Back in the mists of time (the nineteen sixties anyway) there was a young apprentice bike mechanic who wanted to build his own machine. American choppers were in all the magazines, He wanted one! However, as anyone who has been an apprentice knows, the pay is crap and the' hours long. After a few years things started to look better but then the girlfriend became his Wife, the mortgage consumed the funds and the house took up all the spare time. It took forty-odd years (some of them very odd!) for the lad to find the resources to get the project started.
There is a saying in the Army, 'Time spent on reconnaissance is seldom wasted' so it was about a year before starting on the metalwork that I began planning something. After much deliberation I decided to go along with my original idea and build a bike in the style of a sixties chopper, maybe.
Apart from the actual shape of the thing, much of the visual impact is the paint job, for me it has to be flames! Whilst I wanted an older style of bike I didn't want to live in the past so I decided on a modern metallic/metal flake finish in two shades of blue, the only real throwback I decided to go for was a rigid frame.
Most of the bikes being built today are big and fat with massive engines. Being a contrary so and so I am going the other way, small narrow thing with an 883 cc Sportster donk. Let's face it, when I was a nipper not many people could afford new parts so bikes were based on secondhand bits from cheap (and therefore often small) machinery. Nowadays I'm just plain tightfisted! Furthermore, I didn't want it to be too radical, I need reasonable handling as I intend to use it as everyday transport, and also I wanted to utilize as many standard parts as possible.
I decided to go for a slightly lower frame, 2" higher at the steering head with 2" of stretch and 40 degrees of rake (about 10 degrees over stock), and 6" longer fork legs to level things up.
About halfway through the planning I was chatting to one of our lady members and she said her Sportster custom was up for sale, (she is now cruisin' round on a Fatboy) a deal was done, the donor bike had arrived!, all it needed to start the build was a frame.
Sometimes when you are looking for an item it's a needle in a haystack job, but the variety of motorcycle frames on offer is amazing. There are literally hundreds of different styles on the market, with as many different prices too! After spending a small fortune on bike magazines and then a few hours on the internet thingy, I found a chap in England who builds frames to order and at a reasonable price.
A little investigation revealed that getting the frame shipped over from the UK was much the same price as collecting it myself (one of those special deals with a well known shipping company) so I was organizing an overnighter when the missus says, "why not make it a few days so I can get some shopping done?" What a good idea!! !)
While waiting for the frame to be made I got started dismantling the donor bike.
When taking anything apart with the intention of putting it back together it is vital that all the bits are marked or labeled, so apart from the obvious things, (the fuel tank is fairly recognizable!), get a packet of polythene bags and stick all the nuts and bolts in them and write on the bag what they are for. The same goes for the electrickery, label all the plugs and sockets before pulling them apart. It is also worth cleaning the bits before putting them into storage as it saves a lot of time during the rebuild.
The day we got home with the frame, the first thing I did was to check for rust. Yes] know it was freshly made, and the bare metal is coated with machine oil, but around the welds the oil had burnt off, so clean the dry patches and wipe over with an oily rag. Now the real work begins the dry build.
First, insert engine. Fortunately, the guy who had built the frame had done a good job and all of the bolts around the crankcase and gearbox slipped in, with just a little filing of the top bolt holes needed to get those to fit. Next up were the forks and wheels. After this is done it is a good idea to lower the bike onto the ground to see how it sits. It was a good job we did this early on because it did not look like an old style chopper! It was a very low, low rider. Invoke Plan B. Ditch the ape hangars and install short, flat drag bars. There was a choice of rear mudguards, as the previous owner had changed the stock round one for a bobtail. I chose to use the latter because it made the machine look even lower! After adding the front mudguard and tank and a lump of foam to represent the seat we had a bike to look at.
It was around this time that the first real problem occurred. The new frame is significantly wider than the old one and this meant that the front silencer was in contact with the lower frame tube. Solution: cut the pipe across the nearly vertical straight bit, rotate to the required angle and weld.
As I was using the original wiring harness a space had to be found for all of the plugs and the indicator unit etc, and the battery needed to be fitted nearby to avoid chopping the wiring about too much. After much mucking about (and a teeny bit of cursing) it was decided to stuff the electrics under the seat, with the battery (in a shiny new, one off, and custom box) on the lower frame tubes just in front of the rear wheel. Of course this required the making of a shiny new, one off, custom splash guard to protect it from the wet.
I said at the beginning that I wanted to use as many standard parts as possible, but the bike looked so small at this point the old indicators seemed about the size of coffee mugs! Also I didn't want them hanging from the handlebars so I bought a much smaller set, and this meant, yes, some shiny new, one off. .. ... .. The rear number plate bracket is a molded plastic unit and the rear indicators are now peeping out either side of the number plate. For the front ones I made a fitting to mount them above the headlight. The next thing on the list was the seat, fortunately I know someone, an upholsterer by trade who was able to produce a very good pad and cover on the base I knocked up.
After getting the whole thing assembled we then proceeded to take it all apart. At this point another complication reared its ugly head; to get the battery out of the box required removing the rear mudguard, the splashguard and undoing the battery box as well, with the battery in it! So the moral of this story, make sure, as far as possible that some parts can be removed/fitted or worked on without dismantling half the bike.
Talking of electrics, one advantage of using the standard wiring harness was that when we switched on, everything worked first time! While mucking about with the wiring I decided to move the ignition switch from its rather exposed position up by the steering head to a position below the electrics panel on the left side. This also helped to clean up the front of the machine a bit as the coil and horn are already there. All that was needed was to slit the heatproof sleeve covering the wires, unwind the required amount of cable and bind the sleeve back together with heatproof tape.
cleaner and mounting bracket, both of which came with a length of hose for the cylinder head breather. Only one was needed and the spare was the correct diameter and plenty long enough.
All told it took about four months of spare time, about 120 hours work, to put the whole thing together. It was not a particularly difficult thing to do, we had to modify the plan a bit as we went along and there were a few headaches. Nevertheless the effort was definitely worth while. Anybody can do it. Apart from the basic tools, all that is needed is patience, space and the workshop manual.
....John
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The paint job. I knew exactly what I wanted but translating it into a design that the painter could follow took me several hours with the computer. It was worth it! Whilst the chap had to use a bit of artistic license around the curved bits it ended up nearly perfectly matched to the drawings.
To protect the paintwork during assembly I bought a couple of lengths of that molded pipe insulation stuff to cover the frame tubes along with some bubble wrap, it's amazing how many times one knocks the padding when using tools. When trying to insert the engine we realized how thick the paint actually was, it made the holes small enough that we could not get the bolts in.
In my experience the best thing for removing the paint from the holes is to use one of those miniature model makers drills with a very small grinding stone. At this time it is also a good idea to expose the metal wherever any electrical earth wire is to be connected.
Due to the fact that the new oil tank is further back than the old one the feed hose was too short. Fortunately I had purchased a fancy air
