Getting there

Alright, time for another update. Been one busy bee working on the bike. Here goes...

Photo above shows the Headlight/Blinker bracket I made. In my last post yo could see the bits and pieces un-welded.

Same thing just from a different angle and closer up.

This is the Rectifier/Regulator and how I chose to mount it to the seat support. Was really the only location on the bike I could find that I liked and didn't look like it was just slapped on wherever I could find room.

Looking at the Rectifier/Regulator from the side and below.

The old wiring harness was a mess and didn't fit the bike after all the modifications I made. So I decided to make this SIMPLIFIED wiring harness. Good joke huh ;-) It's actually not that bad when you take it wire by wire. Easy to get lost if you're not paying attention though. It's times like this when I wished I had multiple colors of wire. Instead I'm going to have to find some labels that wont fall off.

That's it for now.

Hello again!!!

Alright, so yeah it's been a while. Sorry. Been a lot going down between family stuff, work stuff, winter storms, and a car accident. No injuries...besides my pride and my poor truck. Here's a photo of her weather the storm. She looks so sad and there's nothing I can do. Still feel pretty damn shitty about the whole thing.

But anyways...onto the real purpose of this blog. Posts about the happenings in my little shop while working on my bike. Here's the brief....

Moved all (well most) of my tools down to the basement. Couldn't stand sub-zero temperatures in the garage anymore. Down here it's a steady 50-60 degrees. Plenty warm for working with a sweatshirt on. Good thing in the summer too as it will stay nice and cool.

Got myself a larger compressor from home depot. My dad came up one day and helped me haul it home from the store, haul it into the basement, mount it to the floor, wire it up, and plumb it. Only took a couple trips back and forth to the store to get it all figure out. Working like a champ so far. I can now actually run my air tools. Air tools are so gosh darn nice when doing metal work.

The steering stop on the bike was cracking off the frame and getting twisted. Nothing that can't be solved with the trusty TIG welder. Here it is all welded up and fixed.

 No idea if I posted this already. Lengthened the kick stand back to a stock length. For some reason the previous owner shortened the damn thing. Bike would have fallen over if it was that short. While I was at it I installed a custom foot for it too. Hopefully the bike wont sink into the pavement like stock 650's do with their damn small ass kick stand feet.

 Finished up the forward control linkages. Here's a shot of the shifter control...

 Here's the shot of the rear break control. You can also see the new master cylinder installed as well. This master cylinder is off of a 2004-2005 Kawasaki ZX10 or ZX10R Ninja. Hoping it works out. I might have to do something more about the direct linkage. Worried that engine and road vibrations might shake the linkage bolt loose. If it does then the linkage arm from the control and pushrod of the master cylinder can get out line and wont work. We'll see...

 Close up shot of the rear front stay welded to the swing arm. That was a fun little adventure.

 Shot of the rear master cylinder reservoir mounted. This one was fun too. Almost melted the damn thing and caused a fire. Good note for anyone welding near plastic/rubber/synthetics...DON'T DO IT!!!

 Close up shot of the electronics box mounts underneath the rear swing arm. No box mounted due to the fact it's sitting in my computer room being thoroughly neglected. Not having too much fun working out how all the electronics will fit.

 Here's the current state of my custom front blinker mount. Decided to do a little modification from what I posted SOMEWHERE earlier in this blog. You'll see in a little while what I'm doing. Hard to explain and MUCH easier to just post a finished photo.

Well that's all for now. I'm going to go down some advil now for the whiplash from the accident. Hopefully the house doesn't blow away during the storm. I am quite impressed by the fact that my yard is still practically bare from all the damn wind. However, there is a 4 foot snow drift in front of my door. That's going to be fun to shovel through when the storm is over.

Till next time....

New Welder

Wow it's been a while since I've posted. Well here's what's happened since the last one. Not much I'm afraid. Got a new welder...TA DAAA!!!!

It's an Everlast Power Tig 200DX and here's what the control panel looks like close up. Lots of knobs and switches to play with means lots of fun to be had.

Here's a photo of the insanely huge torch that it comes with. This will be the first thing that gets upgraded on the welder. The bank has to recuperate first though.

Here's my first project. I cut up and sand blasted the previous owners TC Brothers Battery box to make it work for my electronics enclosure. After all the cutting I obviously had to weld it all back up. Here's the base of the box all welded up.

Here's a photo of the sheet of steel I used to make the top. It's all cut up and ready to be folded up.

Sheet of steel all folded up via the use of a BFH and a block of wood.

