Japanhead update - Chain Adjusters

The chain adjusters that we had on Japanhead were a little too traditional chopper and stuck way too far out. These are Jap dirt bike eccentrics, indexed for easy wheel alignment.

Much sleeker!

JapanHead upate - Stainless Exhaust

After setting up our chin spoiler oil bag, we decided that the exhaust needed to be routed differently, for a lot of reasons. So, we started playing with some bits of stainless pipe in different bends.

Hours and hours and hours and hours.....

Twisty

Spaghetti, anyone ?

The slip fits are held together with loops of stainless and hook springs, superbike style

JapanHead Update - Tag Bracket

After having a temporary tag bracket for the mechanical shakedown for almost a year, it was time to work out something sleeker and permanent.

After building a tab that comes off of the axle plate we drilled it and tapped it. then we cut a bung and welded it to a piece of strap.

Dual purpose, tag bracket and chain guard!

The absolutely coolest part of this system, if traveling through certain states that may or may not have a ban on vertically mounted plates, it's a simple switch thanks to the channels we cut in the bung with the mill.

JapanHead Update - Battery Box

We wanted to put the battery box inside of the primary to keep it nice and hidden.

So, we grabbed a stainless trapezoidal rectangular prism, out of our pile of stainless trapezoidal rectangular prisms and started chopping with our new band saw (ain't it a cool bandsaw?)

Mounted some tabs with Dzuz fasteners for the cover and bracketed it to the frame.

Check out our cool stainless cover/door.

And the best part, with our tiny glass mat battery there is enough room for a shelf and a space for a tool kit or whatever else.

JapanHead update - Oil Bag

Where oh where can we put the oil bag? We didn't want to put it under the seat, because that's where it always winds up and it wasn't "race" enough for a Panhead with Tecnomagnesios.

So we started beating on some stainless and digging through some of our stock

Tack and Whack

We ended up with a rubber isolated (it's on pins in the rear) chin spoiler oil bag that's held firmly in place with a couple isolators and spring power. Super race looking, who says you can't have show AND go.

We'll have more later on about our oil fill, drain and fittings.

New, younger employees at the shop

The restoration work has really been pilling up, so we had to hire a pair of four and eight-year old girls to help out with the powder coating duties. I think their first frame turned out pretty nice:

(we feel that we need to point out that this is NOT a customer's frame!)

'59 Bonnie Head Fin Repair

Here is a '59 Bonneville head that was improperly packaged for shipping and had all of the fins on the right side broken off. So, we had Patrick Day, our welder go through and meticulously weld back into place.

Just a little more touch up on the bottom fin.

As you can see, the head is now good as new.

"Smile for the camera Pat."

51 Speed Twin Restoration

It RUNS...

It's a little smokey but we'll see what happens after a little more break in. Now we have a ton of changes to make to the rest of the bike, to make it correct for 1951.

Japanhead Update

Japanhead has been going strong, it has been ridden pretty regularly to really shake out any issues a 53 pan chopper can generate. But, since the oil bag situation is actually supposed to be temporary we thought it would be cool to install an oil cooler. So we made some top tabs and some lower bungs and mounted one.

Cam Bush Fitting and Crank Balancing

Finally got around to balancing the crank for my TR6R, used a knife edge balance and counter weights at an 85% balance factor.

Nothing says fun like attacking a major engine component with an air drill...

I also went a head and sized and reamed my cam bushes.

Just a couple more crossbones pictures

Just a couple more pictures of the "finished" product.

Although we have a couple cool ideas for the air cleaner cover...

Crossbones Update

After getting the aftermarket seat fitted properly and the fender in place the owner and the shop pretty much unanimously agreed that the struts that came with the kit needed to go. So we got to work on bending up some struts out of round stock, cutting some bungs and welding tabs to the swing arm. Here's what we ended up with, some nice subtle curves that blend in with the rest of the bike.

After getting the struts mounted up and in place we pretty quickly realized that the stock finish on the primary outer cover, derby cover, cam cover, transmission cover and rocker boxes had to be changed in some way (it was spotting like crazy). What we ended up doing was taking the covers off of everything and doing a little bead blasting/polishing/wet sanding to get the finish that's on it now.

Improving a factory 'custom'

mounted fender stays at an angle to match springer. fender was located to achieve this. fender was also located to allow for tire growth at mach speeds ! very important !

sidemount taillight / license bracket originally designed for rear axle mount but fender struts used up space, sooo... we filled the hole and mounted it to unused passenger peg bracket. killer. kustom. kool !

seat is in a much better location, lower and closer to tank. the provided brackets and spring posts about 3 inches higher. Yuck ! It looked like a satellite dish ! tune in tokyo! tune in tokyo !

here's the front mount,tigged and powder coated

PowderCoating my Triumph Cases

I decided that instead of having my cases burnished or polished for my TR6R chopper that I'm going to PowderCoat them. So after a few hours of taping off all of the major mating surfaces and a few test pieces to pick a color that I liked, I went with a high temp factory gray.

The taping off of the cases.

The finished color which has a cool metallic look, with the cases bolted together.

Real Quick mock up in my frame.

There will be plenty more to come...

Turning Down Fork Lowers

I decided that for my '72 TR6R chopper, I'm going to run a 74 FX front end with all of the fender/brake lugs shaved off and the lowers turned down on the lathe. Originally I was going to either polish or powder the legs once they were fully turned down, but now I'm digging the machined look so much that I may just lay some clear powdercoat on them just for protection from the elements.

-Junior