The father/son special

[tbird]

Ok, so I am finally starting this thread. First I would like to thank all you for the info and entertainment that is provided on this site. I could not have and probably would not have taken this endeavor on had it not been for this site. I have never built a bike before, but have a small background in hot rods and was a mechanic for several years. Been trolling this site for over a year now, finally made a purchase last Oct and have been building it with my dad since. Had a little delay from Ardcore(which is not unheard of) and been putting in weekends when I can. My goal was to have it running I the spring(didn't happen), now I just want to ride the damn thing. I'll put pics up when I can...
this is what i started with, it was would start but was dumping fuel out of the left carb

 

[gggGary]

Waiting for more............

 

[tbird]

ok, so after spending to money on jets, needles and needle jets from Mikes(I will be running open exh/intake) and rebuild kits to fix the gas pouring out of the carb problem; i still had a running problem. I then chased my tail for quite some time, finally figured out it was a defective petcock. Once i bypassed that i found that the PO had been trying to "tune" around the petcock by screwing the idle screw all the way in
sorry no pics of me pulling my hair out

 

[tbird]

if you are reading this that means you clicked bobber and you read that I had ordered a hardtail from Ardcore. Yes, we are hardtailing this and I already can hear Fredintoon grumbling about it that being said lets get to cuttin while waiting for the hardtail to arrive we started with removing the stock neck gussets

 

[tbird]

had some rattle can black lyin around

 

[tbird]

as you can prob tell this is truly a backyard build, in my parents backyard. My dads el camino is in the garage in pieces and this is where the welder and majority of tools are. This is also a budget build, trying to do as much in house as we can. I liked the look of HHB speedster headers, but the price of a builders kit better
took the front end off to make it easier to mock up the headers

 

[tbird]

here you can see the peanut tank I picked up off of ebay and just a hint of the header sticking out

 

[tbird]

Here is the exhaust from the front and side, pretty happy with the shape

 

[tbird]

Wow, I haven't updated this in how long

 

[tbird]

ok, so will try and do a photo dump to catch up.

after some arguing w/ ardcore this finally arrived

so naturally the tear down began..

then this happened

trial fitting of the hardtail

had some pegs off of my dirt bike

seat pan

exhaust back from the coater, mocking up fitment w/ the front end lowered to approximate height. its close, but doesn't rub

 

[tbird]

Ok, so from the beginning I had a rough idea of what I wanted to do w/ the seat. I wasn't really digging the hairpin or barrel springs. I was looking at the airbag setups and the ones w/ the mountain bike shock. I was leaning toward the MB shock, just couldn't find the right shock set up for my budget. I was kicking around another idea, which is what I went with, I wanted clean and simple and think it looks good. You can also see my rear master set up, it will have a hard line plumbed to the rear caliper.

 

[TwoManyXS1Bs]

A sliding leaf spring!
Novel, first time I've seen that on a bike.

 

[tbird]

thank you, I was hoping to be unique in that regard, spoiler alert-it actually works(quite well)

also, not shown in pics, we added a "rail" on either side of the eye of the spring so it will not slide side to side

 

[tbird]

So next we started working on mounting the rear fender and tail light/lic plate mount. I scored the fender from Hugh on one of his "garage sales" on the IG.

also got the headlight mounted

 

[tbird]

not the best shot, but here is the overall stance

 

[tbird]

So at this point it was tear down time. We blew it apart to paint the frame/motor. No pics of that process. Here is the frame painted w/ motor installed.

Wheels on and hiding from the rain

 

[tbird]

Originally I was going to run the EX500 carbs(which i had already purchased), but i didnt have enough clearance w/ the rear down tube. Sooo, I was forced to go a different route. After a lot of reading on here, I went with VM37's from Hoos Racing. I was then stuck w/ an intake manifold problem. Google and Ebay to the rescue. Found this intake from joe-wiseguy on the fleabay

bad pic, but installed

 

[tbird]

I had high hopes of covering the seat ourselves, my dad had other ideas and we had it done professionally. I really happy w/ how it turned out.. You can also see the velocity stacks I am running

 

[Jim]

Lookin' good.
I've a minor complaint.... put bigger pics up for us old guys.

 

[tbird]

Lookin' good.
I've a minor complaint.... put bigger pics up for us old guys.

sorry about that, lemme see what i can do. I'll put a couple up, let me know if there is a specific one that you want to see that i dont post