gorgeous work. well done. here are some thoughts (not criticism): 1. consider changing the fuel lines to metal instead of the rubber or material types. looks far better. you may have to jettison the fuel filter, as i did. 2. having removed the filler, you will need a 'filler' there's a local guy here who makes the, in carbon fiber, specific to your bike. 3. not sure where you pegs are located, ergonomically speaking. you appear to ave moved them back a little. once you sit and ride you might have to change things, as i did. i can post details if you need it. 4. get rid of the fidly original side stand and get a browns from usa. you will need to fabricate a mounting bracket but that's no big deal for you. the browns looks tops and works a treat. cheers gad
Thanks Gad. 1. Steel gas lines: Dig that. I'm game. I put a light in the tank a couple weeks ago and it wasn't pretty...gonna need to get it cleaned and coated. Then I'll go with something less "Tractor Supply" on the inline filters. 2. Filler: is the the c/f piece you have added on your engine top? Sorry, if I'm off on this. 3. Rearsets: Yeah, we'll see how the positioning works. Tried to get it as close to the specs of my 05 Speed Triple but won't know exactly until the subframe gets tacked up. 4. Sidestand: The stock SS is definitely fiddly. The Brown's does look good-n-sturdy. Will add that to the "want" list. Appreciate the tips!!
hey man, nice work!! Question: What kind of welder did you use to weld the bracket on the shifter arm? Did you have any trouble welding that? I still need to do something similar. Just made rearsets for my Suzuki project buy the way, this is how I did it: http://bmwcafe.blogspot.com/2009/12/rearsets-part-deux.html http://bmwcafe.blogspot.com/2009/12/rearsets-for-suzuki.html
Hey, MIOB. Your rearsets turned out great. I've been keeping up with your blog. Looking forward to seeing them on the bike. I use a Lincoln Weld Pak 100 Mig with flux cored wire for everything. Picked it up barely used for $170.00 about 5 years ago. Love it. It works great for thin stuff but wouldn't want to weld steel over 1/4" with it.
Sometimes I feel a twinge of anger when I see good bikes being hacked up for ghetto looking cafe racers. Your work on the other hand is inspiring and well done/documented- I can't wait to see the finished product!
Hey have you had any chance to try out that ebatt? My panasonic will not fit under rear tail. Gonna try and sell it to recoup some money for an Odyssey 680 or that ebatt 300 if it works ok.
I wish I had a solid answer for you but here's how the test went down...the bike hadn't been started for over 3 months. It was 16 degrees out when I wheeled the machine out to the mouth of the garage to fire it up. hooked up the e-batt (which had been sitting out in the garage for a month as well) and gave it a shot. it cranked over the big ol' beemer. Tried for about 5 seconds. I waited, tried again for about 5 more seconds. after that, nothing. I was bumbed. Emailed the e-batt guy and gave him the scenario and asked if they typically needed to be charged or if the cold garage had an affect on the situation. He said, with that battery you can wait .5 hour and try again(which i didn't do)...that it will somewhat charge itself, while it was initially cranking. He still reassured me that it's a powerful enough product to work for my bike and they come fully charged. So, plan is for me to wait til it warms up, get the e-batt on a tester to see what it's holding for a charge, use a tender if necessary and try again. I'm still really hopeful. The bike is over at the metal worker's shop now so I won't get to try it for another few weeks. Sorry, that's all the info I have for the battery situation. Plan B is to mount a different gel battery under the trans like guy did: The tubing and preliminary work going well....more soon.
So, here's the rough mock I made for Cliff (He's bending the tubing and doing the final TIG welding) just to give him an idea of what I'm after. It was a quicky tacked up with 1/4" rod and some washers I had laying around. (The upper subframe area won't be quite that high). We decided to utilize the rear right side shock stud and rear left shock tabs to "mount" the rear swingarm bracing and weld the front upright bracing to the swingarm. Should be nice and symmetrical looking. I may use the left rear side for a license plate mount as well. I'll post some more progress shots in a sec.
With enough welding done to test the shock we rolled the bike off of the center stand and it stood perfectly...very little sag if any. I bounced up and down on the foot pegs and it felt great! The GSXR shock is on the stiff setting with the spring adjustment at about the middle of the threads.
Right there with you notarex ... BUT ... Sparky ... this is looking good. Thank you for actually taking the time to do it RIGHT. PS - Those welds are artwork. That is something that I still can't seem to do ... make a nice looking weld.
Are those bearings welded in (probably not), pressed in, glued in or in some other way fixed? (Just curious, I use 2k glue to weld in some not-so-heavy duty bearings, I'd like to learn how I can really use bearings)
For the rear mount, the bearings were removed from the stock GSXR linkage and pressed into the new steel mount. The front mount/bearings actually didn't need to be altered.
Do you have more detailed shots of the upper mount arrangement.? Excellent work, I look forward to seeing the final product.
Thanks! I didn't get many shots or angles of the upper mounts. Here are a couple of grainy close ups tho from the cell Phone cam. It should give you an idea of what is happening. This was Cliff's idea. An allen head bolt runs through the tubing and shock. The nut is basically pressed in...so you can back out the bolt and drop the shock. The outer horizontal tubing mounts are cut at angle...that's why it appears to be an oval in the side view pic. I'll get better shots without the tank mounted later. (finish welding wasn't done yet at the time of these pics...Cliff is also bracing up the lower shock mount where it attaches to the swingarm hoop).
Yeah, I was wondering about that lower mount. Any reason you guys didn't fab it up as a straight shot from shock bottom to front of the curve on the swingarm brace, instead of on top of it? I would think it would be better able to handle the compression force in a straight line, rather than a 90 degree angle. The fact that you guys are bracing it up says you think so, too. But then I'm not an engineer; just thinking of all the things I've broken in the past. Don't get me wrong, this is gorgeous work and waaayyyyy beyond anything I'd even attempt, much less pull off as successfully as you are. I'm sure there's a reason, and I'm just curious what that reason is. Keep on keeping on, real sexy cafe your working up here. Can't wait to see more!
