CB350 ground up build

Beautifully ambitious!! The 440 Kawasaki piston conversion is a really great upgrade, lots of work there. The picture of the CB350 monoshock is intriguing. looks like you are building your own backbone and subframe, is this the case?
 
finishing up the first tank, I used the solidworks model to develop the patterns, so the tank is accurate to the design, I don't need to have the frame or anything else built yet, it will fit because the drawing says so :)

the seat was 3d printed in a few sections and joined together, it will be sanded, filled, and primed to be used for molds to make the final carbon or fiberglass seats

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I pretty much finished the seat for building a mold, that just involved primer, bondo and sanding, the pattern then gets waxed, coated in PVA, flanged, and a mold will be built on it. I also set up the swingarm jig, it's a simple tool I modeled in solidworks so I can use it over again with a few slight modifications for different swingarms.




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my neighbor has a plasma table, I helped him get it set up and assist with troubleshooting things for him, so I get to use it when I need to, it zipped off the parts for 3 tank bottoms in about 30 minutes, saving me maybe 3 hours of templating and cutting on a band saw. everything fit up and welded together nicely, I may make some 3d printed templates to cut the edges of the tank to match the bottom, but it wasn't too much work to do it freehand. I will need to come up with something to secure the top of the filler cap to inside the tank, I'm thinking about making a 6 threaded hole flange that mates with the top side, but is split, so it can be taken out of the tank through the filler hole in case it needs to be replaced, otherwise the tank would be scrap if the bottom of the flange was stuck in there. The idea being, it will be simpler to just have the filler cap sandwich to the gas tank rather than weld it in and deal with the warpage that comes with that.
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Lovely work! I follow you on instagram as well and thoroughly enjoy the updates on your many projects (even the non-bike ones like the large 3D printer and the PC oven!), you certainly have a broad palette of skills. May I ask (if not being too nosy) if you live off of this? Or do you have a 'day job' as well?
 
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Working on it! I do machining and problem solving in the manufacturing area, some product development too.
 
I 3d printed some flanges based on draft angle from the 3d model, then started building the mold. I'll be trying prepreg for this seat, usually I do infusion for carbon fiber, but I'd like to try using prepreg more because it doesn't require as complicated of a mold, I can use my powdercoat oven to bake it since the ramp rate can be controlled. should be interesting.
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Started and finished swingarms today, machined the parts and bent the arms yesterday, but it didn't really take the whole day, so maybe 10 hours into 3 completed arms. Not bad, the goal here is to streamline the build process by A: building a series of basically the same bike and B: using tech to eliminate any trial and error typical in the "custom" build process. They're about 5.5lbs too, not too shabby.


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Hello
finishing up the first tank, I used the solidworks model to develop the patterns, so the tank is accurate to the design, I don't need to have the frame or anything else built yet, it will fit because the drawing says so :)
I hope you are right ;)
And from what i see here big chance you are right :D

Love your topic.
Very meticulous job.
Makes my think and do mine less sloppy :)
 
nothing too eye catching to show lately, but I finished the frame design 100% including detailing all threaded inserts, tabs, etc etc. so I started machining the actual parts for them, just lots of accumulating pieces, then putting everything together. What I am hopeful about with the designing first, fabricating later process is that it will take a lot of the 95% finished project duldrums out, because once all the actual pieces are made, the bike will just go together like a kit.

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here's a bit better rendering, I've continued to detail the assembly and fill in some of the tiny little things like how the headlight mounts, finished designing the tree clamps, etc, there's a lot of time put into pulling part numbers from mcmaster and inserting things like screws, bearings, seals... the advantage comes when assembly starts and nothing needs modification or waiting on parts.

this render is of the non fairing version, so it includes a different headlight mount and turn signal position, for simplicity sake, everything else stays the same

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and omg lol I just realized I clamped the fender to the upper part of the fork leg, that would be funny to actually build it not realizing the wheel would hit the obviously not moving fender
 
Nice work on those swingarms. what alloy did you use?
 
started putting the frames together, doing 3 at a time certainly saves time in cutting the metal up, not in welding, but it's still a good idea I think. The frame basically aligns itself, so no actual jigs are required, just have to maintain the tight fit of the swingarm bearing tube and steering bearing tube, the rest takes care of itself.

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