First ride of the year

The weather was so much better than predicted, I just had to go for a ride. It was cold and tricky at some places (ice), but I had a great time.

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.

virago update

Yep, we've been working on the Virago again. Started of by going to the deep south of our country, Brabant, which is almost Africa, for a new starter motor. So we finally have a working starter motor again now. We quickly adapted the side stand so it doesn't have to lean on a block of wood the whole time and fired up the bike. The exhaust system with rings that worked so well on the Suzuki worked marvelously on the XV too. It runs better on both cylinders now we have restricted the flow in the much shorter rear exhaust.

We had hoped to take it for a first decent test ride and although I (for some reason it's always me who has to do the first ride, tells you a bit about the confidence Vincent has in our building skills) broke the previous record of 5 meters, the final 7 meters weren't very impressive. The bike kept dying after running for roughly 20 seconds. It did that every time, very annoying. We excluded fuel and battery problems, but we're not sure yet what the problem is.

After draining the battery in all the attempts we took it back into the shed and did some other vital work (like making a whole new throttle set up, the old one was CRAP and we didn't have very much control over the revs). All in all a mixed result. No test ride yet, but in the end we did have the feeling that we made progress.

The carburetor that caused so many problems yesterday:

The exhaust fumes were getting to someone's head while trying to do a test ride:

Floris' 1off Bol d'or freestyle racer

I've posted this bike on this blog before, but Floris has decided to make it even cooler, so I'll just have to post it again. Stunning bike, love the out of the box thinking on this build.

Builders website: http://www.florisvelthuis.com/

When this bike builder get's bored

The garden is still covered in snow, so no bike building here. We have worked on the Virago, but we spend most of our time on the new startermotor that turned out not to work either. Wast of money and time.

The only thing left to do was play around a bit with metal pieces I had kept (never throw away metal).

Hope to be able to go back to bike building soon, but the weather forecast doesn't look very good :(

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.

Utrecht city Friday December 17th

No building and no riding in this weather :(

Stunning!

Via motor-forum.nl

Very cool Virago cafe

Came across this photo on Chopperstyle. Best looking Virago I've seen so far!

More info: http://caferacerspecial.blogspot.com

R60/6 cafe by Pbeckm

I was sure I had already posted this bike on this blog, but looking back in the history I must have forgot. Shame on me. I sure as hell had planned to post it, because I love it. It's another BMW cafe on ADV rider. It's a little different, but very, very impressive. Love the styling, looks like a hell of a lot of fun to ride. Kudos for Bpeckm for this bike!

The build thread here.