Very cool W650 custom

I've posted a link to Lars' blog, Brauchi's bikes, a while ago, but his W650 is now as good as finished. A great bike combined with some photography talent results in this:

Great work Lars!

Check out more of this bike and some great photography on his blog.

More photo's from the Amsterdam trip

Ton's Kawa/Amsterdam trip: KZ 750 street tracker

Last night I took the BMW to go to Amsterdam for some photo's. In Amsterdam I met up with Michal (fotoduda), a friend of his (he promised she would have long legs and believe me, they were long!) and Ton. Ton has build a very, very nice Kawa you might have seen on this site before. He'll readily admit that it is a bit of a Wrenchmonkeys copy, but that doesn't make the bike any less beautiful. Even though we got kicked out of the building we were taking the photo's in after 20 minutes already, we still had a great time. Hopefully we'll do this again soon with more bikes!

Amsterdam

Took the CB to Amsterdam last week. I just love that city..... Anyway, Zoran knew a nice old wharf, so we took our bikes there to see if it's a nice place fot photo's. It is, so I'll have to go back there, not that you'll here me complaining about that....

Just above the seat you can see Amsterdam central station

Zoran has done a few minor things on his KZ like heat wrapping the exhaust and painting some parts. Looks the business!!!

Not that I have anything to complaim about

Some great graffiti there!! Someone was really quick to respond to the EHEC bacteria

On the way back I took a little detour via the old city center. Great place. Didn't take my time to take decent photo's though.

Today was NOT a good day.

The start of the day was excellent. Sunny, warm and we had a fun ride planned. Zoran was coming over to pick up his Kawa and he brought a few friends, one of the Lennard from the Bubblevisor blog and one of them Michal, the guy behind this excellent site: site

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, this could go wrong:

Zoran got a nail in his tire. 'Repairing' it took som much time I had to take off straught after, because I was supposed to go to the place where we worked on the Virago to move all the stuff to Vincent's new house. So I took the BMW (Even more fun to ride than the CB).

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, It died. The BMW died a couple of hunderd meters before I got to my destination. A short look in the tank made it very obvious what had caused the BMW to die:

the Tank 'Cure' was dissolving and clogged up my petcocks. Nice. NOT. Also good to know that I had to get back home as well, another 30 miles or so.

Yep, not a good day. But wait, it could still get worse. And so it did.... We loaded all the tools and metal onto a trailer and tried to start the Virago to move everything to Vincent's place. Tried to start it, because it didn't get any fuel. After a quite a while we found out that one of the fuel hose clamps was to tight so no fuel could come trough. So we started the bike and off we went:

That's me on the Virago. I got as far as 7 kilometers, exactly halfway. Then it died. Gearbox seemed to be totally gone and the engine wouldn't run anymore. Great.

We had to go back later to pick it up with the trailer.

So no, today was NOT a good day, although the BMW did manage to get me back home (all be it only just).

KZ400

I moved the headlight down a bit, it is more in line with the tank now. Also put some finishing touches on the wiring loom and installed a 'new' brake caliper, that's all as it is supposed to be now too. So the bike is rideable and that was the main goal. Painting and riding it is up to Zoran :)

The Kawa is on the road

Zoran Requested to have the license plate and the rear light moved to the back off the seat, so I did that. I made a rear fender to protect the intake filters (not on the photo's yet), repaired the throttle cable and tuned the carbs a bit.

Runs really nice, nice warm sound too! (in the video it is still on the choke, so it's a bit loud/rough). There seems to be a problem with the clutch though. I'll see if I can find the problem later on.

Zoran's Kawa

I am a bit busy with my research, but I found some time to work on the KZ again. Didn't do all that much. I had a fight with the intake rubbers, won one fight, lost the other, so I call it a draw (I installed one new one, couldn't get the other one off). Also moved the tail light to the side mount. I like it a lot better there.

Kawa update

Spend some time on Zoran's Kawa again this weekend. I'd already made the rear spoiler for it and a bracket for the rear light. Wanted the latter to be different from usual, but I'm not happy with the result, it looks a bit like a lampoon now, so I'll probably change it. This weekend I made a side mount for the license plate. Wanted a light (looking) construction so I made it out of steel bars.

Zoran's Kawa

First of all to whoever reads this: I wish you a healthy and happy 2011!!

Spend some time on Zoran's KZ. I had to find a place for all the electrics of this bike. I figured it would be best to have everything tucked up right against the seat so the wires would be as short as possible and everything would be hidden from view as good as possible. So I made some simple brackets.

This'll work.

I also tuned the handle bars around and shortened the clutch and brake lever, they were enormous.

Next will be the rear spoiler. I'd like to leave it off all together because the seat is already pretty long, or else have it pointing upwards like in this photo (That's a testfit, I would mount it a bit higher), but customer is king and Zoran wants it mounted horizontally. That's not going to be a problem of course.

Look what found it's way back into my garden

It's Zoran's KZ400. The photo obviously isn't from today, but it's here in the garden. I made a new wiring loom for it this summer, now I'm going to do some of the finishing touches like making brackets for the lights/license plate, finding a place for the battery and some more stuff.

Before you start think that I've gone commercial: The deal is that Zoran will only pay for the materials I use. I can't afford a new project myself, but I really like having something around that I can work on. So this way it's a win-win.