XS650 crap.

Anyway. Work continues on the XS650 bar hopper. It's a "Bratstyle Shop" influenced build, mixing Japanese and conventional American Chopper techniques and styles. Real tight geometry, narrow bars, mid controls, etc.

Tore the forks apart as I needed to replace a few seals. Which turned into an "as long as I'm in there" thing... I cut 1.5" out of the main spring, fabricated a spacer for the lower and set it up to preload the spring - (firms it up in other words) and threw 'em back together. Still have to turn the legs and shave some of the excess mounts, but internally lowering and rebuilding the forks are one more check mark crossed off the list.

Still gotta build a seat pan and finish welding up the new seat rails, but I've been feeling too damn lazy for that lately.


Also started ripping down on one of the possible tanks for it. Standard Sporty tank - frisco mounted. Might section and narrow it, length and width wise. Depends on how unlazy I feel.

Did start the metal work for the rear fender. Still unsure of how I'll finish it. Just building the blank. I might wind up welding in the hood spear from a '60-'66 Chevy truck into the tank and then welding in two spears that'll match into the fender. Or just saying F it, and cutting up one of the '36 Ferd spare tire rings I've got kicking about and going the 'easy' way out and forgoing the spear on the tank. At this point.. who the hell knows.

It does have a name though... which is a start for me. The Zombie Runner. Think greens, reds, blues and purple candies over chunky flake.

Pictures... whenever I get off my ass and take some.

Until then.. this is the kind of crap I'm talking about. And that reminds me.. I definitely need to cut out and redo the gussets. The stock ones are ugly.



And I'll leave you with a coupla nice Harley 45"ers. My latest kick. Gotta love 'ol junk'.

Remember folks - always block your wheels and double check everything when working under a car on jack stands. Good friend of mine did everything properly - and unfortunately the unforeseen happened that caused the car to fall off the stands crushing and killing him. You may be gone, but you certainly aren't forgotten Jason. Rest in Peace man.

fender work

As it sounds. Did a bunch of metal work to save a fender.









Obviously I'm skipping over a *lot* of stuff and not explaining anything, but deal with it. It went from a rusted out hunk of crap.. to a clean piece.

Caved Tank

Suppose I'll start it off with a caved tank I just did. Hindsight says it would have been easier to cut & flip then reweld the sides...but whatever. This was done by beating the sides in with a ball peen hammer, a hell of a lot of patience and some flat out f'ing luck. I did everything on it (saved for the dish tank & redoing the rear fender, internal struts, etc) last year. I sectioned and chopped the snot out of (and lowered... a lot) the front fender, resprayed it, chopped the rear fender, built the old external struts, etc. last summer. This was the 'change up' for this summer.

Anyway. Start by beating the shit out of it.


Then continue beating the shit out of it. You'll wind up with something closer to this.
Then continue beating the shit out of it. For a hell of a long time. Then do the other side.

Skip forward a shit ton of work, and throw it into epoxy primer to see what you wind up with. Hopefully something along the lines of this. In truth I did resort to using a skim coat of filler. There was no way I was going to take the time to make the dish 100% metal finished out, as this bike gets POUNDED. Rode hard and put away wet is putting it nicely. Anyway.

White epoxy. She wasn't 100% at that point, but at least I could see easier what little spots needed tweaking. And yeah. I propped it up on jackstands, so sue me. It works. I had other stuff (actually IN paint) on my stands.

Skipping forward, I finally put the thing into black base coat. HD's vivid black.. tweaked. Then I set about doing the silver leaf inlay in the dish on either side. I hadn't done leaf in a *long* ass time so I had to relearn. Obviously still all smeared from my grubby paws, the leafing process and such..but.



Then I masked the inlay. Threw about 9 coats of candy brandywine over it, unmasked and cleared the whole thing. With a hell of a lot of clear to kill the edge. Excuse the crap photos. Most were shot with a cell as I've become too lazy to drag around my DSLR.

Anyway. That lead to. I redid the rear fender at the same time as well. Right off the gun. Also fabricated a set of internal struts for it, among other tweaks. Came out pretty slick overall and really changed the look of the bike. I'll have to take some finished shots with the DSLR...one o these days.