poop's tuscaloosa dumplin'!

[Poop]

Originally Posted by Boogeyman

What kind of powder coating rig do you have Poop?

it's not mine, but a buddy's. it's the basic, bottom-end hotcoat brand setup you can get from eastwood. works great for what i had to do.

[Poop]

Originally Posted by donald branscom

You need 5 inches ground clearance. OK....4.5" that it.

Frame looks very good. good start.

Now you need a build table 20 iches high 30 inches wide, and 8 feet long.

thanks for the feedback, donald! actually, i just finished this build a week or so ago. it's in this month's COTM... so give 'er a vote if you think she's worth it. at least, just vote for someone, because that was one of my favorite parts of this website, minus the negative crap from a long time ago.

as for the build table... it would have been nice, but i made do with blocks of scrap lumber from my workbench project, and from some old farm gate posts lying around, and from a sears bike jack.

as for the seat... i would have had to do much the same, as i hammered and test fit a gazillion times to eliminate even the slightest pressure points, so it's kinda personalized for MY ASS. i've spent much time in tractor seats, and appreciate their relative comfort, but ultimately took my inspiration from another source.

thanks again for the feedback and for reading.

[Poop]

alright, sorry i've let this stagnate a few nights. i'll try to keep on at a quicker pace here. and same as before, if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask. otherwise, i'm gonna try to keep clipping through here.

my confidence boosted by the success of my seat pan (i'm very happy with that part so far), i started fucking around with that old headlight shell i was cabletying up to the trees in initial brainstorming sessions. it got pulled from service because of the long cracks in the thin shell that developed at the mounting points, right through both of the mounting holes (very close together). i had looked around several junkyards and other places for all kinds of shells i could modify, and never found anything i liked any more. this one was already in my hands, was free, and had a little room in the rear to stuff fuses or other electrical shit later.

[Poop]

so in the interest of fucking around (a friend showed up one night with her camera and wanted to snap a few shots, too), i used a cut-off wheel to cut out the cracks, then hammered out some 1/8 from the seat pan effort to fit the inside of the shell there, since the shell was simply too thin to bear much of a weld--or much vibration for that matter--as it was.

the pics from that night were more goofing off than anything, so my apologies, and my apologies to brad for dragging his good shop name into this night of fine crapsmanship.

oh yeah, and joke all you want about the glasses, but i seem to get shit in my eyes all the freakin' time, always have. maybe i have a slow blink reflex or something. but as bad as it is with sawdust and fence splinters and pepper bugs, i know it's worse with rust flakes and hot metal.




oh, and joke the hammer, too, it you want. but that's all i had back then. never really beat on any metal other than galvanized fence nail heads. (yes, i got the zinc flakes in my eyes, too.)



now i understand why not to mount a vise so freakin' high. i did better a year or so later with my anvil.

[Boogeyman]

Originally Posted by Poop

it's not mine, but a buddy's. it's the basic, bottom-end hotcoat brand setup you can get from eastwood. works great for what i had to do.

Thanks, i'm going to check them out. I'd like to have something (on the cheaper side) to do small parts with. I'll leave the larger stuff that requires a huge oven to the pro's, but I would really like to try doing some small stuff like fork lowers, handlebars and pegs etc...

[Poop]

time for a test fit. no leaks! word up...



poor dude. he has been a witness for many years of his master's steady descent into utter madness. but he's loyal, like my little igor. "igor, more moles! igor, more crickets!"

[Poop]

Originally Posted by Boogeyman

Thanks, i'm going to check them out. I'd like to have something (on the cheaper side) to do small parts with. I'll leave the larger stuff that requires a huge oven to the pro's, but I would really like to try doing some small stuff like fork lowers, handlebars and pegs etc...

it's worth every freaking penny. i'd have one by now, if i hadn't enjoyed free access to that setup, plus a bunch of other equipment i'd never be able to afford, in a huge, clean shop space, with skilled aircraft mechanics generous with their wisdom and time.

even used it to do my hubs and rims before re-lacing! it's almost idiot-proof. even a little fun. you could probably recoup the cost quickly coating small parts for friends.

