1981 Virago XV-920: First Time Build

[settintrendz]

Lookin Rad Man!! Great job on the subframe. The clutch and ignition covers look really good. I like that you spent the time to clean em up instead of just painting the entire thing black like some do- Assembled no less.

***Just noticed the subframe woes. At any rate, it does look good and do the job. Can not believe that price though. Wow.

 

[RoyalRider]

Bryanjoh, you're bike is turning out sick and I am really appreciating the great photos.

I will be setting up a paintbooth in my garage in the spring and your garage is about the same size, good reference pics. Same with the info for painting the engine and parts. I was toying with the idea of doing that for my Honda's engine as it's very old and dinged up but was wondering if it was worth the trouble. It didn't seem to be that much of a hassle for you so I might tackle it. Shame you had to pay that much for the sub-frame Still it looks great and will get you on the road that much faster.

So yeah, sweet build so far, I'm interested because there are tons of viragos in my area for cheap and I've always wanted to work on one.

 

[bryanjoh]

Thanks for the feedback everybody, its great to hear.

As far as the prices go, my budget is based on the idea to be able to sell the bike for break-even cost....assuming my hours on hours of labour are free (it's a hobby, not a job). Right now I am anticipating the final costs to be somewhere around $3200-$3400 CAD.

Based on what I have personally sold other, lesser bikes for in Calgary, I believe I can get this back out of the sale when it comes time to finance the next project. Now the only issue is whether the bike will sell in fall after I've had my fun with it, or if I will need to hold it over next winter until demand spikes in springtime.

Would be nice to sell it come September or so to fund a new project.

But then again, this is all still based on the assumption that I am competent enough to get it running again....

 

[bryanjoh]

Now for a fun post, all the pictures after a weeks worth of painting.

I did a batch of parts with the Duplicolor Hi-Build primer and gloss black, the same stuff I used on the frame. These have no clear coat, and haven't been sanded at all. I tried to mask off a part of the foot braces to get a bit of contrast, and ended up getting a little bit of bleed-through which I'm a little upset about, but its not a major.

All the while, my laundry room has been turned into a temporary curing oven. Which works alright with the furnace in there and the door shut, maximum heat, minimum fumes.

Next up was exhaust. As I mentioned before, I wasnt happy with the VHT Flameproof that I used on the engine, it seems super fragile. So I opted to go with Duplicolor Engine Enamel in gloss black for the pipes. Duplicolor specifies a maximum temperature of about 500F though, whereas VHT claims up to 2000F. So I thought maybe if I use the VHT Primer underneath, that may help.

I had about 1/3rd of a can left over from the engine, hence the two cans of VHT, I didn't use nearly that much.

The pipes have been sitting now for about 5 days and I am really happy with the finish. It's super glossy and seems a LOT tougher than the VHT is on the engine. Be it, neither of these have been cured properly as per the cans (with the engine running at high heat), so maybe the VHT will harden up a bit once the bike starts blowing smoke.

 

[Maritime]

The engine enamel will likely burn off on you over time. At least at the header closest to the motor, it might hold up near the end. I think Duplicolor makes a header paint too but I can't remember. Now matter what, you have to cure them to the letter on the instructions or they fail. Nice work though.

 

[bryanjoh]

Now for the tank....


On Maritimes recommendation, I went back and picked up a tube of Bondo's Glazing Putty to fill in the small pits and such. The putty was super easy to work with and seemed to do its job quite will. Darker red is the putty, white-pink is the original bondo. You can really see all the imperfections it filled in.

Now after one more night of sanding I thought the tank was now smoother than glass.... Sadly I was wrong. Not until the color coat went down did I realize how apparent the bondo work would be under the paint. I thought the paint/primer would fill in small imperfections, in fact it did quite the opposite, it accentuates them.

The paint though! Strictly speaking to the color and finish of the Duplicolor Metal Specks Retro Red, I'm thrilled with it. It was a little tricky to spray, it goes on real thin and is transparent, so I was a little worried until about the 4th coat went down and the color really started to show up. I primed the tank using some leftovers of the Duplicolor Hi-Build Fleet Primer.

For the clear coat used Duplicolor Acrylic Laquer. I'm really happy with this, it was incredibly easy to spray and came out with no eggshell whatsoever. I have no intention of sanding the finish to any extent.

All-in-all, the tank could have been done better on the prep side of things, but it came out good enough that I have no intention of stripping it down again and redoing it anytime soon.

For a first attempt, I'll take it,

Color only, no clearcoat yet.

This one shows the bondo show-through at the bottom of the tank, this was hard to photograph.

Final product with clear coat!

 

[Maritime]

A trick to finding your flaws is to use a cheap paint and put a glide coat on, then all those little parts show up before you use the good expensive paint. That being said most folks won't look close enough to see them, but you will always see them LOL. Also, the clear you used looks good but be careful with fuel. Gas will eat through and ruin your paint in seconds, so careful when you fill it up. I like that colour too. It really pops in the sun.

