KentMoney
XS650 Addict
Another XS650 sacrificed to the chopper Gods! Muahahhaha!
All joking aside, this thread is to document my first contracted motorcycle build for a local chap here in San Jose, CA. He had found my build here on xs650.com and asked me if I could help him out. After a few meetings and discussions with him I was starting to get a solid grasp on the style he was going for and said, "Let's do this!"
This is what we started out with: A hackjob of a cafe racer. The seat pan was made of two pieces of wood stapled together, there were no brake lights, and I found a rag stuffed into the electrical harness when I did the tear down. Oh yeah, and the battery was fastened underneath the wooden seat with a screw hook and zip ties. Oh lordy!
Here she is when I brought her back to my two-wheeled stable.
I was surprised to find on the ride over to my place that the engine seemed to be pulling pretty damn well, wasn't leaking oil, or making funky noises. Although she didn't look respectable, her heart was in a good place. Because of this, I recommended that we skip touching the engine for now and see what a good tuning could do. The primary mission here was to make a stylish looking bike for cruising, not a second-splitting-racer.
And so the tear down begins.
Here you can see the rag I found stuffed in the gusset in between the electrical.
I started hacking at the neck area so that I could get the new Wassel-style tank on ASAP. Johann, the owner of the bike, had already bought a handful of critical, style-dictating parts: the round Wassel tank, a brat kit with Burly shocks, a lowering kit for the forks, and some other parts. So, you can imagine a low, lean-but-curvaceous machine brewing.
Began to really clean up the neck area. We opted to remove all the stock gussets in favor of the open, airy feel it would give. Anyone have any objections to the structural integrity of this choice? We plan on keeping the cross bar...I did a quick spray with black to keep it from getting rusty after I was done grinding/cleaning. Johann wanted to run the tank as low, and as far up as possible on the backbone of the frame.
Some more hacking to the passenger peg mounts and center mounts
Starting to accumulate a good amount of hacked vestiges.
All joking aside, this thread is to document my first contracted motorcycle build for a local chap here in San Jose, CA. He had found my build here on xs650.com and asked me if I could help him out. After a few meetings and discussions with him I was starting to get a solid grasp on the style he was going for and said, "Let's do this!"
This is what we started out with: A hackjob of a cafe racer. The seat pan was made of two pieces of wood stapled together, there were no brake lights, and I found a rag stuffed into the electrical harness when I did the tear down. Oh yeah, and the battery was fastened underneath the wooden seat with a screw hook and zip ties. Oh lordy!
Here she is when I brought her back to my two-wheeled stable.
I was surprised to find on the ride over to my place that the engine seemed to be pulling pretty damn well, wasn't leaking oil, or making funky noises. Although she didn't look respectable, her heart was in a good place. Because of this, I recommended that we skip touching the engine for now and see what a good tuning could do. The primary mission here was to make a stylish looking bike for cruising, not a second-splitting-racer.
And so the tear down begins.
Here you can see the rag I found stuffed in the gusset in between the electrical.
I started hacking at the neck area so that I could get the new Wassel-style tank on ASAP. Johann, the owner of the bike, had already bought a handful of critical, style-dictating parts: the round Wassel tank, a brat kit with Burly shocks, a lowering kit for the forks, and some other parts. So, you can imagine a low, lean-but-curvaceous machine brewing.
Began to really clean up the neck area. We opted to remove all the stock gussets in favor of the open, airy feel it would give. Anyone have any objections to the structural integrity of this choice? We plan on keeping the cross bar...I did a quick spray with black to keep it from getting rusty after I was done grinding/cleaning. Johann wanted to run the tank as low, and as far up as possible on the backbone of the frame.
Some more hacking to the passenger peg mounts and center mounts
Starting to accumulate a good amount of hacked vestiges.