1980 Yamaha SR250 - Work in progress

That plate looks awesome there, not to sure about believing that gorilla glue will hold though. Maybe a metal bracket that attaches to under the seat.

If you paint th engine, file the ends of the fins to give it some contrast.

I'm amazed at how these bikes can have such a different personality with very little effort.

yeah when I say paint the engine, I mean accent paint with polished surfaces mostly. very little black paint. I'd like to get a chrome-like finish going eventually when I have a few days set aside for polishing.

and yes the gorilla tape is a momentary solution hah, I will be doing something a little more solid soon.

to find out how far your forks travel, put a zip tie around one of the forks snuggly so it can still slide but stays in place on its own. place it at the bottom of the fork tube just above the dust covers. start her up and get going as fast as you can and then stop as hard as you can with out killing your self. the zip tie will slide up with the compression of the fork and stay in place to indicate how far it will travel during normal use. i'd give it another inch or two above that as how far you can lower the forks. although lowering it that far might look ridiculous and be unsafe as well. but you get the point. with bars on the bike, the forks will hit them and you can only raise them thru a couple inches. thats how mine sits at the moment...

awesome, thanks for the idea. I'll have to get wrenching tomorrow... it's supposed to keep raining so I might as well play around a bit.