Plasma cutters are amazing, but let me back up just a taste. I needed to take care of the Devil in Houston at Lucky Devil’s Metal Works and made the brother a belt buckle. He’s going to build the lovely Nyla a Frisco style chopper in the near future—tight and light. You’ll see it come together right here on Bikernet.com.
So burning the midnight oil and silicone bronze rod I made this belt buckle and shipped it to Houston. Then I turned back to the Salt Shaker, since I was waiting on 45 Flattie components. I scored this Eye Candy classic taillight since we wanted to add some old school to the Panhead Sportbike. This puppy worked out perfectly. They also make the ’59 Cadillac taillight on last year’s Sturgis Shovel.
Eye Candy Custom Cycles LLC
Republic, Ohio(513) 312-1137
EyeCandy CustomCycles.com
That was the easy part. Drill the holes through the frame rail and mount the sucker, so it fed the wires properly and looked cool. Then I shifted to mounting the gold metalflake Le Pera solo seat. You can order these in a number of colors and beading hues to match your theme. I’m stuck with gold Brembo rotors and calipers so I went nuts with the seat. The plan is to gold metalflake the frame and some components and shoot the sheet metal black with Bomber girl graphics.
Seats can be a pain in the ass to mount on custom frames, unless they are cast into the sheet metal and won’t move. I monkeyed with this for hours trying to pick the correct position. This Le Pera seat is a classic for stock or rigid frames. It comes with a black powedered front frame mount and bungs on the back for springs–simple, easy to mount, but I changed the system. I also wanted to be able to move the seat back for a salt flats prone position. Then the damn thing needs to be centered and slightly tapered off level. Then, once the front was mounted, I needed to mess with the rear.
I split a stock solo-seat mounting bracket and welded a chunk of bent bar stock in between.
Then I cut apart one of my failed seat mounting systems and started to work on the rear bracket. I decided not to use springs for two reasons: The bike is rubbermounted and springs would make the seat too high.
I machined a slot in the strap so it would fit over the Le Pera support, but still be strong. Then I welded tabs to reach the frame holes.
As it turned out the seat set on a couple of rubber bushings and will slide back about an inch and a half for Bonneville prone racing.
So there you have it. Three bolts remove the seat, it’s adjustable and secure. Shit, it was even comfortable. David Zelma, over at PM, keeps telling me that I’m going to hell for installing a solo seat on a sport bike. I’ve got lots of reasons for heading for the Devil’s den and that ain’t one of them.
Next, I started to mess with an old triumph handlebar fairing. I wanted to run without the fairing, but the system with the V, comes with a dash of sorts. I shitcanned the original cat-eye fairing if favor of this one and a old school Bates headlight.
I made headlight brackets out of spacers and tubing to at the old school touch and place the headlight just under the fairing.
So far I liked the look for some strange reason, but we needed to finish off the dash aspect. That’s where the Plasma cutter came it so handy. Check the next episode of buiding this bike for Plasma and peg mounting tips.
Next I’ll show you the fork stops I built for the 45, then we’ll shift back to Plasma cutting and machining extended peg mounts for my long legs. That’s where John Reed’s words come in handy. The bastard designed the bike for a midget, and for several reasons I can’t handle mid-controls anymore. Wait till you see what we did.
“The primaries are FXR/dresser systems,” John Reed said. “You can weld the steel footpeg brackets. I am pretty sure they aredrop forgings.I put mine in a mill and machined the shit out of them to make themlighter, but if you are using the bike on the saltyou want to keep as much weight as the motor can pull.”
