Was thinking blacking out my tripples as well as the valve covers, but I really like the way yours looks with the yellow. Coming along very nicely!!

cheers, Walt

 

Did you end up deciding on the yellow or the aqua colors that you were talking about? It was weird, I was really set on teal until about the day before when I was looking at the bike and thought "if this is teal, I may not like it in a year or two..." So I just went with the colors that looked best together that the powdercoater had in stock. Ended up being yellow, which if I remember correctly was your first choice, right?

 

Wow! Great job! I just read through the thread. I like the powder coat job on the frame and swing arm, as well as all the yellow parts. You should be proud of your efforts to this point.

As for the torque wrench...I'd wouldn't use anything other than name brand. When I was teaching we had all Snap-on. But I've got Craftsman (1/2 and 3/8 drive), and as long as you take care of it and turn it down to the lowest setting (but not below) after use, they hold calibration very well. Just remember that with lower torque settings you won't hear or feel a "click". Just go slowly until the handle "breaks", sometimes using just 2 or 3 fingers.

As for "Sex and the City", I'm with you. I tried to watch it once, and I just about gagged before the first commercial break. That was enough for me.

 

lol

 

You are correct, the Yellow scheme was and is my first choice. We all know that yellow is the fastest color. I got on photoshop and have been manipulating a picture of a bike that looks quite a bit like mine should end up. I have changed around the colors of the various parts and have had fun trying different schemes. I tried drawing in flames and will definitely leave that to true artists and painters. One thing that I really liked was having the frame, swingarm, subframe, and the passenger pegs red. It just looked very hot. I doubt that I will go that route since it doesnt fit with my total scheme. I am leaning twards having all those parts powdercoated high gloss black with the tank and plastics some type of house of color yellow of sorts. I am looking at ether black flames with red outlines/highlights or the honda wing in black.

As you can tell, I fell quite a bit behind in my intended schedule. I took a week off to decide if I really wanted to continue with this project or just part out the bike and invest in something newer. I ultimately decided that it wasnt going to be the social project I had hoped, but that I really hate not finishing something I start. I then started adding more and more mods to the list to do while I have the bike disassembled. At this point I have the 1000rr forks, brakes, and rim all ready to go. I have the forks mounted on the 954 tripples with the new allballs bearings changed out on the lower tripple and on the frame. The clearance work on the lower stops has been done. The rear 1000rr wheel is here as well as the sp2 swingarm. Engine mods have been completed for now. I got screwed out of a set of convertibars on ebay, so am now going to probably go with the apex ones. I have found a very active sportbike group in my area and was able to get some leads on a good painter and some quality shops.

Its been fun for me to watch your progress. Looks very impressive.

Cheers

 

Ain't that always the truth... two weeks becomes a month very quickly...

A little bit more fun tonight:



Hopefully gonna sit down with the carbs and have a good talk/cleaning with them tomorrow... gotta try to get enough sleep to stay awake at work...

 

BTW this comment I find really funny.

And, yep, I learned it well... I've stripped bolts before, but trusted the tool (or rather, my setup of the tool) more than my instinct on that one and the repercussions were immediate!

 

Is it just the perspective, or is your left brake line too short?

Can't wait to see the final results!

 

Just perspective I think- I'm sure it's just coming right at the camera b/c the right and left lines have about the same amount of "slack"

got the side covers on... they look way less black in real life... that's what she said...



Too many parts and too little time at this point- was having the opposite problem two weeks ago!

 

Starting with a side story: I broke the throttle sensor switch trying to re-install the carbs and only barely realizing that I did this. So, bummed out, I go to see if I can buy a used one... nope... so maybe order one from Honda...? 100 bucks. Ok, well the junkyard is supposedly open on Saturday so maybe I'll stop by to see what it's all about because I've never been to one...

MOTORCYCLE JUNKYARDS ARE AWESOME!!! there were a bazillion different pieces there and I'm sure most of you had seen one before, but holy jeeze I've never been exposed to so much scrap carnage before. My next project will be to make Optimus Prime because I'm pretty sure all the pieces are there. Anyway, I' walking around with my friend for like an hour and find a semi-truck full of carburetors . I set my coffee down and say to her "guess I'm going in" Not three steps inside I see the VTR air box, carbs and throttle cables all tightly wrapped up and on top, waiting for me to take it home.