[Poop]

so i don't have pics from the mount fabrication process, but it's pretty simple. in all of my years of riding, i only have to adjust my headlight if someone else fucks it up, or if the chick i'm carrying gets too fat. (happened, don't joke.)

since this bike is being built only for one (having a passenger takes so much fun out of the ride, i've learned through the years), i decided to mount this headlight without any adjustment. the only variable would be the spring rate of the front forks, and that's fairly easy to get straight.

i also wanted my mount to be simple and clean. and my trees really only offered mounting points on the top side. so i flipped my shell upside down, since i now had 1/8" of steel to weld to, and welded up some roundbar, curved and cut from beneath to taper down to the front of the shell, in a fashion that matched the treatment at the front of my seat hinge.




of course, that treatment involved beveling back further to allow for deep weld penetration, so i can sculpt back the weld to create the look of the roundbar neatly melting into the shell, just like the seat hinge. it takes some time and patience, but no money. it was a perfect fit for me.

[Poop]

around this time i discovered bare knuckle choppers' build that he called "helena handbasket," and loved it. pics here. like all of y'all, i get my brain churning on ideas while i'm sitting on the crapper churning out a crap, all while admiring other people's ideas from mags like cycle source and the horse. (actually, i don't read the horse too much anymore, not for a while.) when i came across this bike, it got my mind spinning on several ideas. one was the heim joint mount for the rear fender. very rarely do i see a fender mount that can move to follow the tire after chain adjustments. another was the coolness of routing the exhaust under the seat, which of course is nothing new under the sun. and the third, I THINK, was the pull chain idea for the lights. it's neat, no mess, and different--what we're all going for--but i can't tell from the pics if this is the bike i got the idea from. for some reason i think it is.

so anyway, i asked around about that idea, and learned from my electrical engineer friend that i'd need to do it with a relay, since those switches (including the samples i'd brought him from lowe's) are designed for very low current. i didn't know anything about using a relay, but he said he'd make it work, no problem, gave me one out of his garage so i'd figure how to make it fit, and said to look him up when it was time to wire the bike.

and THAT'S what i mean when i say i have awesome friends, and couldn't have done this without the help of some really cool people.

so, in goes the pull chain. (later in the build, i decided to add another pull chain for another function. it's in the same location, left side of the headlight, and the bucket now contains three relays. glad i had all that room.)

[Poop]

that's it for a little while. i have work to do, customers to supply, all that. i think i'll be able to post some more this weekend, though.

thank y'all so much for reading. i can tell from the "views" statistic that some folks are. so thanks.

[Spade115]

you have a pull chain to turn on your light? THATS AWESOME!!

[Poop]

okay, i'm gonna try not to post many more pics to this page. so i might have to burn a couple of posts, to get us to the next...

[Poop]

most of the tanks you see on the last page include a tank i was borrowing from kilby deuce, and decided not to use for a couple of reasons. i decided that i wanted to make something cool from the crapass tank i had. a few inspirations had influenced me.

top of that list was markee's thread here on cc about six years ago entitled tank building tutorial. it is still one of the best threads on this site, in my book. it's also the reason i'm writing this thread, in case i can give somebody the confidence that his thread seemed to pass on to others on this site. i have nowhere near the skills that markee has, but maybe that can give some confidence to the guys who don't have much of a background.

another inspiration was this tiny little tank that i had seen on the pray for me documentary about jason jessee. in it he had a skinny little sporty tank he'd modded, i mean skinny and high as hell. i thought it was cool as shit. you only see it for a second, during the part where he's putting chickens through endurance challenges, i think. or somewhere around then. but the point is that i had in my head that a sporty tank, modded skinny and high, would be the way to go for me. especially on such a low chop as this. i liked the whole stance of a high hunchback tank sticking up freakishly.

the last inspiration was the tank itself. it had been leaking, apparently not for the first time. an outlet at the bottom, and a couple of other places, had been brazed or soldered extensively, and still leaked. so i knew i needed to just cut out the bottom and start over for that. and as long as i was doing that, then mods to the shape of the tank would be fairly easy. (this coming from the guy who doesn't weld worth a shit, or really at all at this point.)

[Poop]

okay, i think i have one more post to burn before posting pics. i knew from the kilby deuce tank i had put up there that a tight taper in the back of the tank would give the bike a narrow "waistline," if you will. keeping the bike skinny would make the motor look bigger, give the bike more of a redneck, minimalist, hot rod look.

however, i did realize with the parallel twin that a tank as skinny as the jason jessee one would just look silly. i was helping another buddy out on a 750 build at this time, and a regular sporty tank on that made the bike look pear shaped from behind or in front. it seemed like the fat guy from laurel and hardy (don't remember which one was the fat one) wearing that tiny little hat. it just looked stupid. so i decided i'd leave the front of the tank the same width, and just taper the back.

[Poop]

oops, one more post to burn...