Jeff71:

I had a thread on the paint process....I learned it as I went along.

Here is the link:
http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1387812207/0

The process involves lots and lots of taping, spraying, removing the tape and applying more, spraying, removing tape...then clear coating.

If you ever get to the Cincinnati/N. Kentucky area let me know.....I would be happy to show you how this is done.

Dave

Dave, your bike never gets boring. Looks amazing. I love it.
FWIW, my RE Continental GT has Sport Demons on as standard. Looks like they are wearing well on a bike that has almost no power. They have good grip and is fun getting them right to the edges. Be interesting to see how long they last.
My 600 Pantah I use Battleax's on, the back one I expect around 10-12k km. They seem to wear really well and grip well. I guess I'm not that hard on this bike and ride it a bit gently these days.

Dave: put your's up against a Ryca and there's no question your's has THAT look! terrific! The cut-down tank on the ryca is a mistake. Apparently Suz is aware of all the re-building, as they've given ryca some free bikes.  Sure wish Suz would put a 'tracker' on the market, or give us the Tempter. I love that engine.

zipidachimp wrote on 07/09/14 at 21:24:32:


Well it would be a fun time to try....but unfortunately a family thing got in the way.  My youngest niece is getting married on Saturday.

My wife and I are stopping by the AMA Vintage Days on Friday on the drive up to Salem, OH......but Saturday not possible. :'(

Well it is back together after replacing the 4 broken spokes with 4 new spokes and a new tire....and I learned some useful things.

1)  Check your spokes occasionally....especially on a bike where you built the back wheel.  According to the folks at Buchanan's Wheel and Rim, rear wheel spokes most often break because they are too loose...not too tight.  I had about 4,000 miles on this wheel and it seemed to ride really nice, and I had not checked the spoke tightness after the initial build.

2)  I bought a spoke torque wrench, and it appears that I has spoked the wheel with too little tension on the spokes.  Buchanan's recommended 60 in/lbs. for street bikes....and that is pretty darn tight.  

3)  I was having a horrible time getting the wheel true.  I would snug up the spokes to get the wheel straight - then use the pattern recommended by the Excel Torque wrench to tighten the wheel.  I would start with about 40 in/lbs and torque everything up, then go up in 5 in/lbs increments.  The pattern they recommend for torquing is to go to the sprocket side inner spokes, then the brake side inner spokes, then the sprocket side outer spokes, then last the brake side outers spokes.  Every time I did this I ended up with a low spot and wobble at the same spot on the wheel.  I tried several times and each time it looked good for a while - then that same low spot would show up.  It took me several tries and several hours before I learned what was happening.  Each time I increased the torque I would go to the inside sprocket side spoke nearest the air nipple hole to start - I used the hole as a reference of where I had started.  The problem was that when I started in the same place every time - it would pull that spoke more than the others - as it was the first spoke to be tightened at the new wrench setting....so eventually it would pull the rim out of round when you started to reach the higher torque settings.  Eventually I figured out what was going on....and then I would start tightening at the new torque setting for whatever spoke was at the point the rim was the highest.....so it would tighten the rim more in that location and pull it more round.  This worked much better.

4)  The new Bridgestone Battlax tire has a really stiff carcass, has a lot of tread over on the sides, and must be made for some extreme lean angles.  The tire looked like it might have wanted a wider rim as I was mounting it......it appears to be really tight radius across the tread and it makes it look like I won't have a lot of tread touching the pavement.  This morning I looked at the Bridgestone specs online and they recommend this tire be used on a 3.00 to 4.00 rim....and I have it on a 2.50 wide rim....Woops!

Looks like I need to change the rim if I want to continue to use this tire......Dagummit!

And it may be that the modern tires are not made for the narrow rims that are being used on the CAFE' conversions, and that may be a reason I wore the center of the tire out so quickly.  Here is a chart that shows the recommend rim widths for tires, and it confirms what Bridgestone recommends for their Battlax BT45 tire.  I could not find a recommendation from Pirelli for their Sport Demons.
http://www.c-note.dk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Motorcycle_Rim_Widt...

Dave how are you finding the  seat? Is the width comfortable? If you were to make it yourself would you make it wider?
I am measuring up for the sub frame at the moment and thinking of making the seat a little wider maybe to match the tank width.
All comments are welcome.
I'm looking at making the seat pan 10 inches at the widest point to avoid cheek over hang.

I will post this in my build...for lack of a better place to post it.  Maybe I should make a Tech Section Article someday.

As I indicated previously in my thread, the RYCA tail light is not very bright and does not provide much notice of you using your brakes in bright sunshine.  Oldfeller commented on my brake light the first time I took it on a Dragon event - he said the brake light did not stand out and would not get folks attention.

The next year I installed a supplemental LED brake light under the seat.  It is hidden pretty well under the seat at the point where the downtubes at the front of the wheel come up and meet the seat pan.  You don't see the light while walking around looking at the bike - but when you are in a vehicle behind the bike it is clearly seen, and it is bright and gets attention.  I actually installed some red tape over the lens to tone the brightness down a bit....so folks would not get blue spots in their eyes if they were sitting behind me at a stop light at night.  The light I used was pretty expensive at $ 79.95 - but works well.
http://www.strobes-r-us.com/closeup.asp?cid=32&pid=720&offset=0



The photo of the light in operation has exceeded the ability of the camera to show the difference in brightness.....the bottom brake light is about 4 times as bright as the RYCA brake light....it really gets our attention!


This is what it looks like with red tape over it, the mount painted black, and my new red lense RYCA style tail light.



I really think everyone should add a supplemental brake light like this one, as the standard RYCA style light just doesn't get attention.

I just found a much cheaper light that most likely will work well enough, and is less than half the price of what I used.  The light has half the lights and is a little deeper and taller - but still should be easy to mount and should be a big improvement over the tiny little pea sized LED's that the RYCA style tail light has.
https://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinfo/strobe-fixtures/3-watt-vehicle-mini-...

The lens is clear - but the emitted light is red, and they are really bright.  The light has 11 flashing patterns - and one pattern does not flash and you choose that pattern for the brake light.  It is not legal to have a brake light that flashes continually.....although it is legal to have the modulator that flash a few times before the light comes on steady.  It is possible to use the modulators with these LED lights.

That looks good. Modern instrumentation with a vintage look. Exactly what an LS650 cafe racer needs.