The SR400 #8

Here's a sneak preview of an SR we've been working on for a while. It's at around 80% finished now - the front fender needs to be sorted and we're not going to keep the nitroheads seat on it. That ducktail design is universally beautiful, but a bit of an easy 'out'. So we're working mould that'll make the rear seat.

Besides the obvious, the fairings, etc there's a lot of little niggly things we've sorted - the horrible casting marks on the rear hub, for example. The front wheel actually does have a proper air scoop now (the originals are false) and a few other bits and peices.

More pics to come.

Tank Repairs

The Honda GB500 is a great little bike. While it never got anything like the following the SR did it was reliable, quick, easy to service and looked fantastic in stock trim. Here's Jens GB that we had in the shop a while ago, after it was dropped on its right hand side, leaving a decent-sized dent in the side of the tank.

Stripping the existing finish back...

Oops indeed.

And now the more interesting bit. Studs are welded around the dented area and, using a draw hammer, you essentially whack out against the studs, pulling the dent out and true.

And woolah! You have a un-schmunched motorcycle tank. And here it is all coming together, with some various polishing and tidying up. Good ol' gloss black to finish.

And outside. Can you see the dent?

Nope, neither can we. And paint schemes like this can be pretty unforgiving. We were looking at various tank badges and decals but this stock scheme looks quite good. Testimony to the clean lines of the bike and how well it works proportionately.

Polishing

Sorry about the lack of updates - we've been flat out lately with some new and very interesting projects. Between time spent at the Lincoln welder, polishing and painting and the Broadford Bike Bonanza over the Easter long weekend, we haven't had time to scratch ourselves.

We've done a fair bit of work to this 2005 Yamaha SR400 over the past few years. The latest thing we've done is some mechanical polishing on the sidecovers, top triple clamp, fork brace and so on to make it look a bit more presentable.

Not too much money makes it look a lot flasher...

With minimal care the finish should last a long, long time. As a sidenote, check out Purple Metal Polish by California Custom. It's a bloody good maintenance polish - not as harsh as Autosol for upkeep.

DR650 Tracker

Here's a straightforward one we've had a play with recently.

It's a 2005 DR650 that was built by Deus in Sydney when they first started 6 or so years ago.

When the customer bought the bike it'd been dropped on both sides, and has the marks to show it. Here's some pics of the bike before we got a hold of it, complete with bombastic metal flake.

The customer wanted something a little more traditional looking than the standard headlight surround. He tracked down an XJR1300 headlight and we mounted it and sorted the electrics.

Finished in the workshop...

A few days later and it's up and doing the rounds of Bright and Omeo.

While he was away riding he had a bit of an 'incident' with the tail light. (It wasn't made by us!) It was flimsy and starting to crack from the vibrations generated by a big single, breaking and falling on the rear tyre, shattering the light.

So, we changed the tailight out to something brighter and mounted some smaller indicators further under the rear fibreglass. Some more pics (Again, from the customer)

When it's not lit up, the tail section is hidden under the fibreglass, lightening the look of the bike a fair bit. While we were in there, we found the cause of some of the fibreglass cracking on the right hand side of the ducktail. The exhaust mount bracket was pushing against it, causing some of the 'spiderwebbing' in the finish on the other side. We trimmed the mount so it won't cause any further problems.

Pretty subtle eh? But when it's lit up...

It's a lot brighter than before. Overall a much safer and sturdier package now. Some welding was required and the thing is so solid now you could literally drill down through the tail, mount a ball and tow a trailer.

So it looks like that's the first stage done there.

But while we had the bike, we couldn't help ourselves and have a play with some spare tanks and seats we had around the workshop. We tried a dozen tanks, but none worked as well as an old Ducati parahell twin tank.

Ah, now we're talking...

Watch this space.