start seeing it going down, but it's not really going down at the minute.

[00:15:43]Feel like it's getting heavier, but it shouldn't be cuz I've still not got any bloody fluid going through it.

[00:15:49]Keep going. Keep pumping. Keep pumping.

[00:15:51]It's definitely getting stiffer. Got fluid. See it?

[00:16:00]Got fluid now. Yes, it's working. On this bit, I can actually bleed it by myself. So can give it a few pumps and then I can hold it down and then I can release the nipple and then tighten the nipple. Give it a few more pumps and I can hold it down.

[00:16:29]Open the nipple.

[00:16:32]Close the nipple.

[00:16:34]A few more pumps. So, we've actually got a clutch pedal there. I can feel it.

[00:16:38]It's quite stiff. So, we're going to top the master cylinder with brake fluid.

[00:16:41]And we're going to install it back together. And then we can put it finally and hopefully for the last time on our little bracket inside the car. Okay. So, we've got a clutch pedal, we've got a working clutch, we've got a working throttle. I think now we should get this car up and running for the first time.

[00:16:57]We've had it running for a few seconds, but there's barely been any oil in it as we've had a leaking starter cover. So, I've got my starter cover back here from Airtech. Uh they've very graciously welded up that big crack from where the bike had been on its side. So, we're going to install the uh the starter cover and then we also got like the starter motor crank in here. And we also need to put in the uh the actual statter, which I don't know why they call it stat. I'm not sure what they call it on motorbikes, but it's basically like the alternator. So, this is it here. So, we need to install this back into the start cover. And we need to install the starter cover on. We need to seal it. We need to make sure we got this in the right place with the start or it's going to make a horrible noise.

[00:17:37]And we can fire it up, put some oil in it, fire it up for the first time, and see if we can get it going through the gears with the clutch pedal and the throttle inside the truck. So, this is basically the alternator on a motorbike engine, and it's just got four bolts into the starter cover here. Now, we actually took this off because Airtech welded up the start cover, which had previously been cracked, and we didn't want to burn any of the terminals inside this thing. Now, this might have a gasket, but the previous owner had just installed it with sealant, and I can't be asked trying to find a gasket anywhere. So, we're just going to tidy both surfaces up with some uh with some Scotchbrite, and we're going to put a nice thin layer of gasket sealant over the static cover, ready to go on. Now you have this little gear and it's basically just float and there's only a little pin that holds it in. And this is the the gear that converts the starter motor movement into the crank movement.

[00:18:29]So this does have to be lined up pretty bang on. Uh and it is quite tricky to get it between the gears and the pin in place. And then once that's in, we can actually install a static cover. Now I forgot how how magnetic this was. So I potentially might have ruined all that sealant, but I think it's okay. So, uh, yeah, you got to line this up pretty bang on, otherwise that magnet is just going to drag it over to the engine. And then there's a bunch of eight mil bolts, uh, threading this into the engine block. And that means after it's installed, we can finally get to starting this thing. Okay, so while we're waiting for the, uh, for that sealant to skim over on the stat cover, we're going to start turning towards one of the worst jobs, and that's going to be the wiring. Now, in the Relant and everything, um, we had the engine pretty much right at the front. So, what that meant is that we could we didn't actually have to extend all the wiring, but as you can see, we need that dash to fit over there. We kind of want it to be somewhat cool, this one, and we want the switches inside. So, this is going to be really annoying because obviously the wiring only comes to here. So, we're going to have to lengthen all of this wiring loom, which is going to be an absolute pain in the ass cuz there's a lot of wires in there. But we might not need all of them. So, we're going to strip down all of this loom and basically just pull out the wires that we need cuz a lot of these are like stuff like headlights and blah blah blah. A lot of [ __ ] that we don't need.

[00:19:56]Maybe I don't think we're ever going to need it. When are we ever going to need headlights in this thing? So, because this time the engine is mounted much further back, we are going to have to extend a lot of the wiring room, especially the key switches, the key, and also the dash. Uh, and I hate doing stuff like this because it's tedious and it's very easy to just break one wire and then the whole thing won't start.

[00:20:16]Oh, was I just predicting the [ __ ] future? So, these are all the wires just for the dash that we're going to have to extend. Now, I do have a load of spare wiring looms and different cars which I've used from engine swaps, but it's still a really [ __ ] job. But, I'm too eager to turn this thing on and hear it.

[00:20:33]Uh, so it's been about 40 minutes for that sealant, so I think it's going to be skinning over by now. So, I think we should top it up with oil and actually get this thing running properly for the first time. Now, motorbikes actually use the same oil for the gearbox as they do for the engine. So, you do have to get motorbike specific oil. And in this case, it's 10W40. In some cases, a lot of motorbikes use like a red power steering ATF sort of fluid, but in this case, it does just look like engine oil. Okay, I can't run it for mega mega mega mega mega long cuz it's got no coolant in it. But that's it's fine. It'll be it'll be good for a few minutes at least so we can get it idling. Um, what am I forgetting? Okay, I'm going to pull out the coil packs just so we can get it cranking and get some oil pressure up. Okay, we're in neutral.

