Cm 400 to cafe

[Hortons Heroes]

If my speedo dies I will probably check it out.

I have a question on reupholstering my seat. Is it better to just take  seat pan in with no foam or should I buy and shape the foam before taking it to a shop? Also I heard rumors that the club has someone they use often for seat work, any info?

[Rusty Bucket]

Yeah, the upholstery guy is Mike Hyland  - I had a card  with his number , but it's old.  You're young - your probably a whiz with a mobile phone. I would guess you could talk to him about the foam, but if your ideas and expectations are incredibly specific, you should probably at least take a stab at shaping a foam base that meets your criterion.   Nobody better qualified than you to know what is in your head.  Nice pocket for the speedo on the top triple there, the mount will be deep if you use the stock bosses but should be solid enough for the single central guage.  Nice dark area for the warning lights if you have the room. 
  Are those stock black turn signals?  Or just stock chrome ones painted black?  If they are black, I can't believe I missed those last year when I was looking for black signal lights for the LeMans - I ended up using vastly uglier plastic Yamaha units - and those Honda ones look good (to me).
  No chance the front fender hits the bottom of the headlight housing at full bump? Not that this seems to be an insurmountable problem - I see people riding around with those tool kits about 1" above their front fender, and somehow they never have the big dent in the top of the fender that I would get in the first half hour with that arrangement...

[Rusty Bucket]

Ford used a cable drive electronic speedo system in the mid 90's. a small electronic gizmo on the trans that gave a pulse. I wonder if a person could utilize that type of unit to work with electronic tach.(same principle, mech rotation to guage)?

  I have been wishing for a cable-drive electronic- hybrid speedo, meaning the cable goes into the instrument housing as normal, and then drives an adjustable signal-generator, before final display.  On the black Guzzi I am (planning on) using one of the bicycle-style speedos, the ones with the rare-earth magnets fitted to the wheel hub, usually at the rotor bolts;  but they are kind of ugly, and the only one I had anything to do with prior to this became an enigmatic mystery at the electronic level, and so displayed nothing but useless gibberish.  The one I have may not be much of an improvement.

[Hortons Heroes]

I believe they are stock, I have another 1980 that has the black ones on it as well.

Even with the light turned over there is piles of room between the fender and the light...unless I start doing fronties...and gain 100 pounds.

[Hortons Heroes]

I for sure have 4 of the rear lights in black that are spares. I could just trade you for the chrome ones off of my soon to be cafe if you want. I don't really care if they are black or chrome.

[Hortons Heroes]

I think I made a boo boo.
I got my clip ons hooraayy...Turns out I didn't look at the colour enough and they are not silver but kind of a Mr T gold colour. I think I now how to name my bike "Pity the fool"

Going to toss them on Saturday night and get some more pics.

[Hortons Heroes]

Latest update.

The triple tree on the left, speedo just hanging there. Decided to lower the whole front end by just pushing the forks father through the triple tree instead of cutting down the fork ears and mounting them low.


Triple tree upside down, ignition mounted ( a little hillbilly but super solid) and choke mounted. Boring the hole from what it was for the handle bar mounts to  1"for the ignition took a long freaking time. The choke was a breeze.


Rought draft of the speedo mount and the dummy lights pannel. Got to late so it will be the finishing touches soon. Made from a salvaged truck box thing. The X's are showing what else will be cut off from the mount. Clip ons  mounted and they looks great. Pushing the forks up flattened some of the lines on the bike as well. You can see the choke and ignition mounted in the handle bar holes. Some O rings to center to ignition then a bead of silicon to keep the water out.


The new look with the clip ons mounted...so ...many...cables...to shorten!


I need to shape the foam and then the material needs to arrive but a flat seat is being created.


When I took the triple tree off Ben warned me that the steering post was ball bearing mounted, I was careful with the top ones but I shifted the bike and didn't realize there were ball bearings on the bottom as well and they scattered across his shop. Luckily I found all 19 and we regreased both which was not a bad idea at all.

Progress continues.

[Rusty Bucket]

Ah, for a minute there I thought you were inverting the top triple clamp for some reason - but now I understand, you were illustrating what was going on in the former handlebar mounting pockets.   The clip-ons look good - with you on the colour, but still, they look long enough, and I like the mounts... I'm still concerned that, at some point, your desire to have the headlight bucket low is going to converge with the results of having your forks pushed up through the triples..

Here is a bratbike mock-up (not a real bike - a Kawasaki triple tank from that period will not go on a 650 Yamaha frame without being completely gutted - and even then, I doubt it would fit as low as this computer mock-up.  Notice the telltale white pixels between the seat and rear of the tank.  I didn't notice;  I thought this was a real bike, and I was pretty taken with it.)  Very nice brakes, though, and the bike looks good.

[attachment deleted by admin due to full attachment storage]

[Hortons Heroes]

I will be working with my existing seat pan so my seat will hopefully be flat but it wont be that thin.

That is a sweet look, thanks to you I will now spend my next hour looking at brat bikes. If that was real that tank would get mighty hot.

[Hortons Heroes]

One thing off the list tonight, lots of progress but only on one area.