All I needed was the $100 piece, ended up paying a little more for everything because they didn't want to part it out. I get home and open up the dust old airbox and inside is a gold mine. Well, for me at least- everything was oem and super clean. My airflow funnel things are broken, I have a K&N too much airflow filter, hoses are all worn out so this discovery of perfect new innards was the silver lining to breaking a throttle sensor.

Anyway,

Got the subframe stripped today and was antsy to see what I had left so threw some stuff on. Man, the proportions change a lot with a tank and tail. I kinda liked it so bare, but also like having a gas tank... And one of my points was to keep the ability to carry a passenger...



Put on some end mirrors- definitely give a good rear view, still trying to decide if I like the width/looks.

 

So I take it that was at Bob's Used on Elwood? One of my favorite places to wander looking for random parts. lol

 

Yep it was bob's! I went there because you had mentioned it awhile back when I was in need of a new frame... the place was overwhelming. It reminded me of an It's Always Sunny episode where Charlie and Frank go dumpster diving and find a bunch of treasure.

 

Side project as I fiddle with the undertail radiator and putting bits and pieces on. The front headlight is still intimidating: I have no idea what I plan on doing there other than I have an HID projector...

But I do have some ideas for the gauges. Took them out of the housing that was uncovered and spread out to fit under the nice stock fairing. Hoping to make a custom housing with the same electronics so I don't have to deal with aftermarket/gauges from different bikes, etc. In my world I'm avoiding work by doing this because thinking about dealing with the electronics... I'm just messing with the housing...

Out:


Measured, and playing with the placement:


Thinking about sticking tweety's gear indicator in there... it would be cool... the only reason not to would be because I already have too much info for a naked bike anyway. Hell, I may do away with the tach...

 

Wow! Are you going to keep the tank and tail section that same color...looks like maroon? That looks great.

As for the bar ends, I've always liked the looks of them. A riding buddy from the '80s and a current riding buddy use bar end mirrors. They like them. I just don't like the idea of taking my eyes that far off the road to check my mirrors. Although yours look like they're high enough where that might not be a problem. My buddy from the '80s had folding mirrors on his '78 CB750F, and he would fold them in when splitting lanes.

 

Now, there is a illogical rationalization if I ever heard one...

It would take you an afternoon (3-4h) hooking up a CBR cluster of your choice and soldering up the cables... And that is with you being very neat and tidy any going sloooow... It'd take me 5 minutes... I highly doubt you can make a casing in less than 10 working hours...

But no matter what, if it looks like the rest of your work, it's going to look nice...

 

Wouldn't be my first, haha!

Waiting for parts, figuring out a bunch of odds and ends with electronics, but got a little bit of hands on stuff done. I had cleaned the rust off of my exhaust and hit it with a light coat of flameproof paint awhile back and finally got around to wrapping it. Used a 50' x 1" black roll and it was about 2 feet short... go figure.





One more item of bu'ness down, less parts on the shelf than on my bike now so really starting to feel like this is gonna happen!

 

I like what your doing with your exhaust.

You might have the right idea going with a street fighter...lol

I got my bike just about completely back together today. Decided to put it back together and dial in all the mods I have done before doing all the cosmetics. Everything went fine until I put the fairing back on. Its going to take quite a bit of juggling to get everything on the right hand handlebar side to fit right. The 1000rr brake master has the line running pretty much right down at the fairing. The stock throttle is going to have to turned....and on and on it goes....lol

By not having a fairing you are definitly saving alot of fitment issues.

Take care and keep up the good work

Cheers

 

Thanks, Walt! I'm going to have less painting to do as well which will be nice. It will sure miss it's balanced, unique lines tho. The more familiar I am with this bike the more fond I am of it's half fairing and well thought out design language.

Created some new issues for myself tho, so don't feel too bad. I've got to figure out a way to mount a cluster gauge and headlight, both of which kinda went with the fairing...heh

You have any pics?

 

50' is unreal.................but you did an incredibly neat, OCD wrap-job. If you add that pic to your resume, you're sure to get that gift-wrapping job at the local department store. I'm sending you my pipes. Nice job on the build!

 

My friend told me he would do it better because he used to wrap hockey sticks or something like that, so I had to prove him wrong! It helped to have two of us- him feeding the wrap through the water bucket and me focusing on getting the tight 1/4 inch overlap.

