some history on the '81 custom
A friend of my roommate's father had this bike sitting around in his barn for a couple of years,, all he ever used it for was riding the kids around in the yard, and was hanging on to the bike to salvage the rubber for his sportster (aka, the piece of shit also featured in this blog). I was ready for a chop project and basically made him sell it to me. this is how it looked the day i brought it home:
obviously i wasnt about to ride it around like that..
So, the first order of business was ditching a bunch of crap. mufflers, front fender, chain guard, bars, seat, side covers, rear fender, the ridiculously huge taillight assembly, and eventually the footpegs and the entire electrical system..
We dropped the bike a few inches by dumping the rear shocks and replacing them with solid struts..while we were at it, we had to cut the rear section of the frame off to get that clean look in the rear end.. i wanted the fender to sit less than an inch from the tire..
first the struts were just some flat stock with a couple of holes drilled in them to get the spacing right..then i thought i'd try some square tube stock for a little different look,, it looked box-y and cool, but we were all convinced i'd end up flying down the freeway with the tire spinning 3,000 rpm under my ass, and i might want something a little more substantial. so we cut and welded some struts out of steel pipe and used the rubber bushings from the original shocks..
worked pretty well, and definately a bit safer.
..the bike now sat the way i wanted it to, but my legs were still too god damn long to ride it comfortably,, hence the forward controls..
try as i might to find a how-to from someone who had done it already,,no luck..
i ended up making them out of some old stock footpegs, fabricated steel plates, carriage bolts, old stock pedal rubbers fitted to fabricated pedals, some rear brake linkage, and several fabricated spacers made from pipe.
they look pretty bad ass huh? on this side though, there was a problem..
the brake pedal in this configuration functions pivoting on one of the main supports for the pedal itself.. which means that support has to be a little loose to allow the brake pedal to pivot around the pipe. .. i still havent figured out the perfect solution for this, but my two thoughts are either (1) dump the back brake alltogether, (taking the pedal and linkage with it) or (2) starting over and fabricating some serious shit this summer while the motor's out of the bike.. stay tuned to see what happens with that..
what about the clutch pedal you ask? there is none. this bike as it sits right now is a suicide shift with the clutch lever built into the shifter arm.
obviously i wasnt about to ride it around like that..
So, the first order of business was ditching a bunch of crap. mufflers, front fender, chain guard, bars, seat, side covers, rear fender, the ridiculously huge taillight assembly, and eventually the footpegs and the entire electrical system..
We dropped the bike a few inches by dumping the rear shocks and replacing them with solid struts..while we were at it, we had to cut the rear section of the frame off to get that clean look in the rear end.. i wanted the fender to sit less than an inch from the tire..
first the struts were just some flat stock with a couple of holes drilled in them to get the spacing right..then i thought i'd try some square tube stock for a little different look,, it looked box-y and cool, but we were all convinced i'd end up flying down the freeway with the tire spinning 3,000 rpm under my ass, and i might want something a little more substantial. so we cut and welded some struts out of steel pipe and used the rubber bushings from the original shocks..
worked pretty well, and definately a bit safer.
..the bike now sat the way i wanted it to, but my legs were still too god damn long to ride it comfortably,, hence the forward controls..
try as i might to find a how-to from someone who had done it already,,no luck..
i ended up making them out of some old stock footpegs, fabricated steel plates, carriage bolts, old stock pedal rubbers fitted to fabricated pedals, some rear brake linkage, and several fabricated spacers made from pipe.
they look pretty bad ass huh? on this side though, there was a problem..
the brake pedal in this configuration functions pivoting on one of the main supports for the pedal itself.. which means that support has to be a little loose to allow the brake pedal to pivot around the pipe. .. i still havent figured out the perfect solution for this, but my two thoughts are either (1) dump the back brake alltogether, (taking the pedal and linkage with it) or (2) starting over and fabricating some serious shit this summer while the motor's out of the bike.. stay tuned to see what happens with that..
what about the clutch pedal you ask? there is none. this bike as it sits right now is a suicide shift with the clutch lever built into the shifter arm.
posted by Dude at 6:05 PM
2 Comments:
Dude, there is some cool info for some forward controls on the honda choppers site. The dude will even send patterns out to whoever wants them. He seems happy with them.
see ya at the garage.
Not sure where to post this but I wanted to ask if anyone has heard of National Clicks?
Can someone help me find it?
Overheard some co-workers talking about it all week but didn't have time to ask so I thought I would post it here to see if someone could help me out.
Seems to be getting alot of buzz right now.
Thanks
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