They sent me two of the same colour light in two different styles in the same order...working this out now with the seller on ebay but just so you have a heads as to why the dummy lights may look different.


The old harness for the dummy lights


New harness for the dummy lights. Just plugged it in to give it a test. brown wires are signal (forgive my jargon) and the blacks are grounds. All in all simple enough just took a while to get it done.


Testing out the new lights. All of them work just dandy. from left to right (for reference the holes on either side of the lights mount to the two bolts about the choke and ignition.)
left turn
neutral
oil
highbeam
right turn


Cleaned up the metal and got the primer coat on (going to be black) the bracket that holds it all together. Loom and some minor wire hiding then onto the next thing. Hop?ng to get new seat finished before christmas but I doubt my material will arrive by then.

I have spare front and rear rims for the tires so I may get bored and take all the black paint off and clear coat them.

[Hortons Heroes]

was just looking at mounting my mirrors as bar ends and remembered the clip ons are aluminum. That means I can't do the Rusty method and weld a 10mm nut into the end of the bar and then just screw the mirror in, reshape and tada...bar end mirrors.

Stumbled on these adapters and realized they may be worth the money to save me some time. They also make it super easy to mount right side up, upside down or wherever I want on the bar.



I am loving the look and price of these.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/universal-7-8-10mm-Motorcycle-Handlebar-Mirror-Mount-holder-adapter-4-colors-/261119415889?pt=Motorcycles_Parts_Accessories&hash=item3ccbee1651&vxp=mtr

and in black
http://www.ebay.com/itm/universal-7-8-10mm-Motorcycle-Handlebar-Mirror-Mount-holder-adapter-black-/251179671140?pt=Motorcycles_Parts_Accessories&hash=item3a7b799e64&vxp=mtr

[Rusty Bucket]

When I am welding in slugs for mirrors and weights, I usually drill holes vertically through the bars and weld that way, leaving a flat seat on the end of the slug for the mirror base (or for more weight).  Dressing the welds which are now on the grip surfaces is pretty easy.  In aluminum, much the same thing could be accomplished by countersinking a couple of fasteners into an aluminum slug - staking it in place - you'd just have to dress the head of the fastener to conform to the bar's surface.  The welding doesn't affect the threads in the steel slugs, but you'd have to go a little farther in from the end of the bars for bolting them in, since you need the fasteners to not overlap... anyway, the clamp-on mounts that you have there look sanitary and will work perfectly, I'm sure, and save you the trouble of modifying your new clip-ons.  I'm just too cheap for such things.
  Nice job with the indicator/warning lights - can't argue with full-functionality.

[Hortons Heroes]

That makes more sense and is fairly ingenious.

I had a question on your tanks, they almost have a clear coat on raw metal look. How did you achieve that?

[Rusty Bucket]

Yup, pretty much as you say, clear-coat over bare steel.  The trickiest part of this is that the clear-coat has a difficult time adhering to polished metal - so you have to sort of find the balance-point between adhesion and the shiny alloy look we like.  The other note applies to Japanese tanks from the '70's, anyway - maybe others - but definitely them - the steel has re-eally been stretched in many of these during manufacturing.  The result is that the steel is thin, and has had it's 'grain' sort of stretched open. This makes no difference under most circumstances, but if you really try for a super-fine bright shiny finish, you can end up with weird areas of the tank which will annoy you with 'pores' in the steel that you didn't see earlier with the duller finish.  And also your rattle-can clear-coat might scratch and chip off very easily.
  There are real catalyzed clear-coats out there that might avoid these issues  - but I am 25 years out of date on auto paint.

[Hortons Heroes]

I have started to remove the paint off of my wheel rims with a wire brush and it gives it a nice even texture without polishing it. They are aluminum and steel which almost gives it a nice two tone look. I am not really going for super polished look with my bike anyway as I like metalic but not sold on chromy looks.

I was going to paint the tank and side covers as I like colour on my bike.

As with all things on this build I don't know anything about upholstery so I was super nervous to start any work but one quote of $220 to redo the seat gave me a new confidence in my abilities. Here is the work so far, you can see the step up shape of the old style seat in the pics above.

Here is the seat pan needing some love. It has the shaped bottom on it.


I cut the seat so the bottom line is straight across and derustified the thing. The meant I cut off a few of the spikes to grab the fabric and left a sharp edge.


Riveted on new spikes and put car door edging that will keep the stretched fabric from rubbing on the metal edge.


I cut off the passenger seat foam all together and what you see is basically just a skirt that covers the drop in the metal so the fabric will have something behind it. The white foam is right on the metal, it's also far to light of a weight and compresses to much but I don't plan to be on the back of my bike much....or at all. I got an electric turkey knife to do the rough shaping then used an angle grinder with a sanding disc on to do the fine work. The front seat I brought back the foam a few inches from the tank as it used to ride up it a bit and tried to flatten it out before putting on the white layer. I like the look and am just waiting for the fabric to arrive so I can stretch it over.


It's just being modeled on another bike in my garage, the cafe is at a friends garage. This shot is part of the way through the cleaning up of the excess white foam.


Not sure if my goal of a done seat by Christmas will come true but unless someone has some seat material for cheap looks like I will have to wait.