Just testing the water, so to speak. Would a H****y based bobber build be acceptable on here ? I seem to spend more time on this forum than the other bike forums that I frequent & I know there are people who like the American tractors on here & who own Ducatis. Don't be worried about rediculing me, I can handle that as I've already build a similar thing & my mate had swamped me with ridicule for the ten years it took to finish. The best was he then went out & bought a Fat Boy !!
Two wheels good. Ride anything, enjoy it for what it is. As you say, there are a few on here already, some like them, others don't; its what makes life interesting. Good luck with it
All builds are good and interesting. Poking fun at slow moving agricultural machinery is all part of the fun. Crack on with the build. If you like it, you do it. I’m sure plenty of people would be interested.Hurry up and post some pictures. Besides, if someone doesn’t want to look/read they don’t have to, do they.
OK, here goes !! First of all I'm not a lover of Harley's, but I do like to look of old style bobbers, so after a lot of badgering by a mate on how good Harley's are & loads of pictures he kept sending me, on a whim, I bought a gearbox & started the Métis. Took ten years, learned lots about the Harleyish world & ended up with a load of parts left over. So, I decided to build another & change the things I didn't like about the first one. I sold the parts I knew I wasn't going to use & bought a few bits I knew I wanted & didn't have. Things like a seat & horn. The front end took the longest to complete last time, (around a year) so I thought I'd start with that. I already had a drilling jig for the disc mounts & a mate gave me a 21" front wheel off some old Harley nail. I made some mounts for the disc & got a local engineering firm to drill the wheel rim for me, (I did the first one on a mates maunal miller, but as he was in the middle of moving house his miller wasn't up & running) using my jig. Once the rim was drilled I stripped the wheels down, fitted the disc mounts to the jig & assembled it for welding. Once that was done the new spool hub & rim went for powder coating, (the disc in the picture is a dummy just for checking alignment). Meanwhile the forks arrived from Holland & I fitted some grease nipples to aid future lubrication. Front caliper mounting arm was next. The previous one again I made on a mates miller. Once I'd finished it I had another mate draw it for me with Solidworks. That way if I ever needed another I could get someone to CNC it for me. So got it CNC'd after checking it all worked with a 3D print. The finished arm & torque link fitted. That's more or less the front end done. The first bike had a single tank that fitted between the two top frame tubes, this will have twin tanks that will fit either side of the top frame tubes. The first bike has a limited range, around 50 miles because it had to fit between the frame tubes. I'm hoping by making twin tanks I can get them made a bit bigger & they will hold enough fuel to go for 70 miles !! Because of this they will need a balance pipe so I made some bungs to fit a balance pipe to to bottom of the two tanks. It will have quick release, self-sealing fittings at either end. I might then be able to mount some of the electrics between the two tanks too if they will fit. That way there'll be more room for the battery in the battery box. I then made the mounting brackets for the tanks, the two curved brackets are for the top mounts & the flat brackets are for the bottom mounts, (brackets were laser cut by a local engineering firm 'cos I was lazy !!). The bending jig I made to go in my hydraulic press, which made bending the two top brackets much easier. Finished parts ready for the tanks to be made. I already had the rear wheel ready. I used a 240 section tyre on the first bike, but wanted a narrower one for this bike. Got a Harley Night Train 17" wheel off Ebay & stripped it, got it powder coated & re-spoked with stainless spokes. The advantge of a narrower wheel is that it means the primary drive can be closer to the centre line of the bike, so you can lean over a bit more when cornering. The first bike goes round right-hands bends slightly better than left-hand bends !! Neither of which are very good at all !! Cornering is not the first bike's strong point ! This morning a caliper arrived in the post so I can get on now with drawing the rear caliper mounting arm & getting that made. When fitted to the bike the caliper will be under-slung, same as the first one. This is where I'm up to at the moment.
If you attached the name steve mcqueen to it then everybody would want one,it's a cool ride and i bet the sound system is great for waking up the neighbours too.
It isn't the stealthiest of things on the road & always passes the MoT without any advisories. The same test station has put advisories on my mates Fat Boy when he has that MoT'd, (much to his disgust !!). Those GPR cans on it come with two removeable baffles, one fits in the front & the other in the rear. You can swop & change them as you please, I've just got the front baffels fitted & find it quite acceptable
Continued with my measuring today & noticed that the banjo bolt for the caliper was too long & didn't clamp the copper washers & banjo body before it tightened up in the caliper body. So, wizzed a millimeter off the bolt on my lathe. Tightens up nicely now. One job less to worry about when it comes to fitting the caliper in a few years time !
I love a bobber. And if you want to waste your hard earned on a machine that turns money into noise without producing horsepower then go for it! Loving the girder front end btw.
I too appreciate the engineering & design work that you have put into it. The finished bike will be a work of art, a bit like a Panigale, always something intricate and different to discover & admire. The only difference for me being I would quite like to own a Panigale, it takes nothing away from your creation though. Fabulous, look forward to seeing the finished bike.
I know what you're saying & I'm with you on the Panigale. I'm hoping my son, who's recently passed is bike test will be buying one soon, (once he's got his garage finished !) so I can use that ! The thing I've come to realise with building any type of custom bike is, once you start you start collecting parts you think will look good and/or like. By the time you come to use those parts you've found, other, better looking part have found their way into your possession so you end up with a load of bits left over. Then when you finish that bike you look at all the left over parts & think I might as well build another bike with those parts ! During this whole process you see other peoples build & ideas & think you want the next one to have that engine & those forks, etc, etc ! I have a good friend who is starting to build a custom Ducati based flat-tracker framed bike. It will have a carbon single-sided swing arm, titanium tubed frame, 900SS engine. He's already looking at the next build ! It's very like "thermal runaway" in electronic components, once it starts it's very difficult or impossible to stop
Just 2 words....Kin awesome!! Build threads I find inspirational , as in live following and admiring, and in these strange times for some of us, this is a ray of light, something to look forward to..thank you.
