When I see a "rat bike" I do not see it as a fashion statement or a work of art, but as a machine whose owner cannot be bothered with such things as maintenance and upkeep. In short, a junker.

That lookss great for an 87!

**in response to the rat bike knocks**

My rats have performed and ran great, internally quite tight and smooth, it's just the exterior that's beat.
It's a statement to those that prefer to judge a book by it's cover.

Rocco 0 your before and after are mixed up, the before should be the after ... yea you can fix it any time. Yea ...

Cunn1780 I'll give my left arm for that look, easy.
I will leave it as is. And honestly, I did this to one bike but I will leave yours be.
http://picasaweb.google.com/srinath.the.man/SavageChopperBuild#

Ratting out is not a wilful act. Ratting out happens by itself due to negligence, carelessness etc, yours or other peoples.

If it were to get messed up, and you dont fix it cos its working fine, yes that is fine, spending money, effort and time to rat it is counter productive.

Mine came to me with a broken/bent fork a bent wheel, a bent handlebar and a smashed tank and no carb. Sakara's carb went on it, a raked out FE was made and fitted and drag bars and whatever.
I have a good clean dark green rear fender, but nothing else matched and I only got 1 side cover. I hacked it up and did a silver powdercoat on it and fitted silver parts all around on it. Mine was ratted by someone else and I got it for 150 bucks.

Your $1100 beauty will be worth 1100 as is next year, and almost at any point in its life, it will be worth 1000 if its maintained well. AKA, oil, gas, spark plugs, tires, valve adjustments etc. Rat it and the more you rat, the less its worth. Spend 200 on paint, and do flat black, yes, its now worth 700. Spend 300 and paint the motor flat black, its worth 500. So on and so on ...
I'd really ride and maintain and let it be.
Cool.
Srinath.

if u are like me, and hate when people rub things with diapers instead of ride or drive them, then flat black it and don't worry about it. i don't plan on ever selling my beast so resale is no matter. the sparkly black and blue and purple stock paint wasn't me, so i changed it!

Sorry JOG ... but yea I agree. One of the virago Idiots dented his tank to make the side cheeks concave ... I mean I have heard of liposuction for fat lady's asses, but I doubt they suck so much to make their asses concave ... anyway, so he's put in a ton of effort to get a 2.8 gal tank to a 1.5 gal on a bike that barely makes 30 mpg. Bright Idea dumbass. Then of course he did a bunch of other crap and is asking serious $, good luck there cos stock virago's going for 1500-2K in solid shape.

Rocco: That blue is exactly what mine is or was, but the body work has been pulled and saved up, and I ahve slapped the coffee color stuff on it. I love that blue BTW and plan to put it on my long term bike not fritter it away and sell it off. I love your ammo box, and with that on the bike would have looked weird in anythign but black. However I'd ahve swapped the body with someone rather than paint it.

Sportbikes have the "I crashed and forgot to fix it" look that people refer to as "street fightered". I guess "rat" is the cruiser equivalent.

Cool.
Srinath.

Most people are uneducated about rats.They ARE maintained.People put the money into high performance/running and don't worry what it looks like.Look at all the gassers from the sixties.MOST not nice to look at,but fast as hell!

You got modders and you got leave it alone folks.  I've been both, so I can sympathize either way.

Key thing is to fix what is wrong with your bike -- and right now that is a battery.  

Yes, with an acid type battery you have to have the clear plastic tube connected to dump your excess gas and bubbles of acid down to the pavement in a safe fashion.  This is not an issue even with a "backwards" battery as the tube they give you is more than long enough to loop over the top of the battery and then go down the correct side.

Whoever posted that acid would leak from the battery because the bike leans on the side stand was in error.  Each cell tilts separately and the liquid level does tilt inside the cell, but the centrally located overflow vent to each cell does not see any fluid that is tall enough to exit the individual baffle area that is on top of each cell.

Heck, if "battery leaking out" was true whenever you laid your bike down temporarily on its side you'd have a heck of a mess.  The baffling in the top of the battery prevents this from happening too.

Still, if you have a vented liquid acid battery please do hook up the clear vent tube and route it over the top of the battery into the pathway that is built into the battery box.

The base gas is hydrogen, but it bubbles up from a bath of sulfuric/nitric acid and is birthing off of copper and lead plates that have been turned into other nasty corrosive types of metal sulfides by the battery action.

If a human fart is "just gas" but stinks horribly, just think of what a battery fart could do as far as being corrosive.

Plus, they are sorta "juicy" farts to boot, with little bubbles of liquid acid intermixed with the gas as it runs down the clear tube to blatt out on to the pavement.

That's why the clear tube is cut a little long, to dangle below the undercarriage of the bike.  You don't want any splash from the tip of the drip tube to get on your bike.  Rubber (as in tires) is pretty much immune to acid, but the steel in your spokes and rims are not immune.