LONG TIME NO SEE

It has been a bit over 2 month since my last update so I do apologise to those who have been waiting to see what has been happening. Not long after my last update I landed myself a new job which has been taking up a lot of my spare time. I have also recently purchased a second house which has been stressful and absorbed the last little bit of spare time I have.

Unfortunately, this is likely to be the last update for a little while. The house I will be moving to does not have a garage but I will be building on in due course. Give it 6 months and I should hopefully be back into the bike.

I also wish I had more progress to report on!

Since my last update, key items achieved are:

Mounting of rear sets and bracket
Mounting of rear brake cylinder
Mounting of tail light and number plate bracket
Mounting of rear indicator set

Mounting of rear set and bracket

I originally had cut the rear sets out of 4 mm mild steel. After welding these on there was WAY too much flex in these brackets and they were quickly scrapped. Following this, I drafted up a template in CAD and emailed this off to a local fabricator to laser cut two brackets out of 8 mm mild steel. After just running a single small bead of weld on the outside there is absolutely no flex in these brackets. $70 well spent.

I ordered a pair of adjustable and foldable rear sets online from TEC Bike Parts USA. This allowed me to get the angles for the levers set up right and also allows me to fold the RHS peg up when I need to kick start the bike.

I have also made up a small bracket for the rear brake reservoir which I am yet to weld onto the frame.

I have a high tensile stainless steel spring which is being fixed between the brake leaver and the rear set bracket to provide resistance and to ensure the leaver returns to its original position.

The welds in general are a bit messy however now that all the welding is done I plan on stripping the bike down, sitting the frame up on the work bench and welding all the hard to reach areas and revisiting some of the more average welds. Nothing a grinder cant fix...

Next I modified the old gear shifter leaver so that it could be linked to the rear set. A bit of "cut and shut work" and bending in the vice with a bit of convincing from a hammer and it was all done. I am looking into using swivel ball joints instead of the current connection however am having difficulty sourcing these. If anyone can point me in the direction of a supplier in Australia that would be great!

I am still yet to fix the connection rod to the rear set for the above reason.

In order to mount the number plate bracket and hopefully achieve something remotely road worthy, I had to extend the standard "Ninja Star" bracket which you can pick up from Ellaspede.

Tracking down a tail light that suited the build has been something I have struggled with for quite some time. Prism Motorcycles makes a very nice tail light however, buy the time I get in posted to Australia and currency conversion between USD and AUD it works out to be nearly $200. I ended up going with a mini 50 mm dia tail light from Lane Splitter Garage. The guy who owns the business is close to where I work so met up with him at the local coffee shop and picked it up.

When it came to mounting the rear indicators, I welded nuts on the inside of the seat support rails which the tail lights now screw into.

To be perfectly honest, the tail light does not look that great in the photos however in person it looks really good and the shape of the tail light compliments the overall shape of the bike (that's just my opinion - I will let you be the judge).

And a final picture of the current progress of the bike