I lvoe the wounded duck more than the build itself! HAHA just kidding, but the bike looka great man!
To quote myself from last night from the Tea Leaf thread…
I was pretty heated last night. Got up early this morning and figured out that my new pilot jets work they way they should and I can’t use choke when it’s this warm out or the bike floods…managed to get it running and rode it around the neighborhood. everything up to 3/4 throttle feels great…I’m still not convinced the 120 mains I just put in are enough still… going to get the bike warm with a quick ride after work and then try sync’ing the carbs and see how it is after that. It’s rideable, its running better than when I broke the carbs down, it just still doesnt pull very good at WOT; in my opinion there should be more oomph up top. we’ll see I guess.
Well I wouldn’t fuck with it too much before your trip. So the battery worked out?
I guess so lol. I pulled the charger this morning and threw the multimeter on it, read 14.5v so I guess it’s good to go for now. I’m gonna sync the carbs and call it “done” for the trip…I’ll worry about it when I get back I guess. Jetting sucks lol.
oh yeah, I forgot to put up pics of the sidecovers…finished them in truck bed liner for durability and re-mounted. Came out nice I think
i like the side covers painted SERIOUS
Well, some good news some bad news. Took the bike down for Vintage Motorcycle days and had an absolute blast. Chatted with lots of strangers about the bike, got a lot of compliments and all that…
bad news, in the 130 miles (round trip) to and from the event from my buddies place where I was staying…
the bike started REALLY leaking oil from various places…once of which was the valve cover breather…this is 90% of the time a major sign that the rings are toast. Meaning this motor is pretty much shot now.
I looked into just tossing my CB650 motor in, but the charging systems are different and FUCK WIRING.
So I guess I park it for the rest of the season until I get through some of these other projects and decide if it’s worth rebuilding the motor.
I can do a complete gasket set and new rings for about $90 in parts…$150 if I do new rod bearings.
At this point, I’m considering rebuilding the motor and selling the bike because at that point everything on it will have been re-done…
would be better off buying a CB650 so I don’t have to mess with wiring and throw my big-bore 650/750 hybrid motor in THAT…time will tell I guess…
---------- Post added at 02:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:10 PM ----------
oh, here’s some pictures of mine and my buddies CB550 from the weekend…
anything we saw at the show that seemed worth a picture made it to our website if you want to check it out…
Wow that looks like so much fun nick!
Well, it’s pretty unfortunate that I haven’t touched the bike nor updated this thread since Vintage Motorcycle Days…mostly due to my frustrations with blowing the piston rings…
but there’s good news. First off, I have purchased replacement piston rings and a gasket kit to refresh the motor that’s in the bike. My plan is to do that, then throw it back in while I work on the hybrid motor this summer a little at a time.
I also just scored an absolutely smokin’ deal on a modern inverted front end. Might be doing supermoto 17" spoked wheels with modern sportbike tires, and that might mean I’ll build a custom swingarm and offset sprockets to go 3" front wheel 4.25" rear wheel.
not sure if the triples will work, but it’s a damn good start on getting modern suspension and brakes on the bike. Might have to make up a bunch of gussets for the frame as research shows other guys have twisted the frames taking advantage of the modern stuff. Probably won’t have any more updates here for at least a month, I’ve gotta get the XS650 bobber buttoned up and the car finished up first. Mostly just wanted to share the joy of my most recent ebay score lol.
Looks like your day turned around after we talked last night. Awesome snag!
this is why I live by the mantra “everything happens for a reason” Man was I pissed I missed out on a 'busa front setup with all the same equipment at almost double this price…I guess it was meant to be that I get similar parts for half the cost lol.
Last week you told me you were selling it now you’re back at it, lol. Hopefully this means you can put that “beefier” motor in, because that last one was slow as balls, haha. Let me know if you need a hand chooch.
