making bars from bars

with no bike here and completely slacking on getting Chris's sportster running, I need some sort of project to keep the few hours (read:1 hour) a day of free time busy. I had talked to both Chris and Kim about using the bends and bungs from the 70moto Gentleman's Bars and changing a few things ever since the shovel was getting finished. brought some pieces by BCM and we've slowly worked on it.

so....some heat, some patient coping, some tacking, back to coping, tacking, welding, heating, smoking, yes, a good amount of smoke was coming out of the ends of the bars, bending, heating, bending, and mounting. Kim was on heat duty while I was on the bending duty and I will fully admit that we went with the "art, not science" style of fabrication which can get interesting when bending stainless steel tubing. tip:use some science with your bends. bend it once, bend it right. whoopsie!

they are not the right style for maximum Bob's bike, but it's what we had to make sure the bars were perfectly in line with the front end. that was my biggest want for these. oh and a nice tight radius in the vertical sections of the bars....I think that they will look quite mounted up, especially after I spend some time behind the polishing wheel!!!

now, back to waiting!!!!! almost there!

Once you go Black, you never go....

Made a few changes to the sporty this weekend. Still working out a few of the kinks, such as a proper and safe way to mount the new (old) tank to my frame, but nothing a few zip ties can't fix for now.

Rode over to BCM Kim's today and had some great conversations about bikes, life, relationships and watched him painfully get through his hangover. Good times!

Side view of the new look. 2.2 gallon 1991-ish gas tank. Has the number 5 on it for when the sportsters switched to 5 speed trannys.

3/4 View. The fender is still a bit higher than ideal, BUT when I'm actually riding, it's probably only an inch off the tire at most. Gotta keep doing some ride testing to see how much lower I can go to the tire. I did decide to keep with the front fender mounted as the rear fender for now. Signature move? not really.....stolen from this amazing bike.

A little Bench Mark love on the points cover. A sweet start to some colab projects coming from BCM Kim and CECNC Pat. Turns out my sportster has the same hole pattern as the old shovels and similar to that of the old Ironheads (turned 90 degrees).

Rear view. A wider rear fender (eventually) will help close the gap in between the width of the shock mounts. I also need a better/different rear view mirror. the stock one looks supes whack. and those forward controls are either going bye bye OR I might be shaving the width down by a few inches so they don't look so, so....out there?

Overall, a great moto-centric weekend.