Trevor's Triumph

Walk your lenky ass over to my garage and I’ll find you plenty

Dang that’s steep. How large? The only parts I brought were two small lifter blocks and they were 100% free of any dirt.

I brought over the primary cover [~7"x16"], inspection cover [3" round disc], timing cover [~7"x7"], gearbox outer cover [~6"x10"], two rocker boxes [~6"x4"x2"], two inlet manifolds [2"x2"x1"] and two carburetor caps [1" round disc]. My parts definitely needed to be degreased. Dude didn’t seem to be overly enthusiastic about taking my business. I got the impression I was inconveniencing him. He grumbled while shuffling through the parts, told me between $200-$250 (with an obvious emphasis on the high end) and then he asked for my name and phone number. He told me he’d call me and headed for the door. I asked “Uhh…so, a couple days or what?” He laughed. “I can try to have them done by the end of the week.” I looked at him. “It’s usually one to two weeks” he continued, before walked through the door. Cool. After vapor blasting, I’m going to have $800 in just outward engine appearance. A bit ridiculous.

I remade that steering damper plug.

And then I welded it to a flange.

Just need to get some paint/powdercoat on it and that’s done.

I bought an Ohlins rear shock from a Daytona, and I placed a nice order with Cognito. As soon as all of that shit shows up and I get the wheels built, I can finish frame fabrication. Rad.

slow down you’re making me look bad. lol.

whats that swingarm off of?

Well, That seems like an appropriate order of magnitude then, considering the size and cleanliness level. If it makes you feel any better I have spent 1500 dollars on buffing wheels.

Man, I don’t like cognito moto. Just an FYI, I had a pair of one-off hubs made from emachineshop.com off my print for only a little more than you paid for that one hub. Besides the fact that I think their prices suck, it’s just too “order your cafe racer off the internet”… which isn’t what YOU are doing, but when I see bikes that it just looks like cognito moto threw up all over, it bums me out.

Are you building the wheels?

Hah, don’t worry. I’ve still got a shit ton of work to do. The swingarm is from a ~2005 Ducati 800 SuperSport. I actually cut the top hoop off of it the other day. I’m going to replace it with one that’s a little shorter, works a bit better with my shock choice and is made of ~1" DOM. I like Newman’s wooden die bending method, so I’ll likely give that a go.

Let’s not start comparing this British hog to your beautiful handcrafted Knuckle. Hah. But yea. That does make me a feel a tiny bit better.

Yea. I know. I actually felt a little guilty ordering them, because it was like “I don’t even have to CAD these, they’ll just work.” There’s even a SKU for the one. Ideally, I’ll go the full custom route next time. I tried to rationalize it this way; I ordered the hubs bare so that I can anodize them gold myself to match the intended Beringer hardware and I’ll powder coat the spokes black and the nipples tank color. I am planning on building the wheels myself.

Woah, Devin got a nice chunk of change from you!

Beringer stuff rocks. :tup:

Also doesn’t help that you don’t like café themed motorcycles to begin with.

I’m running a Beringer caliper on my knucklehead. I think. If it looks too modern I will shelve it for something else.

I don’t mind cafe racer type bikes, but most of that culture is not DIY. Or not any type of real DIY. And I don’t like that. While I’m sure there are cases of it, so many of the bikes are just assemblies of purchased parts. Not a lot of talent. It’s a lot like the car scene, really. Or the modern harley/bobber scene. Lots and lots of buy this, buy that.

Choppers, on the other hand, is heavily rooted in DIY. Go to a chopper type show (NOT a “bike night”) and I can guarantee that 90% of the bikes will have handmade parts. Yeah, a lot of it is really terrible, but it’s much more endearing to me than just some catalog bike.

Anyway, I don’t think this bike is in the vein of the former, so carry on.

I hate how café is synonymous with any shit bag abortion with clip on bars that has been left to rot under a tree and now some douche canoe thinks it’s the second coming of Christ. I’m sorry, but your fucking Verago is as far from a café bike as I am from being optimistic.

