Fair bit done today although looking at the bike you wouldn't really know,
First up welded up the cut off chain guard holder on the swingarm. It had a depressed section and so I cracked out the filler rod, filled it in and ground it back.
Next up was the subframe. There were a couple of things to achieve here:
1. Remove kinks in the tube after the upright tubes (the tube wasn't level all the way around causing the gap to the bottom of the seat to be inconsistent)
2. Lift it up about 25mm
To remove the kinks I got the grinder and cut some slits where the tube was kinked. Standing on it to bend it slightly, then rewelded back up. Got it pretty good in the end although I will need to tidy the tubes up a bit before paint.
I'm after a sporty aggressive look with this bike, like a modern sportbike. The GSXR front end helps a bit but I needed a bit more space between the rear wheel and the rear hoop. The dodgy way would be to put a longer shock on it, however this would bugger up the handling and also probably cause the chain to rub the swingarm. The other alternative was to bend the whole subframe up, not an issue seeing as I won't require it to be load bearing because I will be converting to a monoshock.
Worried it would look goofy but I used the same technique as I used on the kinked sections. Worked a treat. Just need to get some 1" tube to extend the uprights.
Other items were finishing off the seat, cut the bottom so it was level all the way round, welded up some sections and got the grinder on it so it was smooth. Looks much better:
Stance of the bike is looking great compared to how it was.
Old:
New:
Also started on the tank. Getting it all welded up is proving to be a pain, lots of blowing holes, but I'm getting the hang of filling them in with the TIG. Hope to have it ready for pressure testing in the next couple of weeks.