Wife got a bike!!

[1st bike]

She told me the other day, that it means more to her that I am building something completely custom FOR her, than having a bike at all.

The above and the line about "tired of starting with crap all the time" were the two best things i have read in this thread. enjoy the time with your wife dude....if momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy! can't wait to see the finished product and the smile on your wifes face as she stands next to something her husband did for her. rock it out!

[T99Ford]

So I have made some progress on the cafe project. The seat is mocked up, and I have most of my cabe routings figured at the steering head. I fabricated a smaller battery box, since this will have pod filters, and I don't need the stock air cleaner mounts. I chopped the rear of the frame and added a new grab bar/ support that is contoured like the rear of the seat. Now I can start the final disassembly, for paint and powder coating. I don't know if I will be using that license plate mount or not, since it sticks straight out. I did plug in that LED taillight, and it works quite well. I think the frame will clean up pretty nicely once it is detabbed and powder coated. So far I have taken off over 30# of weight from the stock setup. I ran it around a little after I got the seat on, and while no XS1100, it has respectable performance.

[Erik the Red]

msf course

Firstly, I think it's great that you and your wife have a project to work on together that involves a bike. I hope to get my girlfriend into bikes at some point.

Secondly, I'm going to advocate for the MSF safety course. It's a very good course, and the things learned will put her way ahead of the curve. It's better to start off with good riding habits than to have to break bad habits later on. They do provide the bikes for the Basic Course, so if it gets tipped, no biggie. Plus it's a closed course (probably a parking lot), so you don't have to worry about learning riding when there are cages and such around. I don't know what kind of bikes they use there, but here there are a couple that era Honda 125's. -Similar style. This will absolutely set her up for success.

I took the liberty of looking it up in MT. There will be courses offered at MSU. According to the website, registration begins March 1st, and I know for a fact that the spring classes fill up fast, so if your wife will plan to take it, mark the date on the calendar. Here's a website that will give you more info. MT MSF courses Good luck with the project.

PS- I was in Bozeman this past summer, and I have to say, the Bozeman Brewing Company has one of the best IPA's I've had. I'm just sayin'.

[joceiphus]

Man that bike looks really good! You're doing a great job!

[DGXSER]

Hey T71, good progress, just a thought though. That battery box looks AWEFUL close to those carbs for fitting pods in. That and part of the beauty of pods is that you can pull carbs easily, that battery box location seems to defeat that purpose. Just the function before form engineer coming out.

[T99Ford]

Thanks for the info, Eric! And I have to agree on the Bozeman Brewing, There are alot of people who enjoy it here!
DG, thanks for looking so close! The pods actually mount to the outside of the battery boxes, so the clearance is not an issue. Though I must admit, I am really putting the pods on for looks; the stock airbox was much better laid out than on an XS and wasn't really a concern, but I just like the clean looks of no airbox better. But thanks for pointing all that out, one can get carried away on one of these projects and forget the little things!

[DGXSER]

Thinking something like the "ram air" set up I saw recently on the site somewhere (maybe in this thread)? You probably did this as you seem to know what your doing better than I would, but just make sure you put the actual parts your going to use in place and remove them the way you plan to for maintenance before you powder coat the frame.

Being in the building industry and specifically mechanical building systems mostly for twenty years, I can not tell you how often I see things put into places where you will need to cut holes in the building walls to get the thing out or even replace a part. Gets old having to tell contractors to think before they install the crap. Even if the engineer showed it like that, we can still think and ask questions before we run full steam ahead and leave the owner screwed. Be even worse if you did that to yourself, so I have to ask.

[Guy_b_g]

Being in the building industry and specifically mechanical building systems mostly for twenty years, I can not tell you how often I see things put into places where you will need to cut holes in the building walls to get the thing out or even replace a part. Gets old having to tell contractors to think before they install the crap. Even if the engineer showed it like that, we can still think and ask questions before we run full steam ahead and leave the owner screwed. Be even worse if you did that to yourself, so I have to ask.

Worst case I ever saw of that was the original Bradley Fighting Vehicle. The whole interior was computer designed so that you could fit all the Infantry gear and one reload of ammo inside with everything neatly stowed away. Problem was much of the ammo was stored under the floorboards, or behind other gear, so you had to get everyone out and unload most of the gear to reload the gun magazine, plus you had to take it all out of the boxes and link it up 20 rounds at a time. Stupid.

In Desert Storm we took out the center seats and built a plywood box with a hinged top, then remounted the center seats on it. Now we could link all our ammo and stow it in a perfect location for a fast reload, we called it a "hot box". Newer Bradleys have "hot boxes" incorporated into their design and made of aluminum.

I don't know how many times I have seen CAD designs in the manufacturing facility where I worked that were simply unbuildable with the equipment we had, or unworkable when on site construction began.

[cywelchjr]

The worst I have seen was with the Microwave Tropospheric scatter radio system that had a very high failure rate component (a large power transistor IIRC) that was buried under 3 layers of other components that never failed. What would have been a 5 minute repair job with a proper design (put the transistor in the open in a socket) turned out to be 4 to 5 hours of work, and generally required replacing about 50% of the components that would not have failed had they not had to be un-soldered and resoldered just to replace that one component. And we could not get the engineers to change the design, even though we had several engineers working at techs who showed the design could have been changed, would have cost less, and actually would have made the transistor last longer. And the worst thing is that the DOD bought the system pretty must as-is.

[T99Ford]

Thanks for taking that kind of interest in my project. Sorry for the confusiong in wording, the pods don't mount on the sides, just the battery box is to the rear, and centered between the pods when they are installed on the carbs. The research I have done doesn't really show any improvement over stock with a ram air at speeds less than 100 MPH, so I have given up any kind of ideas with that.

But, this is precisely why I installed the seat, handlebars, and made the battery box before I did anything else. The battery box is actually pretty close to the stock mounting, just without all the extra stuff for the air cleaners (which used to sit beside the battery). Now I have to disassemble the thing fully, and then cut off all the remaining unused tabs and brackets, and then I am going to polish and clean up alot of the welds. There is alot of spatter and other unnecessary debris around all the welds that I want to get rid of before I powder coat it. But this way I know everything fits. Stay tuned, I will be posing more pics of the project as they happen.

[T99Ford]

I was just going to let everyone know that they can follow the build of this bike as it progresses at Do The Ton.com if you are interested. There are some really cool cafe bikes over there.

Here is the address: http://dotheton.com/index.php?topic=13127.0

It is in sandblasted stage right now, going for powder coating on Monday!