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[Talon]

Forgot to add, I think the rear exhaust looks better with the bends moved back. 

[screem]

great looking bike Dan...and an awesome collection of pics and narative...lookin forward to your next installment

[Gettinold]

Dan just found this thread, What an awesome build. Realy like the tail light and cant wait to see it complete in the "rootbeer" color. 

               Dave

[Dan_Lockwood]

Well folks, here's a somewhat smaller update as I had too much other stuff to do this past weekend to spend as much time as I would have liked on the new bike project.


To start with, this is what my garage looks like right now.  Kind of cluttered but the important stuff is ready and available to be used.  I could not imagine how hard it would be to build a bike like this without a lift of some sort.


I didn't have any flat black paint, but did want them black to see kind of what the pipes will look like.  Remember the mufflers will also be flat black.  I'm leaning at this time to keep the muffler reverse cone tips in chrome just as an accent.  Kind of like Rineharts in reverse.

I also have the rear mounting tabs welded on now so they will hold the pipes, both left and right side from the head flange to the rear muffler mount.


Right side pipe with the new rearward "S" bend.

Okay, now I need some advise on what you all like best.


The idea sounded great, but when completed it looked TOO big for the purpose of just a leg heat guard.  With this one I would have to decide how to mount it, two bolts per cross bar or just one offset bolt on each of the three cross mount tabs.

Not sure about this one so here's another one to look at.


This is basically all mounted other than finish welding the nuts to the pipes that I have the tab mounting bolts run through.  This one looks a bit better in size, but still not 100% sold on it.

I don't want to do the overlay of another size pipe over the pipe, but I do want to have something there just in case I bump my leg and I also like it for character.

I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening on the oil tank, boxing in the battery box.  The project didn't go so well and I spun my wheels most of the time.  I thought it would be easy to just insert a box and fill in the gaps.  Wrong-O-Buckaroo...  So cut, weld, break loose welds, cut some more, start over, weld, cut loose, start over; you all get the idea.  Well at this time I do have a plan and it will probably have to wait now till the weekend.

I have to travel for work this week going out to the Aberdeen MD area for a long day, short night and another long day with flying home at the end, hopefully.

So I'll get you guys caught up after more work has been done.

Let me know your thoughts on the leg heat guard.  You won't hurt my feelings and I can take a little constructive criticism.

And finally, here's my new oil filter mount adapter, courtesy the big HD-Dude, Jim....     

Thanks...


It's a good thing I had a guy locally here check is Ultima and give me the height that the oil filter adapter will come upward from the mount area.  It almost looks like I had planned it to fit right under the header pipe.      

Thanks again for looking and enjoy.

    

[MrFeexit]

MAN OH MAN OH MAN!!! Those pipes are perfection! What an awesome looking bike. At the point its at I love the industrial quality to it. My own tastes would have me keeping it very base metal looking but what ever you do will be dynamite. So cool!

[porthole]

How about just wrapping the pipes?

[Talon]

Pipes look good! I think your right leave the pipes chrome, can you post one more pic of the entire bike from the side, after you painted the pipes?

[Dan_Lockwood]

Pipes look good! I think your right leave the pipes chrome, can you post one more pic of the entire bike from the side, after you painted the pipes?

Thanks to all for the comments.

Craig, here are a few more pictures.  I hope one is what you were looking for.

Again, my original plan was to do flat black ceramic coating on the pipes as well as the mufflers.  Only this weekend I was thinking about possibly just leaving the 'removable tips' of the mufflers chrome for just a bit of flash at the ends, but still not certain about that look either. 

I think right now, even though the pipes are black, they are not flat black.  I think the shine is giving me the wrong impression of the pipes right now.  I will probably get some flat black spray paint and repaint the pipes as well as the mufflers to see what they look like done in that manner. 

I think if I leave the mufflers chrome and the pipes flat black, the mufflers will kind of just be sticking out there with not much of a connection to the bike.  Don't really know, but that's what it looks like right now.


Full side view with the two wire leg guard in place.


Right side rear 3/4 view.


Left side rear 3/4 view.

Again, comments welcome.  I know I'll end up doing what I feel is best, but sometimes just bouncing things off of people with an eye for bikes is better than letting my wife review my work.

Thanks again for the interest in my little project.

Later dudes and dudettes....

    

[naitram]

Dan, i think the 2 wire guard looks beetter then the 3 wire one

[spydglide]

My 2 cents.......I gotta agreed on chroming the pipes and leaving the reverse cones all chrome.  They're good looking the way you made them and will stand out more in chrome.  Unique.     spyder

[Talon]

Thanks Dan, that picture gives a better look at the pipes, seeing the whole bike. I agree with you, leave the mufflers chrome, ceramic coat the pipes black, it breaks it up the length. Looks good, your making good progress!

