Cutting frame

This all happened before leaving for Barber, but I forgot to mention it, so here goes:

     Over on the SOHC4 forums there's a guy who  used to make a frame kit for the 750. This kit allowed you to remove a section behind the neck so that you could pull the valve cover and head with the engine in the bike. This would be extraordinarily useful if you were to have a mysterious and massive oil leak somewhere in there after a fresh rebuild. That kit was The Gordon Frame kit, but sadly, it is no more, so I made my own.

Steel slugs off the lathe

Slug blank in the foreground, all the rest are finish milled and tapped

 All grade 8 M8x1.25 hardware (I think it was 1.25, whatever "fine" is)

Tried it with a hacksaw... but then I remembered power tools

Clearance!

 The front left one needed some cleanup inside the tube to knock down a factory weld bung

And this is how she went to Barber, pretty, and broken.

Although I hate to say it, no. I have no plans to make more than one kit. Demands of work and family always push projects like that to the side and I end up disappointing buyers or myself. Also it's a conflict of interests where I work.

Barber, the sequel (part 1)

We broke down a lot less this year, let me just say that right at the beginning.

But that doesn't mean nothing happened...

This year the group grew a little

Jay, his wife Alice,

myself,

Thanks to Iron&Air for taking this picture

and Junior

Packed ourselves into Jays truck between the bikes

While Matt,

Kate,

Tori,

and Skyler,

I think he's been drinking, that must be why he's blurry.

packed into the Big Blue Beast

Which they then attached a port a potty to, filled it with motorcycles, and drove across the country.

The in flight entertainment CB required constant fettling

When we arrived at Jay and Alices hotel (apparently they prefer comfort) it was time to offload some bikes.

So much Retro Moto metal

That first night, when the bike in a box was still in a box:

Running!... away

I'm city Cycles

China

Bike Bandit (how do I love thee)

Shiny new parts in the mailbox always make the day better

But Sometimes:

Old dirty parts from the junk yard are even better!

That's a nice bottom:

...and top:

She runs, and runs great. After syncing the carbs though she has developed a major oil leak somewhere around the bottom of the head. One way or another though, this is how she' going to Barber.

The storm

There's your' problem, these cases ain't screwed together.

Kevin, in the midst of some lapping action

Jason shining up some valves

Skyler and Jeremy working, and working, and working on fitting up the swinger. This one should be sweet.

Anthony being artsy with the camera

Me playing with the gear stacks, looks like it will work out just fine.

My favorite poster

Junior attempting to straighten an intake valve. It was a valiant effort, but by the time he got it straight, it had shrunk too much. New set ordered and on its way from DCC as I type this.

The only type of beer you're likely to find at my place. But at least there's lots of it.

Done for the day and a beautiful day to ride.

...I wish I had a motorcycle.

The morning before the storm.

...the good kind of storm.

Since I finally had (Thought I had) all the stuff that I needed to put the thing together, what better to do but get all my friends together, feed them all caffeine, and build an effin' bike.

But first, we lunch:

 Some of you may already be familiar with Junior Burrell and his Green Monster, if not, click (www.retromoto1.com) because you should be.

Go Kate!

This is Kates' who the hell is that creep taking pictures of us face.

Speed bump

Everything was going great. I was moving forward, the bike was coming together, and all was good.

...and then, I found this:

Those dogs are junk, fork is possibly reusable, drum is possibly reusable. I tried to find another one of these gears everywhere. I even bought up a whole new basket full of 750 transmission off ebay trying to get one. Same exact problem with that one.

But, with a little help from the good folks over at the SOHC4 Forum I've finally got one and after several months of complete dead stop on this project. I'm charging ahead again.

Life is good.

Red Coat, the other kind

I've become just a tad obsessed with the TZ color scheme. I want to paint everything red and white, and I'm going to start here.

I couldn't get the frame to stop rusting since I've been grinding on it, so I decided instead of touching up all the bare metal with black rattle cans I'd go ahead and shoot the thing red. I have every intention of redoing the paint because I still have to do some frame chopping ahead of me. We'll call this a mockup, a test to confirm the color scheme.

 Stripped

I was working on a friends bike and went ahead and shot my tank at the same time. Took a few layers of primer and a few days to get it all smooth on the top, but I'm pretty happy with the results.

Once the thing's mostly back together I'll take a nice side shot and play with the graphics until I get something that's worth shooting on the tank.