I think I have my final layout/mount for the gauges... Mounting to the two bolts under the key switch. They're a little close together for comfort and the lever arm on this thing will be a little long, but I have a feeling if I'm careful and rubber mount the whole setup it won't be too bad. I am planning on water jet cutting the top and bottom pieces out of aluminum (white parts) and either machine out of ABS or FDM print the middle plastic piece (teal part)... We'll see how pricing ends up on these.




The internals aren't structurally friendly yet, but everything fits inside and it should fit between my brake/clutch lines.

 

looks pretty wild, except that I use the tach more than the speedo, so you'll need to add it when you make mine. haha

 

I went back and forth on this SO many times! It would be nice (if not necessary) to have a tach when tuning or for analyzing the bike on rides. I'm sure all of the people who like to really get into the performance of their bike out there will be disgusted by my lack of respect towards the tach!

I almost went with the tach instead, but... This is going to be a pure street bike and I have a feeling I may have to pass and inspection or two (still can't find the title to the frame when I bought it) and that would be pretty tough to do w/out a speedometer I also find that I use the mileage gauge that is attached to the speedo for overall miles as well as trip miles and didn't want to part with it. I think the guy that is going to help me synch my carbs has one of those instruments that attaches to the spark plug wires to tell what the RPM's are. Either way, my Shadow doesn't have one so I know there are ways around it!

Haha- actually, temp is most important in my mind b/c of the custom radiator system- I want to keep that part monitored!

I really wanted to try making gauges (it'll probably be the only thing I didn't use for inspiration or outright copy from someone else haha) and like the idea of smaller, more basic ones for the naked look so think that I have as close to that as I can get without upsetting the usefulness of the bike yet. If I find it won't work I'll get some CBR gauges or a Trail Tech or something.

 

yeah, you need the speedo/odo for sure, that's why I said "add it" in lieu of one or the other. Maybe you can put the tach and speedo together and the temp guage in a separate location?

in terms of the naked bike concept, to me it's kinda function over form, asymmetric, not predictable, but makin it look cool as you can.

 

I win! I saw someone mention cutting their gauge faces... didn't take me 30 seconds to realize I could overlap mine... the overlap causes the needles to offset so they don't collide, the new layout actually takes up a little LESS width (I was running close to my brake cables), speedo still reads up to 120mph... Now I can have my cake and eat it too!

It's not asymmetric- I actually tried doing that b/c I agree that the asymmetry looks cooler, but this was the most compact that I could get it. Ok nath, you can rest easy now!

 

that'll work. Depending on the rigidity of the framing material, you may be able to reduce the width from the edge of the circle to the outer edge, and/or move the tach down and outward, the speedo up and outward, and the temp to the right and down.

the overlap looks trick though if that has to be!

 

Actually if you swap them over, with the tach needle not going full circle it's going to be even easier to make it fit...

 

Ok, I hate to say it , but you guys are both on to something here...

It's pretty finniky because I have all of the instruments underneath the faces to deal with too (It's not just as simple as placing the faces wherever I want, there are some physical restrictions)

Anyway, the symmetry was bothering me for some reason the more I thought about it, then Tweety pointed out the big open space on the Tach just waiting to have a gauge overlap it... We are way over 10 hours now, but I am happy with the result! Sent the center out today to get a quote on machining the middle part out of ABS... I think I can waterjet cut the aluminum faceplate and backplate for pretty cheap so not worried there...

 

I had my header wrapped for a while just like your with the darker colored stuff.

The first time just left it bare. It faded quickly and road debris really took a toll on the underside. It didn't last long.

The second time I covered the entire thing with 3 or 4 coats of that high temp ceramic paint (black). It looked sharp and the paint gave it a nice tough shell. It lasted quite a while. Would probably still be there if I didn't manage to scrape it off on a right hander.

My advise...paint it. Then maybe top the whole thing off with high temp silicone spray, if you can find any.

 

+1 Yeah, it would be a travesty to have this beautiful wrap-job erode prematurely.

There are many options for high temp paints and other coatings that may protect and extend the service life of pipe wrap.

For example, this stainless steel paint is good for 1200 degrees:

http://www.cotronics.com/vo/cotr/pdf/6105sp.pdf

 

I've already hit it with exhaust wrap silicon spray- makes it look waaaay dark and nice:

http://www.google.com/products/catal...d=0CCoQ8wIwAg#

Based on your guys' experiences, I'll hit it again in a couple of days after that soaks in a bit! I'll post pics too because they're really dark now