pushing my luck

[yantosh]

If your reading this I may have got away with it,  The powerplant, while not new, isn't proper old, but I'm hoping the build it's self ticks some old skool boxes 

Yes I make use of a CNC mill for some components, but they're all designed and made by me, but the bike was built by me , in a 12x8 garden shed  

It is of course already finished and on the road, so this will be a what I did rather than what I'm doing....... trust me, you don't want to see what i'm building just now 

 

so without further ado

 

the chosen powerplant, still wrapped in an unacceptable 21st century guise 

 

 

[yantosh]

so quickly moving on, let me hopefully make it a little more palatable

 

It was at this point I did think to myself "WTF am i doing, that bike was mot'd ,run, sounded great.... a little work would have made it look pretty good....." 

 

[yantosh]

before starting this i made a JD style bender, a frame jig and a swingarm jig , 

 

(apologies if this thread seems a bit disjointed and lacks continuity, it's been a while. I have a build thread else where, but copying that seems a bit lazy, )

 

[yantosh]

original frame was set up in the jig and the engine secured, letting me take it off and put it into storage until such times as the build was complete, I then bent up some flexi plumbing pipe, giving myself half an idea of what it would eventually look like 

[yantosh]

with that done it was time to make the rear mounts , I started of with a temporary set, no point going all in if they're going to be no use . The tube there is a bit heavy, but it's what I had and it was my first frame, later frames have been built from lighter stuff. Knocked up a headstock while I was at it 

[yantosh]

rear frame plates next, had to find a style that didn't look like any of the existing big tube frames.... ended up with something that, when viewed in isolation, bears a passing resemblance to a seahorse. Again I made an initial temporary set, firstly from card, then MDF , I like the through holes, they were kept 

[yantosh]

Decided to put the swingarm pivot in inserts, let me move it I need to, chances of that happening are slim.... but still 

Rear engine mounts were good, so proper ones made up, used the little adjusters from the stock frame, seemed like a nice touch .  The lower left hand side has a row of holes to mount a side stand to. 

Started on a top shock mount design too, the adjustability in that is more likely to be used (hasn't been yet tho) 

[yantosh]

remake the MDF seahorse's in loominum and assemble them with the proper engine mounts, tubes cut to length etc. Had to notch one of the beaks or i'd never be able to get the top rear engine bolt in 

cut out a paper template 1:1 scale of the top shock mount , make sure it matches up with the jig 

[yantosh]

just noticed in the bottom pic, that lump sticking out the back is an exhaust hanger point 

[yantosh]

paper template lines up, knock up a polycarb version.... it fits too 

make up the shock mount fork next, the nut will tighten with a socket, as they do, then be locked in place with grub screws through the tapped holes (I take no credit for the threads, a young colleague is good enough to help out there)  

[yantosh]

Rest of the top mount next, and a mount for the lower linkage. The donor bike had a 10mm spacer at the shock mount, so I done the same, to be honest it'd prob be better without it as its a bit twitchy (yes I could remove it, but i like how the tail sits) 

top mount looked a bit bland, big expanse of flat aluminium, so I popped a pocket in it and added a bit of engraving, once built up it's not easily seen, but I know it's there, and that's enough for me 

[yantosh]

rear bit pretty much machined up, time to step away from CAD, cnc mills etc , time to start bending tubes . This was quite the learning experience, never having made a frame before.I can highly highly recommend the tube mitre program on Tony Foale's website, I've used it plenty on subframes 

As you can see, I was planning on using the airbox (I didn't) , so the frame is pretty wide to clear it 

[yantosh]

Before going any further I welded up as much of the rear section as possible in the jig and popped it out to finish it off. While I was at it I kinda polished the tubes i'd bent up, I recognise the diff between polished and shiny, this is 100% just shiny, I doff my cap to guys and girls  who do proper polishing, it is a hoor of a job 

[yantosh]

with that lot tacked together I was able to start on the rest of the tubes, the ones from the bottom of the headstock especially took a fair bit of fitting 

 

[yantosh]

the engine mounts on the side of the block are quite low, running the tubes low enough to catch them would have completely ruined the lines, an alternative had to be found . 

I made up a pair of weld on brackets,  I wasn't overly enamoured with them at the time, they were left unpolished so as to not draw attention to them self ..... after a couple of years they've grown on me 

[Fazz711]

Looking very nice so far. 

Nice craftmenship. 

Looking forward to see how it looks when finished. 

 

[yantosh]

ohh, i see another mount in that picture ,  a right through the frame job , obviously from the pictures that was a good few steps ago, but l'm pretty sure I opened up the holes to fit bigger weld in bungs, judging by the pic of the end of the tube with the welded in threaded insert . The thread caps are in the other pic 

 

[yantosh]

Engine oot.. the frame had a bundle of bracing to the jig added and it was finished welded, the bracing plates up at the headstock were mocked up in card and then replaced with loomynum 

 

We now have a frame 

[clivegto]

Very cool 

[yantosh]

I say we have a frame, the above pics still need a shit ton of welding , you'll just need to take my word for it that it got welded 

 

with that done it was time for yokes ( not triples.... ) I wanted something that looked cool and interesting.... adjustable offset, that's cool... prob never be adjusted to be fair, but hey. 

 

I could dig out pics of half machined yokes, but lets be honest, we seen it all before , I did engrave the bottom one, just to add a bit of something , the riser block was kept nice and svelte, i'm not a fan of huge chunky risers 

 

 

[yantosh]

braking system, the stock calipers are fine, it had a Brembo master cylinder.... or did it...... I have a sneaky suspicion it was more Blembo , but why settle for fine ? 

I picked up a set of monoblock calipers from a Hondy, not the newest ones ( i'm not made of money) but new enough to be good and old enough to be affordable, these needed longer bolts, and Ti is cheaper than stock... be rude not to 

I had a set of master cylinder / clutch perch from a ZX10r, I've used them before, i like them, I even went as far as to buy a set of shorty levers ..... but then RB got in my head ( some of you know him) "I need some quality parts to go with my frame...... so I now have Accossato  items, they are nice , there are further additions to the braking system to come... but that's for a later day 

[yantosh]

time to throw together whats been done thus far , see if i'm on the right track or making a dogs dinner 

 

the stock arm has to go, but I have to admit I did feel a bit pleased with myself at this stage 

 

[yantosh]

since we're talking about arms, suppose we better set about it 

adjuster blocks with tangs on them to keep them captive and mounts for the swingarm hangers 

the ends have inserts for the adjuster bolts, and were machined to slot inside the tubes, one of the tubes needed machining as a full 2 tubes was too thick 

 

[yantosh]

the stock arm was set up in the jig, mounts made up to align the shock mount, pivot tube machined up and some tube bent. 

you can see on the end of the cross piece where one of the tubes had to be skimmed, that was a bit more of a fucker to do than I expected, the little bit wanted to pop out of the vice once the tube was split and the long ones were interesting to clamp.... anyone who machines metal will have had those jobs where it's a sigh of relief when it finishes without disaster ... or is it just me ?

[Dezza]

Ace What's an MDF seahorse?