 

[bryanjoh]

I'm aware, my last home-painted cafe that I bought had a huge gas spill spot on the tank in the clear from the previous owner. I always make sure to grab a bunch of paper towels to wrap around the nozzle when filling.

 

[Maritime]

Yep, the alternate is 2K clear but you need a proper booth, mask(respirator), goggles, etc. but you can dump gas on that all day long. That being said, I have also used your trick of keeping the paper towels at hand to catch drips

 

[kimjay]

I used metal specks and 2k on a tank and it was great. Looked almost professional. Nice project and so you know the duplicator will burn off the exhaust almost immediately at the head pipes, as it gets too hot there. I know cause i tried it on my gs.

 

[bryanjoh]

Damn, the pipes look so good though. Maybe I will end up wrapping the headers up to the slip-ons once they burn. Didn't really want to do wrap on this though, I dont think it suits it.

 

[Maritime]

You may get lucky and the primer may keep the paint on there but I have had the high heat burn off when curing by not quite timing the heat and cool cycles properly so I am guessing the 500 will not make it when you get to the full hot part.

 

[The French Dude]

Nice build!
I'd love to build a Virago... Maybe the next one

 

[bryanjoh]

The tank has been hanging up curing for a couple of days now and seemed solid enough to lightly handle for a couple minutes, so I decided it was time for a first painted mock up.

I'm starting to get pretty excited to get riding this thing....

Now my struggle over the last two nights has been completing the frame remount. The last couple bolts go in with the rear foot braces, and damn these were a pain.

There are two bolts from frame to front cylinder, two from frame to back cylinder, two that connect the main spine of the frame to the lower center stand portion, two on each foot brace, and one long stud that runs straight through from one foot brace, through the engine, and out the other. And all of them have to line up perfectly.

If anybody else is also fighting with this, the trick that finally worked for me was to remove the two that connect spine to center stand, then put in all the bolts that go through the foot braces (with the help of a lift and a prybar), then loosen the spine-cylinder bolts, put the bike on center stand, and use a prybar to get the spine-center bolts back in.

Was a huge relief to get this all back together finally.

 

[Maritime]

Nice job

 

[bryanjoh]

Been fiddling with rear-sets now for a couple of nights. I had bought DCCs universal rear sets that come without any linkage, so I needed to figure out how to get them connected. I picked up some threaded rod, and a couple of ball joints from Princess Auto which seem to do the trick.

The tricky part here is that the shifter and rear brake each have a spline connection that is hard to match up with anything else. So I took the original shifter lever and brake lever, chopped them, and drilled a hole in the end (drilling through cast with a cordless drill is a pain).

These may need a bit of tweaking down the road, but for now they will stay. Because I still haven't reinstalled the exhaust pipes, I didn't realize until later that I think I am going to have clearance issues with the brake side. The pipes will come in right under the rear triangle and I don't think the linkage is going to fit. I may need to redo this one later to have the linkage on the top side instead of the bottom.



Now, onto what I consider the scariest part of the whole build......electrical. By trade, I'm a mechanical engineer, I don't have the foggiest idea at all how electrical works. So the gameplan here is to simply put the old harness back in and reconnect everything. The only things I'm changing out are the signals and the taillight.

I know what at least two of the things in this pile do.....

I thought I was going to have to remove the carbs to get the harness back in it's home, thankfully all I had to do was loosen them a bit to squeeze this back in on top of them. These carbs are near impossible to reinstall unless the engine is pulled out of the frame.

That's all for now, will probably be back in a couple days asking for electrical help.

 

[Munamankeli]

Nice build

 

[ezence01]

Great job. Can't wait to see it on the road.

 

[Dourado13]

Great job until now , looking forward to start working on mine again


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[bryanjoh]

Been quite a while without a progress update. It's summer time now and I have been spending more time riding my Harley than I have working on the project.

I believe I have completed about 95% of the electrical. Whether or not everything works of course remains to be seen since I do not have a battery yet (leaving that till last). I do however have a lot of pictures to dump as I have made some pretty notable progress lately.

First thing was to modify the old headlight bracket; the old signal mounts wouldn't fit with the clip-ons, so off they came.

Headlight bucket and speedo cluster reassembled and mounted

Next, I had to make a new positive cable for the battery to make up for the increased distance from under the seat to the starter relay. I did this using welding cable, crimping the lugs and then soldering.

After this, I spent a whole lot of time staring at wiring diagrams and figuring out what everything did and where it reconnected, I think I got everything for the most part. I also relocated the regulator to the back of the subframe to unclutter the left side of the bike where it was previously mounted.

I then made some front turn signal brackets out of a couple pieces of takeoff sheet metal bits (I think they were horn mounts before), and made the rear signal mounts out of some angle iron. Also mounted up the sidemount plate and taillight that came from DCC.

Then I decided to toss the seat and tank on to see how it looked with gauges and lights all back in place. To be totally honest, I hate how the bulky stock gauges look, but I'm not keen enough to deal with swapping them right now. Going to focus on getting this thing running again first.