swellguy
Wear out, don't rust out.
Hey everyone,
My name is Kerry, I've been a member here for about a year but finally decided to buy a membership and start posting.
I've been building bikes for about seven years, until recently exclusively Harleys. You can see some of the bikes I did here:
http://www.ksphotos.com/Kerry_Swartz_%5Bphotography%5D/About_Kerry.html
Where I live (Victoria and Vancouver BC), the Harley scene is pretty polarized between HOG/Dealership members and the kids who skateboard and have their bikes in DicE. Both scenes are oddly cliqueish and I never really found friends or others who were interested in what I was doing.
Big wide tire prostreet bikes still seem at home here and I was looking for a new direction to go. There really isn't a café scene here (or at least I haven't found one yet), but I did want to try my hand at building one. There were a number of Sporstster builds I had seen and I had a spare Buell Thunderstorm motor on hand but each of them bikes looked like oversized motors stuffed into frames that were too small.
There is a huge contingent of British twins here; most of them seem set on either restoration or a few go the 70s chopper route. I spent a bit of time watching and waiting for some pre-unit bikes but nothing really came up. Then a low priced 73 Honda cb750 SOHC fell in my lap. A visit to Carpy's site and I figured I'd start my cafe quest with a Honda. I spent a bit of time on the SOHC board and naturally stumbled on Benji's site. "Gorgeous Stuff!" I thought and took the project in that direction.
My build thread continues there:
http://forums.sohc4.net/index.php?topic=76471.0
I'm down to mounting newly built wheels and sorting out electrics. I've been waiting for a custom box swingarm that's taking longer than expected so I might put the bike on hold (work on the headlight bucket hookups for now) until the swing gets in.
What finally obliged me to start up on this board is that now I actually have a rideable café in my garage:
Known simply as "Boomer" about the only thing I can take credit for is owning it. It's my first BMW and was built by a friend and mechanic who works on Harleys but his passion is BMWs. I acquired boomer in trade for one of the bikes I had recently built.
On about page 4 of the Clymer BMW 2-valve Twins book, I realized that I clearly did not have much in the way of a stock 1977 R100S. It's dual plugged with 40mm Dellorto bellmouth carbs:
At one point my friend had actually raced the bike which has a rather unique from suspension dampening system:
I especially like the unique tank badges:
The carbs are rebuilt but I've been trying to tune them up. Taking a bit longer since I've never worked with Dellorto carbs before. Thankfully there's a lot of information out there. The bike has a race cam but I've not gone for a ride though so I can't give you any report about it. It also has a race clutch I've been warned about so I'm waiting for some nice weather to actually ride it. It sounds like an airplane.
That's me for now. I'll explore DTT more for other airheads and sohc owner/builders. If you're in Victoria or Vancouver, feel free to PM if you'd like to meet up.
My name is Kerry, I've been a member here for about a year but finally decided to buy a membership and start posting.
I've been building bikes for about seven years, until recently exclusively Harleys. You can see some of the bikes I did here:
http://www.ksphotos.com/Kerry_Swartz_%5Bphotography%5D/About_Kerry.html
Where I live (Victoria and Vancouver BC), the Harley scene is pretty polarized between HOG/Dealership members and the kids who skateboard and have their bikes in DicE. Both scenes are oddly cliqueish and I never really found friends or others who were interested in what I was doing.
Big wide tire prostreet bikes still seem at home here and I was looking for a new direction to go. There really isn't a café scene here (or at least I haven't found one yet), but I did want to try my hand at building one. There were a number of Sporstster builds I had seen and I had a spare Buell Thunderstorm motor on hand but each of them bikes looked like oversized motors stuffed into frames that were too small.
There is a huge contingent of British twins here; most of them seem set on either restoration or a few go the 70s chopper route. I spent a bit of time watching and waiting for some pre-unit bikes but nothing really came up. Then a low priced 73 Honda cb750 SOHC fell in my lap. A visit to Carpy's site and I figured I'd start my cafe quest with a Honda. I spent a bit of time on the SOHC board and naturally stumbled on Benji's site. "Gorgeous Stuff!" I thought and took the project in that direction.
My build thread continues there:
http://forums.sohc4.net/index.php?topic=76471.0
I'm down to mounting newly built wheels and sorting out electrics. I've been waiting for a custom box swingarm that's taking longer than expected so I might put the bike on hold (work on the headlight bucket hookups for now) until the swing gets in.
What finally obliged me to start up on this board is that now I actually have a rideable café in my garage:
Known simply as "Boomer" about the only thing I can take credit for is owning it. It's my first BMW and was built by a friend and mechanic who works on Harleys but his passion is BMWs. I acquired boomer in trade for one of the bikes I had recently built.
On about page 4 of the Clymer BMW 2-valve Twins book, I realized that I clearly did not have much in the way of a stock 1977 R100S. It's dual plugged with 40mm Dellorto bellmouth carbs:
At one point my friend had actually raced the bike which has a rather unique from suspension dampening system:
I especially like the unique tank badges:
The carbs are rebuilt but I've been trying to tune them up. Taking a bit longer since I've never worked with Dellorto carbs before. Thankfully there's a lot of information out there. The bike has a race cam but I've not gone for a ride though so I can't give you any report about it. It also has a race clutch I've been warned about so I'm waiting for some nice weather to actually ride it. It sounds like an airplane.
That's me for now. I'll explore DTT more for other airheads and sohc owner/builders. If you're in Victoria or Vancouver, feel free to PM if you'd like to meet up.