I figure for what I have into it, I should just keep it and finish it the way I’ve always invisioned…it’ll be kinda cool 20+yrs from now to say I still have my first motorcycle. Maybe I’ll win some “bike-of-the-month” contests along the way on some of the forums I frequent lol.
TL1000R front end came in yesterday, did some preliminary measurements…
neck-to-fork offset on the TL front end is 30mm center to center, while the CB550 is 44.5mm center to center.
CB550 forks are 35mm diameter in the trees, TL is 42mm at top triple and 55mm at the bottom triple.
all together, I have 1.875" of clearance between the two calipers. I have not yet determined if I can use my current wheel due to the spoke clearance.
OK, some more measuring…
the stem diameter for both stems is 30mm. SCORE. I have read up on other front end swaps, and it appears that I can use an XS650 bottom neck bearing as the top bearing if I want to keep the TL1000r stem. The stem on the TL1000r seems to be about a half inch shorter than that of my stock one…which MAY pose a problem.
Newman sent me a breakdown of measurements for all suzuki inverted front end dimensions…but either the table is incorrect on the diameter of the forks at the top triple, or the front end I got on ebay is NOT a TL1000r front end.
table says 55mm dia. at the lower tree and 50mm at the top tree…while I’ve got 55mm at the bottom and 42mm at the top. I measured 30mm offset, table shows 32 (I was probably off the 2mm honestly)
Axle diameter on the cb550 is 15mm while the TL1000r is 25mm…newman showed me how he’s made his own axles to work on both his cb550 and his shovelhead build…which is probably the route I’ll take to remedy that situation.
on another note…wheels…
I mentioned I have 1.875" roughly between calipers…this is between 4.25" and 6.25" from center of axle…on my stock spoked wheel I have I think 1.9" width from outside-outside of the spokes…I MIGHT be able to shave a 1/16" off each caliper housing for clearance…but without actually going through with making the axle and test-mounting the wheel I have no idea if I’ll be able to make the stock wheel work…I had plans to go wider on the wheels all around, from 1.85 front/2.15 rear to 2.5f/3.0r…which may change the spoke layout, and who knows if it will change in my favor or not.
other options are to go with supermoto 17" rims, but with custom spokes and the 17"rims I’ll spend about $600 on wheels…and even still the spokes MAY have clearance issues. plus the hassle of lacing them up and true’ing them and then new tires and, and, and…
OR I’ve been scoping out alloy options, and I’m sort of digging the look of these harley sportster 19x2.5/18x3 wheels…
these are GUARANTEED to clear the calipers…and I can easily either make custom axles or swap bearings to get what I want out of them, and make adaptors for proper-sized rotors.
back to the triples issues…I’m thinking more and more about just whipping up custom aluminum triple clamps and pressing the stock cb550 stem into them…I will get the correct offset, be able to use upgraded stock-sized bearings off-the-shelf, and the stem will be the correct length. The 1/2" difference shouldn’t give me much trouble since the current lower triple on the inverted front end is offset from where the tubes clamp in by almost that 1/2" :
Thoughts anyone?
well, after many attempts at scoring what I wanted/needed on ebay, this is what I ended up with for the modern front end…and coincidentally decided to upgrade the rear too
TL1000S front end, Sportster 19x2.15" front wheel, sportster 18x2.5" rear wheel, GSXR600 rotors, R6 rear caliper and rearset. will have to make a custom brake-stay for the rear, some spacers for the caliper to make it play nice with the axle, and custom spacers for the rear sprocket and front calipers (which will also serve to correct the difference in bolt patterns)
:tup:
So I’m a huge fucking idiot and have mental issues and a majorly distorted view of priorities. Instead of finishing my current projects, I went in on three more. LOL. Pirite, Checko, and myself ran out to LeRoy NY last night and snapped up a wicked deal for three yamaha triples…two xs750’s and one xs850. YAY MOAR PROJECTS! (help me, I’m fucked)
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Sweet! This is exciting!
What are the plans for the XS750’s? After making my half assed cafe and your 650 bobber I think that’s a good choice…