That's it.

That's it. That's it for the photo's I made of the Virago last Tuesday, but that's also it for the Virago build. It's finished. We had to look it up, but we bought the Virago at the end of 2008 and now it's finished. It was the second build Vincent and I did together and we're both very happy with the result.

When we set out, we wanted a more radical bike that had a better finish than our first bike and would be more thought out. (For instance: To remove the saddle of the cx500 chopper, our first build, you had to disassemble about half the bike). The photo's won't show you that it is better thought out, but believe me, it is. I'm pretty sure the photo's do show that the bike is more radical. We were never sure the carb would work, but it does. So do the exhausts. Raking it did not make the handling dangerous and hardtailing it did not make it uncomfortable. It amazes me every time we start it. Now on to the next build!!

The bike as we bought it. Bikes don't get much uglier than that!

2 minutes after we started on it :)

Starting on the inlet manifold

We made the inlet manifold out of old car exhausts that we got for free out of the waste bin of the local Kwik Fit store

We used the carburetor of a classic car (Opel Kadet B)

Construction of the side fairing. We used material we got at the local old iron dump. The problem with that is that it's not always the most suitable. The metal plate we used here is about 3mm thick and MAN was it hard to get it into the right shape. The spring under the seat also came from the same place. We later replaced it with the leave springs of an MG-B classic car that we got for free too.

Making the exhausts was on of the most fun things we did on this build

With the Virago being a Virago, the starter gave us quite a bit of trouble.

We made the rear light entirely ourself. We shaped the alu on the lathe and soldered every LED. The latter was a bit of a pita and we had to do it again because someone (not me ;p) blew them up at the first try.

We really like the result!! 

The electrics were a mess, so we did it all over again, from scratch.


The very first test ride. It actually all works!

Welding......

Tinkering

More welding.... (glad we replaced that welder half way through the build, it was pretty crappy) 

The forward controls are home made too.

One of the first test rides. Always exciting!

The end result exceeds what we thought we could ever do