I bought this bike after a few hacks had there go at “chopperizing” it… Didn’t go so well…
Brought it home and started knocking bondo off the frame. Oh man! These guys loved bondo! Well they needed it to cover up the hideousness they tried to pass off as welds. The stays on the hard tail were threaded at the ends(i’m all for saving coin and making do with what you have but I mean come on boys!)… the rear wheel sat in the frame about 1/2″ out of level… It was a mess.
So the frame was basically scrap. I kept the head tube and a few of the pieces with motor mount bosses on them and went to town fabbing a new frame. This is my first bike build, but it just so happens that i’m a journeyman pressure welder so that gives me an adavantage over most other first timers when it comes to metal fab. All said and done it is stretched around 4 inches, I think. It’s the same wheelbase as a good friends ’70 Triumph with a 4″stretch on it so it’ll be around there. Lowered… uhhh, about as low as it sits in the pics…
It’s a ’71 so it’s got the 256 motor in it. Roughly 667cc I belive. It’s running a 0.75mm overbore piston kit, and the head is ported and polished by me(I’ve ported a bunch of modern 4-valve 450cc MX heads so this was a nice change with the huge ports and valves). It’s being fed through two Mikuni 38mm flat-slide carbs of a SRX snowmobile. I built the intakes out of MX exhaust headers. Will be running a Mity Max so it won’t need a big ugly battery box/!FAKE!(not so cool imo) oil bag thinger. And an electronic ignition of course…
Front forks and trees are adapted from an early seventies CB550. I had to replaces the stem in the triple clamps to accept the Yamaha bearing kit. This fork has a much shorter offset in the triple clamps than a factory Yamaha does. So it should wake up the handling a bit with the back end being stretched. The 19″ front wheel/brakes are off the the CB as well. Lever/mastercylinder is from a Yamaha Craptor 350 ATV. Rear wheel is a 16″ and I don’t know what it’s from but I like it.
Seat is a blem from Rich Phillips leather on Ebay (nicest seats around). Fender was from Ebay as well.
The bike isn’t quite finished and obviously not painted… don’t know what i’m doing there yet. I will post updates.
I’m not using the purple tank. Definitely going with the vintage Wassell thats mocked on it in the other pics.
Eric Nelson