Finish shot of the box with lid.

More to come at a much later day. Have vacation coming up as well as another week long work trip. Probably get back into the garage just in time to loose feeling in my fingers due to the temperature.

It's been too long

Alright, so it's been a while. Sorry about that. But with work, family vacation, etc. etc. it's been hard getting into the garage to get some work done. Regardless here is a brief update on what I've been doing with the bike.

Fired up the old propane fuel forge for some iron work. Was probably not the best of ideas on a 90 degree day but it had to be done.

Here's the only photo I took after forging was done. Was just too damn hot and sweaty to take any more. Bent, tapered, shaped, and drilled the rear fender stays on the swing arm.

After I got a drink of water and cooled down I fabricated up a quick fender stay for the third anchor point to make it good and solid. As it turns out I'm going to have to shape the fender a little bit in order to adjust that downward angle of the rear blinkers in the photo above. Have as of yet to accomplish this.

Here are a couple photos of the first attempt at a gauge cluster mount for the speedo and tach.

Yeah, it ended up having to mount the gauges crooked. Was going to deal with until I came up with a better idea. Turns out my Dad came up with a better idea sooner than I could. Hence why these are photos of the FIRST gauge cluster mount.

First attempt at front blinker mounts. Have since come up with a better idea. Again by good ole Dad.

Nasty oil covered failing 30+ year old rear shocks.

New cheepies but I figured they are probably better than the stockers.

After all that work I found out my clutch was stuck and the rear fender hit the seat spring mounting bar. Had to take the engine out of the frame and do a ton of cutting to get the steel out. Bummer. Three steps forward and two back. Live and learn I guess.

So here's how I came up with the new front blinker mount. Take a 3/8"-16 bolt....

Mount it in the drill press and drill out the middle, cut the head off, cut threads and shank to length...

Insert into a 1/2" O.D. hollow tube from the Depot....

Blinkers thread onto the bolts. The hollow bolts allow the wire of the blinker to pass through into the tube. The bolts will be welded into the tube with plug welds when I've finally decided on size, spacing, and location of the light bar.

Rough idea of how the blinker bar looks in relation to the front end. Location yet to be determined.

New hard mounting of the seat to the seat rails.

I redid the swing arm mounting of the fender stays to look and fit better.

New gauge cluster mount. Fabricated out of 3/16" plate. Single solid piece cut and shaped with hand tools. That took nearly an entire day. Not very fun to do by hand in the middle of the summer in a garage without AC.

Front view of the gauges. Much better now that they are straight.

Re-made the headlight mount to mount the light higher in the trees.

Got a different rear master cylinder. Details on how and where this is mounting to come in the future.

Hand made and stitched in Dexter Maine black leather tool bag for $40. Was blown away to find this while on family vaca. Couldn't pass this bad boy up.

Motor removed from the frame and put on the bench for service.

Got the side cover off to get access to the clutch. Plates were nice and stuck together but otherwise appear to be in good working order. Just need to clean out all the oil sludge, redo the gaskets, nice oil change, clean up all the chain/road sludge on the other side and get her put all back together.

Well that's the long/short version of whats been going on with the bike build. I'll keep ya'll posted.

The dreaded electronics

Most people dread the "Electronics" section of a bike project. I'm a bit odd in this regard. It's been one of my favorite sections. The reason for this is because I enjoy electronics. For christ sakes, I build an under water ROV for my senior project in college. Yes, I'm a geek. No need for you to point it out. I'm well aware ;-)

 My "work bench" at the start of wiring everything up.

 I got so into making everything that I forgot to take time to eat, let along take pictures. Here's the final result. Small capacitor bank to place of the battery. It's a total of 60mF. Black box is the super secret relay used for super secret things. If I told you what's it for I'd have to kill you. A main fuse and then all the accessory fuses. The other bit of wiring there between the relay and fuses is the 555 timer I used to build a flasher relay to work no matter if the flashers are LED or normal bulb operation. Like I said...geek.

Here's the start of the final enclosure of the electronics above. A piece of straight through 3" exhaust pipe on the right. On the left is a 3" inner diameter exhaust pipe coupler.

 Cut 1" off each end of the coupler and this is the result.

 Now take a piece of 14 gauge sheet metal and use the grinder for over an hour and you'll find there were two 3" flat disks inside that sheet. Neat trick huh?

Those metal disks will then be welded to the 1" sections cut off of the coupler. You see what I did there? I made custom end caps for under $6. More to come later. But for now I must consume pizza and beer!!!