Bought in Bushels

Rattlecan

Been Around the Block
Hey Boys,

Just signed up, but I've been following a bunch of your builds for a while now, and in the mean time building my bike. Alot of my build has been posted on the Kawi Triples Canada board, but I figure most of you are a bit younger and can appreciate where in going with this.

Life started as an early Kawaski H1 500

I bought it from some dude in downtown Toronto at a garage sale for $75.
It was all stripped appart, a bare frame some rusty wheels, a taken appart siezed motor and a few other bits.
I guess you get what you pay for. lol

The goal is what they call in the car world "Resto-mod" so this was my vison. Cafe style with modern wheels brakes and suspension, yet keep the old school look and 2 stroke.

So here goes.
 

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This was my donor bike a 2006 Kawi ZX-10 that I bought as a irripairable wreck.
So the plan is for this bike to doante its arms and legs, the heart will be stashed away for anothe day and another possible project.

Do any of you know how to post mutile pics at once???
 

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I installed the front end.
The distance of the bearings on the ZX was about 10mm shorter than the original H1 and the bearing race was about 5mm larger, so i cut the steering tube sction off where the original races sat and then machined up an upper and loer piece wher the new ZX races fit inside and then made the bottom of it so that I could press them into the H1 steering tube.
Once I pressed them in I tig welded them up, and put th the ZX races and installed the front end, and it works perfect.
 

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Onto the swingarm, I needed to widen the the rear frame section about 20mm to get the new swingarm to fit. So I welded in some supports before I cut the back end appart
 

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Here is a shot of the new swingarm point I had a buddy of mine make up for me. It worked out perfect so that I can use all of the factory ZX-10 hardware for the swingarm
 

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Here is a shot of the widened rear frame section and the start of the rear mono shock set up.
 

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I picked up a cheap used Yamaha R1 steering dampener. This is where the factory steering dampener went but I had to make up a new mount for the more modern unit
 

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Here is a shot of the bike as a roller.

Hope you guys like it so far. I'll post more pics soon.

I've been doggin' it way too much this afternoon so maybe I should get back to work and earn a paycheck.

Cheers
Dennis
 

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Great start Dennis - and thanks for signing up as a Site Supporter!

Do you want me to move this to the Projects area or start a new thread there? Would be good to have your build in with all the others.
 
This is originally what I wanted to do to my XS650, But I didn't have the skill or money, haha. So I'm loving this build! Looks good.
 
Thanks guys, glad you dig it.

Tim that would be cool if you could move it to the projects section.

Can't tell you guys how much time I've spent there checkin out your projects and gathering inspiration.

D.
 
I ran into a bit of a problem with the tank I bought, actually this is the 3rd tank I bought.
Its amazing how a tank can look soo good on ebay and then you put it on the bike and its completely wrong. fortunately none of them were more than $50.00

On to the tank of choice, I think its actually an H1 or H2 tank im not 100% sure but I like the long narrow look. Once I made up the hangers and mounts I realized that my for tubes hit, so naturally we improvise.

Here we go holes in the tank.
 

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Looks as if widening that frame pivot was quite an ordeal. It would make quite a write up if one were so inclined. ;)

The tank is turning out great too. Hell of a nice job so far.
 
Sorry boys I didn't realize I missed the frame widening part. I dont have many pics of that, kind of wish I took more, but sometimes when your in there hot n dirty you forget.

I think I posted the pics of all the ghetto bracing i did to make sure that the rest of the frame didn't move when i cut it appart. I leveled the bike hoist i was working on, then leveled the bottom of the frame and made sure the steering stem was 100% square.
After that point I was good to cut out just the section where the swingarm bolted up. I made sure to leave all of the motor mount points intact.
I had a buddy machine up the round pieces you saw in an earlier pic that allowed me to use the factory ZX-10 swingarm hardware.
When I cut out the old swingarm mount, I mounted it in my mill and centered the original swingarm bolt hole. From there I milled the opening for the new pieces my buddy made me. I pressed the new piecees into place and tacked them so they wouldn't move.
I then mounted and bolted up the swingarm mounts to the swingarm with all the correct hardware and correct spacing, and loosely set it all in the frame.
I used a laser level I bought at home depot for about $200 which gives you a really nice crosshair on the bike, and then lined up the swingarm, rear wheel, frame and steering neck to be in perfect plane to one another, and tacked the swingarm mounts into place. At this point i double checked the squareness about 2 or 3 times before welding, and also while welding to make sure that the heat from welding didn't pull it out of square. If your gonna attempt something like this make sure you check and double check because you wont believe how much the part will pull and distort from the heat of welding.

The rest was just more welding and grinding till I was happy with the finished product.

You'll notice that the left side looks like its a bit off center but thats because the ZX-10 swingarm is actually 5mm wideer on the left than the right when you check it to the center of the wheel.
I used that factory down tubes and bent them as close as I could and the had to make some gussets to line everything up nicely and smooth it all out.
 

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