Oh god-I went to a “bike night”, the last one at Armor Tap Room. I was worried as my headlight is less than ideal for riding when the sun is not directly over head. I parked the bike, threw down the side stand, looked up, and kicked it over before even turning off the fuel. It was a sea of pointy bullet air cleaner bullshit, iron crosses, hags on the back that looked decent from far, far from decent, and WANKERS that looked like they bought EVERY FUCKING piece of clothing from the Harley catalog. Jacket/hat/helmet/bandana/PUKE.

Come to Fuel Cleveland this year. Very little of that. If you had any appreciation for VBR, you would like it there.

Deal. At least I’ll have a lot of people around to give me a lift when my bike goes all British. Do we leave people when they have trouble or do we act like the Marines and leave no man behind?

Speaking of DIY or ‘custom’; I discovered that the steering damper solenoid is not a simple on/off affair. It’s actually a PWM unit that offers different levels of dampening based on duty cycle. Frankly, that’s much more preferable to one blanket setting anyhow. I was planning on running a speedometer anyway, mainly because I like to go fast. I bought a GPS VSS to facilitate that, which outputs what I believe to be a 4,000PPM square wave signal. I can interface that to an Arduino which will correlate speed to PWM duty cycle and thus, dampening. Newer sport bikes even have an accelerometer built into a separate damper-only computer that stiffens the damper during hard acceleration and deceleration as well as following the speed/PWM curve. Maybe I’ll bring that to work with me tomorrow.

I bought a PWM unit the other day to run my taillights. Got LEDs in the housing, but only wanted to run one taillight wire, so I’m running the pwm set to 50% between the battery and the tail light, then I’m going to short around it for brake lights. Will have to put a diode behind the pwm to be safe, I think. I don’t know a ton about circuits, really.

Sounds like a 555 timer or similar op-amp/comparator based circuit. I could theoretically do something like that with this. I thought about a thumbwheel on the left bar for adjusting damper stiffness, but I just don’t know if I’m in love with having to adjust that manually. I’d most likely just find a ‘good setting’ and leave it there, plus I just don’t feel like that’s taking advantage of the capabilities and purpose of the electronic damper.

It shouldn’t be a complicated thing. What I’m envisioning is a very small circuit board with an embedded Arduino bootlader compatible microcontroller, a 3-axis accelerometer and an input buffer. A few lines of code so that the Arduino follows [likely] an X^2 curve on the MPH/PWM plot normally, as well as monitoring the accelerometer Y-Axis for ‘high’ input. I shouldn’t need anything more than the Y-axis. Just motorcycle accel and decel.

I studied Electrical Engineering at UB for several years and lost financial aid before I could finish. My own fault, but it still put a wrench in the works. Anyway, I do it as a hobby now. I make things work. I call myself a ‘Pretendgineer’. It makes me feel a bit better.

I like that idea. Might have to run a single throw, dual pole SW or Relay to open the controller if that diode doesn’t solve the issue bypassing it might create depending on the controller. Bench test it, you’re SMRT, you’ll figure it out.

the past 5 posts look like utter jibberish to me, but I love it. Wiring is too magical for me to wrap my head around.

Thank goodness my stock Honda harness was in good shape. sips coffee

Something like this, newman.

The circuit normally passes 12V through the PWM module to the taillight, but the brake switch opens a relay that disconnects and bypasses the PWM module completely, sending 12V straight to the taillight. No need for any diode unless you want a suppression diode across the coil, which is entirely optional.

Most of them have the diode internally already.

Yes I agree that would work. Diode is a lot smaller than the relay though. That would def be a dump shot. There might even be a diode built into that little pwm already.

I mean, if you’re worried about size, I’ve got 20A relays that are less than a half inch cubed. You could use a diode to just prevent current backflow into the PWM module. You’re probably right about there already being a diode in the PWM module. If I were designing that circuit, I would have added a diode on the output for this very reason.

This should work. The reason the relay method is preferred in my book is because it actively disconnects the PWM module from the circuit instead of just dumping 100% duty cycle 12V on top of 50% duty cycle. It doesn’t inherently matter as long as the 50% circuit is protected from surge [the diode].

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Hah. Maybe I’m just a cheap bastard. Mine never have the diode built in. Rarely ever really need one, though.