Swamp Donkey 2.0 Fat Tire Bikes Make the Rockin World Go Round'

[Hurco550]

Not a huge update, but I figure I might as well post em when I've got em. I bored the bearing seats in the tube for the rear hub. I can't get over how great this little lathe has been to me. Even with the tube hanging 8" out of the chuck, it held a half thousands interference 1.375 deep.

Still waiting on the rest of the parts to get back from the waterjet in order to finish it up. For some reason, nobody makes a hub to fit a Honda atc front rim to the back of a Yamaha tw200. Seems like a huge untapped market...

 

[Maritime]

Slick

 

[irk miller]

This is how I hung the axles for the BGW trike. I made one for each side.

 

[Hurco550]

Hey, why not ONE MORE switch-up on this project. @deviant and I have become some sort of Fat Tire brothers, and another trade up happened. He had the hair-brained idea that he wanted a hard tail tw200 chopper, and we decided that the tweaked-framed red one (that @ridesolo originally brought to ME from ALEX haha) would be the best candidate. Last year I chopped off the subframe and fabricated a hardtail for it. It made it to him via @Mr.E at barber this past weekend.

In trade, I ended up getting a much closer to stock, and much better overall condition 1987 tw200 from Alex. It needs a bit of work still, but shouldn't take alot to be a runner.

The plan is to continue on in the same general plan, mostly stock body work, a big front end with the BW/ATC wheel combo that I had already been putting together for the red one. I disassembled a stock tw200 front wheel in order to harvest the front drum and did a bit of machining on the forks and drum plate in order to mount the BW front wheel to TW forks with a TW rear axle and BW triples. Still need to make a simple spacer and shorten the axle about an inch, but all in all, its about ready to go. Next step will be finishing the rear hub in order to mount the ATC wheel out back.

 

[irk miller]

@Deviant1

 

[JustinLonghorn]

This is stupid, and I fucking love every bit of it.

 

[ridesolo]

That fat tired bobber looks better than it did when it left Alabama a couple years ago. That thing was one grim piece of motorbike.

 

[Rider52]

The little fat tired bobber looks like a fun ride. That brake conversion from spokes to a mag wheel is very interesting.

 

[Hurco550]

I got a little more piddling done over the weekend. I made up a simple spacer that mates TW forks to BW trees to TW rear axle to BW wheel to TW front drum brake haha Truly this is the only custom piece to make the whole setup work. The rest is bolt together or really simple mods. Kinda funny how much everything carried over between the TW and BW stuff. I still need to shorten up the axle about an inch to truly finish off the front end, but its good enough for the moment with the a spacer to work until I find a die to re thread the axle after shortening.

Of course no project would be complete without having to extract a broken 6mm bolt from a piece of used Japanese junk from eBay. This time being a broken off front fender mount bolt in the bottom of the triple tree. I'm a welder by trade, but I think I have used this TIG welder at home to extract way more bolts than I have to join two things together lol.

I went ahead and put in new tapered neck bearings before re-assembly. They perform better than the ball bearings, but more importantly, they are way easier to install than the little balls that roll all over the place when removing and replacing lol

Used a come-a-long and a few straps to lift the ol girl up by the garage rafters to pull the stock front end off and throw the new one on.

And this is where we are currently sitting. The fairing is still just in mockup stage and will need brackets made to actually mount it. I also need to begin to re work the seat and mounts to make this XT tank fit, but I like the direction its headed.

 

[Maritime]

Lookin pretty good. Maybe done in time to test it on some snow!

 

[Hurco550]

Lookin pretty good. Maybe done in time to test it on some snow!

Thanks. If I have one regret about getting rid of the first swamp donkey it's that I did so before ever getting a chance to ride it in the snow

 

[john83]

How am I just now seeing this? What a trip to read through! I will now enjoy following along in real time.


Sent from my iPhone using DO THE TON

 

[Hurco550]

Still messing with this thing. No pics at the moment, but as of yesterday, A new CDI arrived in the mail and I finally heard this thing run. Carb rebuild kit on the way. Also, @adventurco delivered to me a set of tw200 disk brake front forks at Mid-Ohio, which I will use to make this a disk brake front end instead of drum. Just chipping away little by little.

 

[Rider52]

Running is 90%!

 

[Hurco550]

Running is 90%!

one of my favorite saying on a project im working on is "90% complete, 90% left to go"