New guy, new build

Sweet but keeping that thing shiny is going to be fun.............

It's not much more maintenance than anything that's painted, once it's polished out a little polish and buff with a soft rag brings it right back.

Nice shaping craft on that fender!

Thanks!

On to the bars. Lucky to have some 7/8 304 SS 11 gage from a previous project. Polishes out almost as bright as chrome and never rusts!



















 
Nice work. What did you use to get the beveling for the bars? Free hand and a disc/belt grinder?

Thanks! Normally I use a hole saw in a tube notching fixture but because the bend needed to made first and the tubing notcher only clamps to straight sections I had to go freehand. I marked the coping line with a sharpy and used the edge of a depressed center grinding wheel to get to the line. And repeated a bunch of times the refine the fit. Then finally bevel back from the coping line to promote full weld penetration (see third frame for the best detail of the bevel)
 
Can anyone recommend aftermarket handle bar switches? I see lots of cheap universal ones on ebay but have doubts about the quality.
 
Can anyone recommend aftermarket handle bar switches? I see lots of cheap universal ones on ebay but have doubts about the quality.

Do you need both sides or ? I replaces the right side with a factory one from Mikes. They also make the headlight switch but it isnt a simple plug and play.
 
I need the left replaced to make it function, the high beam switch is shot. I want the right replaced for appearance, it's corroded and faded.

Here's the start of the tank design. I start with a top and side templates in paper to generate the contour lines for the stations. Then assemble and tape over to approximate the shape on the buck. The tape gets stripped off later to become patterns to cut aluminum sheet to fab the tank. Right now the buck has a flat square end near the tank but it will angle forward from the bottom to the top. The seat will butt with into the tank making a smooth transition to the seat from the tank with enough clearance to avoid interference between the tank and seat.









 
Decided to get the seat and tail designed before going further on the tank. Once you're working in metal it's a lot tougher to change. The lower portion is the profile from tank to seat to tail from the right side, the upper part of the page is a top view of the tail and seat. The apparent scribbles on the lower right are the contour lines at several stations that I need to make a buck for the tail. The one random pull off is the section of the tail, it runs at angle so the detail for it gets pulled 90 degrees off that angle. It looks random on the sheet, I was running out of room on the paper so it landed there.



 
Someone has way to much time :laugh2: it looks good but for me thats just to much work...........I would rather hit the shop and toss a few proto types ;) not sure how many times I have went there broke out the welder and started tacking things and said nope and into the scrap pile............
 
Tail section starting into 3D. This is the tail light I'm integrating into the design. It's for a Honda CBR600. It's an aftermarket LED.





 
Chop chop.

The point of no return. I'm hoping to not have to do a lot to the frame other than add or subtract a few tabs here and there. And that I can do it without stripping it all the way to a bare frame. Here's the start of removing bits to fit the tail. I'm planning on leaving all of what you see here and fitting the tail around and over it.

 
Finally under way. These pieces will get incorporated into the bottom of the tail. The frame will get a thin pad of rubber under these pieces to reduce wear and vibration.

 
Some progress. Two more wing pieces to add to create the rest of the bottom half. At least the top half should only have 3 pieces.

Does anybody happen to know the fully compressed length of the stock rear shocks? I'm a little close on clearance with the bottom of this assembly. I tried to fully compress and measure but I'm not 100% confident I got them fully compressed.

 
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If you plan to use the cafe racer spiritedly, 1" longer shocks don't hurt to have. I also installed an SR500 front end and the combination works really nicely.
 
Start of the top of the tail. First cover the buck with tape and strip it off carefully. The clip it to flatten so it can be transferred to metal. The clips tell me where I need to shrink the metal to make the shape.

 
Progress on fitting the upper and lower halves of the tail. It will lose a bit more bulk around the tail light and along the bottom before it's done.



 
Im not exactly sure about compressed shock height, but the seat pan on my bike is flat across from where you made your cuts on the frame. The rear hoop rakes up 15* and the seat pan remains flat with the bend of the frame.

I have scraped the tire on the seat pan once or twice, but only when hitting hard bumps on the highway. Rear tire is 18x3.5 and I have the preload set to the 2nd hardest setting.

I weigh about 160lbs and have ridden passengers, so theres been some weight on the back and I havent scraped from that..
 
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