Ural, the engine

I liked the look of the Ural engine before, now thats it out of the bike I love it. It looks like it wants a propeller.

I cut off , ground, filed & sanded the air cleaner lower housing that was on the transmission, sooooo much cleaner looking.

Getting things cleaned up, the frame a final skim coat before primer & paint. Today is paint the Ural, & the XS650 frame day.

XS, rounding the corner

I finally figured out a simple attaching system for the removable tail cone on the XS. I wanted to do it in a way that wouldnt require any tools, or have any loose parts., The front slips into 2 small tubes, then pull the rear tab (spring loaded via the cylinder over muffler), push rear of cone down & let tab go into hole under rear of cone, snappizzle! I also reworked the tail reducing it in size from its previous to tall state.

We also decided the bike would run the traditional larger headlight, & that the speedo would be housed in the headlight so the front end would be naked & clean, resulting in the the top tree being the highest point of bike, much slicker looking I thing then having the gauges there. This required the head light housing to be stretched 3/4" to give cable clearance behind light plug , & a small rise for rim of top of speedo. It will be moulded a bit.

Lastly tonite, I tore it down to get the frame fully welded & remove tabs & mounts no needed & prep  frame & body parts for paint.

Matts CB750 Long Bike

This is Matts Long Bike. It a CB750, that he built from scratch, starting with a Santee frame. There's a lot of neat details on this bike, the clear covered, belt drive for the Magneto, the slide out & open storage box, the front brake lines that run inside the girders fork tubes, the hand made girder legs, & the sheer ridiculous length, over 10.5 feet that has perfect trail & handles like a short bike. The motor is built & cammed, he has over a year in this bike, it is overdone everything, & gets ridden hard.

Its a trick to make a wide tired, swing arm bike look good, & Matt did it in spades.

Its Long.........

Really Long.........

Belt drive on Mag, 2-3,4-1 exhuast..

Kandy paint, with dash of flake over it, hand striped.

Brake lines run in tubes of front end. Matts head, check.

Beautiful

I love this picture, wish Id been closer.

Thank you Daniel See for coming out today & photographing. I will post some of his pictures in a few days after they are available. Thank you Kyle for being a good sport.

Saving Grace

I sure do miss this bike.

New carbs for the Ural

Got a pair of Webers for Ural. I have been wanting to get a set of downdrafts for it. The float bowls sit under the gas tank and the manifolds are curved in so theres no leg interference . Now I just need to make some really neat stacks & figure out cable mounts.

A must read.

Excellent Article with beautiful pictures done by the Vintagent on Shinya Kimura , whos work is what got me back into building motorcycles. He made me realize Bikes can be what ever you want them to be, & there is another direction to go. He is a genuine, quite artist whos work is soul moving.

Thank you so much Paul D'Orleans for writing this.

XS, getting along.

I cleaned up the bike a bit, got tires on it, gave motor its first bath & Played musical headlights & gauges. Im on the fence here & will decide tomm hopefully what way to go, big or small, gauges or no visible gauges maybe sinking a speedo in the headlight housing.....Need to talk to LA about it.

Next few days bike will be apart & in paint hopefully & a few touches to motor.

small headlight, (tail on)

small headlight Tail off

Big Light w/ gauges 

Which way to go........

Come see us at the Timonium Motorcycle show in Maryland

Feb 11-13. We will be in the Maryland Consortium Area with Draft Cycle Works, Saint Motor Company, Pinstripe Chris, Barefoot Racing, ZenAngel13 art works next to Rich and the Lowside Syndicate & Lowside Magazine people. We will be the fun area of the show. Touch our bikes, Sit on them if youre tired, gab a while.

Couple of pictures my son drew/painted

Kyle did good on these, very proud.

Some of his work will be for sale at the Timonium Motorcycle Show in Feb. at our stall.

XS, a bit more

Got the seat upholstered, some new tires on, & the fork tube out & cleaned the first time & old headlight mounts gone & new clipons mounted to see about tank clearance. Ill post some cleaner pics tonight for LA.

More excess XS, exhaust & seat.

I have the exhaust done & the 2 person seat pan made. It was a good bit of metalwork, fun project.
Remember, removable tail cone is part of the deal on this bike and Im still figuring that out. I had to get the seat upholstered before I can make the cone rigid & make mounts for it.

Muffler & tail pipes in place, starting to make the rod that will be to outer seat pan rim.

Here's the seat pan frame about done, & ......yes we see you Matt.

Heres bottom of seat pan , its strong :-) & curved for comfort, not flat & square.

And mounted.... Pretty flippin cool.

& with the tail.......I made a small rib around edge to match body line in tank.

Dont ask, Dont tell

This surely cant be what it looks like......... Itll get the full treatment.

Matts CB, almost done.

Its starting to looked pretty stealth & very classy, even with the 90 gallon tank. Pinstripe Chris is holding Matts seat hostage so I can finish the XS before he finishes the CB :-)

Making a muffler for the XS

The exhaust with go from heads, to a 2 into one collector, the one pipe into muffler, & two pipes out the rear.

Back to XS 650 Cafe'

 On this bike it was asked that the exhaust exit under the seat. On an XS, the rear of frame is right on the rear tire & I needed to raise the seat area of frame up & lower the top shock mount, together getting a few inches clearance, & leveling the bottom of frame to ground, & also making the seat area line up with bottom of the Benelli tank, all in one operation.
 The other thing is seating for 2 was requested. It was decided that there would be a long seat, with a removable tail cone, so when ridden solo, it would have the traditional cafe racer look, but pop off the tail cone & there would be passenger room.
 It was a bit of a brain twister at first. Oh, and the bike is to have a muffler as well, while trying to keep it looking naked behind the motor. This all took a good couple hour staring session before I got a plan together.

First thing was to whack it all apart.

Then raise the old seat rail up on frame a bit.

Then add in some tube so the 2 sides tubes will extend up to raised seat tubes. And made slugs for the new tubes that will be added to extend seat a bit.

Next was to add the extensions, & reinsert the rear of frame that was stock. The rear may be altered a bit when I get to dealing with the tail cone.

Now its starting to look like a real cafe & not so much an XS.