Craig

[screem]

Geez we need to start a pipe poll...i too like the black pipes, chrome mufflers...maybe do the cones black....the double heat guard looks better than the triple. good luck Dan...your gaining quite a cheering section in here

[Talon]

I know you said you used the gloss just because you didn't have any flat black, I thing matte or flat black would look better.

Craig

[Dan_Lockwood]

Here we are at update HUIT, seven...

No pictures this week.  All I did this weekend was work on the oil tank and gas tank.

I have the inside of the oil tank all boxed in now and had some small pin holes that I had to fix, reweld.  I have to do something about the core in my MIG cable as the wire is just jerking along and sometimes it just flies out and other times it just sticks a bit.  This Miller is not that old, only burned a 2# spool through it since I move down here.

I would be using my TIG but I'm out of Argon and this tank is not up to date lease wise and it's from Michigan, not St. Louis area.  So my MIG is what I have to work with.  I'm using 16 ga. for my boxing in materials, but the China tanks are 20 ga. and it's a bit of a trick welding the tank with my on/off again MIG wire feed issues.  But hey, nobody said I can't go back over welds and fix any small leaks. 

Back to the tanks.  I got permanent front mounting tabs made from 11 ga. and have them mounted and finished welded inside the fronts of each tank.  I'm using the stock rear mounts for each tank.  I still need to come up with a front lower means to stabilize the tanks.  With just the two mounts on each tank, they're pretty stout but if I try to push them up or down they do move a bit and I don't want them to vibrate and break loose later.  If I can't have a front lower mount for each to the frame, maybe just a mount at the bottom to each other will help.  That should keep them from twisting separately.

I was also afraid that when I was finished with the boxing in of the battery that I might not have enough volume for oil in the tank.  Before I finished the pin hole plugging, I took the oil tank into the kitchen and filled it up with a pint measruing cup.  With the water level just below the main filler cap neck, it holds 6 quarts.  At that amount of available oil space, I think that I'll probably run with 5 quarts in the tank.  That along with the large long oil filter, I should have more than enough oil to help keep things cool enough without running an oil cooler.

One other thing that I hadn't thought about seriously early on, but on Saturday I thought WTF did I do this for?  I'm talking about hiding the battery inside the oil tank.

I got to thinking that with the oil tank probably running in the range of low 200 degrees, I might give the battery some issues.  I have at least 1/2" on front, top, end and rear.  The bottom side of the battery is wide open down to the heads, about 4" away.  So air circulation should be really good.  Then I got to thinking about all the oil bags with the battery mounting inside them and stuffed under a seat without much air flow at all.  At that point the battery heat issue just went away for me.  Any thoughts on this from any of you guys?

So now I have to still work on what I'm going to do for the main harness block.  I was going to put it between the two tanks mounted to the main frame back bone, but I think I need to keep that area open for battery terminal access and maybe even dropping the speedo into the tank gap.

So as life goes on in Dan's garage, I should have more again next week.

If anyone has any thoughts about what or how I'm going to do something, by all means, let me know.  I'm not professing to be an expert on this project, in fact this is my first one, so I'm engineering and building as I go.  If someone has been there done that before and can stop me from making a mistake, I would greatly appreciate it.  I already have left over parts that I'm not going to use because I've changed my mind on the looks and function of some of the parts I bought.  One comes to mind, I have the new EVO style oil filter adapter HD-Dude, Jim, helped me out with and that's going to be used on the bike.  But I had purchased an early style remote oil filter with the cartridge style and through bolt.  Then I was at a swap meet and found a better looking one with a spin on filter, but still didn't want to muddy up the looks of the bike with a remote filter.  So the EVO style really made the difference for me; thanks again Jim...  I have a headlight now, but I'm not going to use it as it and the turn signals won't match each other.  After I made up the tail light with the bullet turn signals mounted to it, the short British style headlight just doesn't look right.  But a too long bullet headlight will not go with the theme of the bike, so I have to be someone choosy on what I get.  So today I think I'm going to order another headlight.  And while I was writing the above verbiage about finding a new place to put my main wiring module, I just thought that I might be able to hide it inside the new longer bullet headlight.  This would only leave wiring harnesses to deal with.

Like I said, I'm doing this by the seat of my pants.  If something doesn't look just right, I change it and start over.  If I have bought a KIT with all the parts assembly proven, it would have been a lot easier.  But if it were that easy, it would take all the fun out of it.

Okay, enough for today.

Later dudes and dudettes...

    

[spydglide]

Just a thought to follow along with your concern of the battery in the oil bag......any other place would be better for the longevity of the battery as we all know from the older HD's that used that configuration.  Clean out of the way look, but at a cost.  spyder