[00:21:27]kill switch.

[00:21:30]Get some oil pressure up first. Okay, oil pressure light has gone out, which means we've got good oil pressure.

[00:21:37]Plug the coils in. Okay, I'm still not getting a fuel pump.

[00:21:47]Why am I not getting a fuel pump? I had this problem last time.

[00:21:54]Why are we not getting fuel?

[00:21:58]So, I'm not sure what the hell has happened. I literally just tried to see why the fuel pump wasn't turning on and now everything is totally dead. Like the keys on and I'm getting absolutely nothing.

[00:22:11]Nothing from anything. The dash isn't lighting on. I thought maybe the battery is dead, but I've jumped the battery and there's nothing there still. It's like I've just got zero power. So, over the course of like 60 seconds, it's almost like one of the main engine fuses has blown, but they haven't cuz I've checked them all. I'm getting nothing anywhere.

[00:22:30]I don't know what the hell has happened cuz I haven't really touched anything.

[00:22:35]Now, what it seems like to me is that the ECU isn't recognizing that the key is actually being turned on, but I'm checking all of the 12 volts coming out the ignition switch, and they're all working. They're all getting 12vt switch and 12 volt live, which means the ignition switch is actually working and it is telling the ECU that the key is in, but nothing is turning on. Okay, I've been looking over the wiring and I found one problem. This switch was on the floor and it says up. Now, that is actually the rollover switch. So, when I'm turning the key now, the fuel pump is turning on. Can you hear that? The fuel pump is turning on, but the dash still isn't turning on. So, it says to me that the ignition's working fine cuz we've got fuel pump, but we can't crank it.

[00:23:25]The kill switch is working. The dash isn't turning on. So, we must have done something when we were chopping this wiring limb apart. This is why sometimes it's better just not [ __ ] touch anything. But, we got fuel. We got fuel.

[00:23:38]The fuel pump is turning on, which means that the ignition bit, the ignition switch is working. The kill switch is working. and uh you know everything in terms of the battery is working. We can't start the car because the dash isn't turning on and it's probably not recognizing the immobilizer because the dash isn't on. So, we need to figure out what the hell is what's gone on. What's happened to this dash? Why is it just randomly turned off? Because it was working and it just randomly turned off.

[00:24:07]What the hell? Okay, progress. I've got it cranking on its own, but I still have no idea why the dash isn't lighting up.

[00:24:13]But progress is actually cranking on the key now. Whether it's going to run, I'm not sure, but we'll just try it. The uh clutch um safety switch was has unplugged itself. So, how I figured that out was I looked down here and I saw that is the clutch uh the clutch safety switch. So, basically the the the bike won't start if it thinks the clutch isn't engaged. So, you got to use the clutch. So, I was like, "Oh, well, that's on the floor. Let me just double check." Cuz obviously all you do is just crimp them together. and they're actually down here. So, you see these two wires here? Uh, that's the clutch switch. So, if you just take them together like that, you're bridging them and you're basically tricking the bike into thinking the clutch is engaged. And somehow these two wires worked their way loose, which is why it wasn't starting on the key. So, let's just try and start it.

[00:25:00]Oh, okay.

[00:25:02]Well, it runs. Why is the dash not lighting up?

[00:25:13]Okay, that's good news. I suppose it runs. But why is the dash not all lighting up? That's so frustrating. I want the dash. Let's see if it revs on the throttle. Will you come and see if Will will you come and see if my crank is moving? I want to see if my clutch and my gears are working.

[00:25:37]Yeah. Go and see if my if my crank is turning. Sit in this gap.

[00:25:43]We're going to go for a start. Are we ready?

[00:25:48]Right. I'm going to engage my clutch.

[00:25:52]Okay. I'm going to go in gear. Are you ready?

[00:25:59]Is it turning? Wait. Are we ready? It should It should turn now.

[00:26:10]I'm going to go into second gear.

[00:26:15]>> Yeah.

[00:26:18]I got a short shift. Are you ready?

[00:26:45]So I believe that is turning. I still I don't know if forward or back is up and down still. I need to That's down. Okay. So that's for and then that's up gears I think.

[00:27:02]Anyway, it's working. We're going to have to fully see when we've got the wheels on. But our clutch is working, our accelerator's working, and it's starting. We need to figure out why the hell the dash ain't working. And then we need to put the dash in up here somewhere. So, take this dash out and put that one in somehow make it work.

[00:27:18]But that's going to be the end of this video. I'm still waiting for my prop shaft adapter. I've been told it was going to be the end of May and now I contacted them MK Sports Cars and then they said, "Oh, now it's going to be mid June." So, we can't actually drive until we get that prop shaft adapter from MK.

[00:27:33]Um, which is really annoying cuz I want to drive it, but I can't do anything. But, we've got a working clutch, we've got a working accelerator, and it runs and drives. So, in the next video, we'll start smashing out the uh the other jobs.

[00:27:47]See you next