ooooooook, finally time to start this thread now that im basically unemployed, and the girl just left me, i may as well find something to occupy me. so let me start with how it was when i first got it, 85 vt700, about 30K miles
so i do like the look of the back end stripped down, the bars need a little more work, and i gotta find mirrors that will work. i wanted to chop the back fender a bit, but the rear tail light is limiting. i still wanna get some kind of rear seat that will fit the back and work so it will cover all the electronics properly. still not sure how thats gonna work. im gonna relocate the license plate to the side, ummm the tank is leakin so the paint is efffed, so im gonna repaint the whole bike, im tired of the silver. got a new clutch, newer rotors, new rear turn signals, and baffles for the pipes i had made up cuz they are waaaaay to loud. i tried takin a video but it won’t start, shes been sittin for way too long haha. well, thats about all i got, look for updates as i go along. it’ll be a surprise for me and you cuz i really have no idea where i’m gonna go with this project. leave me ideas or compliments or whatever ya like!
this guy made his kid a bobber/chopper bike out of his 83 vt500. all work done by himself. he made his own custom forward controls and was nice enough to send me all kinds of pics as to how he did it. this is probably way out of my skill range but i’d like to give it a try, heres a couple pics.
I know one dude that used “poor man’s forward controls” on his Sportster. That was he called it. He took the mid pegs off completely and only had higway pegs. Shifted and used the rear brake with his heal. I tried riding that way and downshifting and braking wasn’t too bad. Upshifting with your heal is challenging though.
well, i got a quick video of my “custom” pipes. please excuse the mess in the garage, currently cleaning and purging it all out. they’re a tad too loud, i set car alarms off everywhere. i’ll get an after video when i get the baffles put in eventually. still in pieces, still tryin to figure out what to do next. i keep thinkin how far away good riding weather is and i think its seriously affecting my motivation for this project hahaha
wow i forgot i had this thread up here. i been really slacking on this project but now that i got a real job with normal hours, i have time and the funds to work on it. so this is what i’ve been up to recently.
so i changed the clutch, that was fun. only got one pic of that, and you can see my little mistake. the gasket remover stuff in a can, yeah that stuff is just like tal-strip. i guess i had some overspray and now the paint is gone from that part of the frame…oh well.
so i’ve decided to go the route of a trailer fender. the frame on this bike in the rear is tapered so they don’t really make a fender that fits it just right. and i put the stock airbox system back in, opted not for the individual filters becuase dyno jet advised me agains it. apparently they dont make a jet kit large enough for this bike to compensate for that. i also ordered a bunch of random parts including a solo seat. soooo i put them all on the bike just for like a mock fit just to see how it all will look. oh and also so the rear fender doesn’t look terrible out of place, i am putting a low profile seat on the back to help take up the gap between the fender and the frame rails.
i also ordered some universal headlight ears and a headlight “eye lid”, i didn’t like how high the headlight was on this bike so i lowered it so its about even with the gas tank. the ears were just a hair to small but after some modification, they worked fine.
ooops, forgot i had this thread. and it definitely took longer than a couple weeks. i finished it up last weekend. took me longer than i thought to fab up the seat mounts etc…
here’s the almost done pics, the one pipe is being redone as i type, and i still need to make a cover for the gap between the seat and the tank, and one to cover the wires under the seat. and i still need to put on new shocks in the rear, the 24 year old blown shocks dont like the new lowered fender and when i hit a bump the back tire smakcs the tail light. and if new shocks dont fix it, i’ll just hard tail it
thanks guys. next part for this project(as long as nothing blows up along the way) after riding season i neeeeed to come up with some sort of design for forward controls. the frame on these older shadows are so short. sometimes i feel like a bear on a tricycle haha
That was he called it. He took the mid pegs off completely and only had higway pegs. Shifted and used the rear brake with his heal. I tried riding that way and downshifting and braking wasn’t too bad. Upshifting with your heal is challenging though.
