cleaning up a mutilated frame

[Muckroot]

Hello all,

I know it's near sacrilege to chop up an old XS frame, but I felt this frame was a good candidate because when I bought it it had already had some of the seat pan chopped off, as well as some of the frame around the swing arm though I can't say for sure what those frame bits did. I'll be taking what's left of the frame plus the hardtail kit to the pro down south who has a proper chopper jig and 40+ years under his belt running his mom and pop custom bike shop. Definitely not going to try and weld it up with my puny welder and my 3+ hours of welding "experience" lol. Anyway, here's how I cleaned up the frame in preparation for a hardtail.

First I started by stripping it down with my pop to have the pro look it over and give me info about where to cut it and what kind of chamfers to put on the tubes to promote the best welds.


After I got the frame inspected and got the go ahead from the chopper man to start hacking away I proceeded forthwith!


After much cutting, grinding, and sanding with the angle grinder I was finally at a point I was happy with.



And of course I was left with a big pile of scraps

Only one thing left to do... take a silly picture!


I was able to get all this accomplished in one day with my pop. Going to wait on taking the frame bits to the shop until I can get the lower engine back together so I can have it bolted into the frame when it gets all jigged up and straightened out. Really excited about this build. Any and all recommendations are welcome. If you'd like to follow this as it goes along my instagram is Muckroute, and it's pretty much just updates on this XS650 project.

 

[gggGary]

Nice start. Full mock up needed to see what bracketry needs to go back on.
Out of an abundance of caution some sort of neck braces are "beyond" being just a good idea.
Correct application of bracing is critical, the simple version is you cannot just solid weld them to the center of the neck and backbone.
Here's some PAIRS by hughs https://www.hughshandbuilt.com/shop/page/3/

 

[Muckroot]

Out of an abundance of caution some sort of neck braces are "beyond" being just a good idea.

Thank you much! but I've already got a set of gussets from TCBros, and although they are a touch smaller than I thought they'd be from the pictures on the website they are all ready for the pro to weld them in. they look to be about the same size as the Hughs "Jane" gussets, though a bit shorter on the top dimension. I'm trusting the pro guy to install them correctly, I figure he's got way more experience than I do in that regard lol.

 

[gggGary]

Yeah still get him a copy of the pic from hughes so he does it right.
I would get them on the side of the down tubes also, but alongside top tube is critical. no weld in front corners leave a gap there.

 

[halfmile]

I made the braces a little smaller to accommodate room for the horn and coil mounts. Don`t know what tank your using but the one I used had a very narrow tunnel so I had to tuck everything in close. I also changed the center bar and top mount for some unknown reason?

 

[5twins]

I think you'll find most agree it's a good idea to retain the top motor mount. These motors shake around a lot and leaving that top mount off will put more strain on the remaining ones. Eventually, they may start breaking on you.