MINE V-Star

wetwilllie

Active Member
I can't sleep so I will tell you a story about my 2001 Yamaha V-Star 650.

I picked it up in trade for my Yamaha Raptor 660 4-wheeler that I had been trying unsuccessfully to sell for 4 months. So I made the trade and lost 10cc and gained a pile of chrome, catalog bought "customization" and a lot of weight.
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Basically I hated everything about this big fat bike. So we started ripping parts off and painting things. Here is the change after the first night. After this things moved a little slower.
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Then I started hitting the tank with a hammer, painting things black and my friend started beating a piece of aluminum into a seat for me.
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Painted headlight with Chrome skull/star.
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Here is the tank with primer on it. Before you look, be warned, I used no bondo or any other filler on this. just sprayed the bare metal.
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We raise the forks in the trees 1.5 inches-ish and then re-located the rear upper shock mount to drop it 1.5 in the rear. It also had some Vance & Hinds pipes on it so I cut the chrome covers off of them and pulled the silencers out. I think it made things much better. The giant air filter cover got tossed as well and I rejetted it.
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Painted the tank with a gold leafed skull/star and took it for test rides with no seat trying not to fall into the rear tire.
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<a href="http://vimeo.com/8658072">maiden voyage</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user1789568">Sky Fleming</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>
<a href="http://vimeo.com/8661429">Untitled</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user1789568">Sky Fleming</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>

Built a plate and taillight mount out of aluminum,
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Made a seat spring out of an old trailer spring.
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And mounted the very pretty seat My friend Matt made.
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Found a fender at my local bike scrap yard and smacked it with a hammer until it worked.
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And that about finished it. Then I rode it and listed it for sale for 4 or 5 months until it sold to fund my next projects. Thanks for taking a look. I think I told enough of a story that I can go to sleep now. g'night.
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I LOVE THIS! I hate those big fat bikes and the only thing people ever seem to do with them is bolt more bullshit onto them. This looks awesome.
How the hell were you able to get the tank dents smooth enough just using a hammer?
 
Great work willie you cleaned it up real nicely.

VonYinzer said:
Pretty cool man. Hard bike to make look good. Well done.
Do you really think so? I've seen a lot of sick 650 VStars. The thing that usually leaves the most to be desired on them is the tank still looks huge and I guess its a hard bike to swap tanks on, so the dished sides on this one really help out on that one.
 
Thanks guys, it was way fun to drive too. the pegs scraped and sparks flew every turn.

Aetsh said:
Are you eventually painting the back fender?

Sold it already for the new projects.

Gimpy Joe said:
How the hell were you able to get the tank dents smooth enough just using a hammer?

With one of these and a saturday. ha
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wow man that looks dope as hell! i ahve seen some of the kits that blue collar bobber builds for them, love the v stars!
 
This thing looked amazing! I like bobbers that arent too tall or long, but WIDE like that, though slimming the tank was definitely a good call.

I particularly like the chrome and black skull work, I may leave some chrome showing through in some design on the new headlight bucket if I can make a decision on what I want.
 
silverstonepgt said:
I particularly like the chrome and black skull work, I may leave some chrome showing through in some design on the new headlight bucket if I can make a decision on what I want.

It turned out pretty good. One tip: Don't scuff/sand the chrome for paint until the stencil is taped off. It's worse then hard to shine once painted.
 
if you have access to a blaster you can turn down the PSI, lay your decal, then blast, works awesome to keep the chrome shiney and scuff up the rest
 
JRK5892 said:
if you have access to a blaster you can turn down the PSI, lay your decal, then blast, works awesome to keep the chrome shiney and scuff up the rest

Hey, I hadn't considered that, I can do that at the college!
 
Wow man, i love your bike. I sold my 650 Vstar last year. Now im wishing I held on to it and make it into a beast!! nice stuff.

Miss my old pearl:
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The key to the vstar is diet. they need to lose weight fast. I'm glad you guys like what I did.

Good tip on the blaster. thx
 
Weird-I'm wondering how they re-did the stock neck tubes on those ones I posted. The stocker looks crazy reinforced.
 
So what's that oil bag looking thing hold- electrics and cover the shock? Seems easy to move the key back to there to open that frame up.
 
Love my V-Star! Yeah, it's big and fat... but I like that for what it is. Totally a different kind of bike from my Seca. I do find I have to stop myself from jumping into a bobber project, and these pictures make resisting that much tougher.

Great job, and that tank's awesome!
 
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