Against the odds

We worked on the Virago again today. After doing some minor modifications we decided to try and start it for the first time. expectations were low because:

The intake is home made

The Intake manifold is home made

The exhausts are home made

The carburator is of a Opel Kadet

And the weather wasn't exactly ideal either.

We would have been happy with any sign of ignition what so ever. This is what we got...

This is with a very cold engine. Later on it started running even better. That's all without any adjustments to the carb.  

rearsets for the Suzuki

One of the things that's still missing on the SP are rearsets. Saw some really nice ones on the swap market last week, but there really is no money for them (student, remember). So there's only one possibility: make 'm myself.

Started off by taking a wheel off of one of my rollerblades. I wanted the bearings. Found a bit of tubing that had exactly the right diameter.

did some cutting

Some welding

and some drilling

It took a long time. It's just too cold outside, so I had to go in and warm back up again a couple of times. I'll have to make some steps on the lathe and the other side, but I'm pretty happy with the look so far.

The BMW story part II

When I'd build de CX500 caferacer for my Girlfriend I was still riding my Yamaha YZF 750R (that I had customized, naturally). The YZF is an absolute fantastic bike, but it was just impossible to ride with both the YZF and the CX at the same time. 

The person on the CX would have to race like an idiot while the person riding the YZF would hardly pass the 2000rpm mark. So that's when I decided to sell the YZF, buy a bike and rebuild it to something special.

I went looking for a god bike to build into a cafe. The first thing that came to mind was a Moto Guzzi. So off I went to a shop with a Le Mans.

I hated the fact that it had a steeringdamper. I just hate those things... but I still liked the bike. However, the guy also had a BMW R100 and he insisted that I would try that bike too. I fell in love within 200 meters. The bike he let me ride was too far gone for me and it had two rear shocks. I prefer the monoshock R80 eventhough it has less power. During my search I came across a crashed R80 monoshock with an R100 engine and Wilbers shocks. Perfect (I thought)

Here's the beauty I bought :). And a few hours later:

More on the BMW next time...

And the handlebars finished

The front brake is working now, still need some small parts to finish the throttle and the clutch controls, than that part will be completely finished. There's not going to be any switches on the handlebars, I think. I'll wire the lights in such a way that they'll always be on. There's not going to be a high beam (tried that with this headlight on the BMW, there was hardly a difference between normal and high beam). I've got no plans yet for the indicators.

Exhaust finished

It's cold, but sunny and dry. Nothing to hold me back from working on the Suzuki. So I finished the exhaust and did some more minor things. It starts looking more and more like a real motorbike :)

Swap market

Found some very usefull stuff today :)

BMW: some more photos

I was making a back up of all the photos on my computer (of witch a lot are of the BMW). Here's a few:

Not very suprisingly, this tank didn't make it in the end.

And this seat set-up didn't make it either, although I still like the idea... I also like the paintjob of the tank on that photo. Shame I had to repair and repaint the tank

tip: don't use too cheap velocity stacks

This guy was at the swapmeet where I bought the tank. Wonder if he sold anything that day, it all looked like it was found in an archaeological dig. 

and a action photo the end this blogentry with. Still plenty of photos on my harddrive, so there's more to come.

Fendertime

Rolled the bike out of the living room this morning without a clue about what I was going to do with it. I was thinking about starting on a bellypan/bugspoiler when an old front fender caught my eye. It's not a front fender anymore now ;)

It's only tagged. I'll have to make the bottom part shorter and place it a bit further back, but I like the overall looks of it so it'll probably stay.

And a Suzuki update again.

I made some spacers on the lathe. This way the sprockets are in line and I also had an issue with the back axle that was solved by these spacers (It's a XL250 rear wheel with an axle diameter of 20 mm's where the axle on my bike is only 15 mm's).

And then the forks issue: I wanted to make them shorter, but when I put them back it looked better than I had expected. So I'll wait with a decision on that until the bike runs so I can see what the effect on the handling is. 

And this happens when you've had more time than you had planned or expected :) 

Virago update

These are busy times..... We found some time to work on the Virago though. Not too much to show for it, most has been 'invisible' work. One of the more noticeable things is the brake pedal. We didn't like the golfclub-pedal, so we made a new one.

We also tried to start it, but as you can see: we still have some problems to solve....