So, a little on the frame. I cut the back section off the LS from behind the swing-arm pivot to just behind the cylinder head stay and welded in a single back-bone. I left the engine solidly bolted into what was left of the frame for the duration of the build, using this as a method to help maintain alignment. You just have to stuff rags into intake and exhaust ports and cover the engine to protect from welding and grinding. My engine had very low miles so this project did not involve any engine work.
I bent and spliced in a a piece of 1-1/2 square steel for a backbone with heavy gusseting on both ends, picking up the cut-off ends of the frame tubes and the swing-arm pivot tube. This allows the carb to stay where it belongs and I found a good rubber "Cobra" right angle elbow to turn the intake to the side for the air filter. Here's the link;
http://www.purosil.com/cobra.htmlThe smallest elbow fits the carb, you just have to find an air filter that works. I did some welding on the my air filter sleeve to make this work but the hardest thing seems to be that elbow. Maybe this will help someone out there.
The shock mount is pretty straight-forward, I did not use any of the FZR linkage, aiming for simplicity and I sometimes think all that linkage may be as much marketing as anything else. After some experimenting, I had to move the lower mount aft a little but this set up works great. The seat struts are pieces of left over bicycle or motorcycle frame parts. The battery box is under the swing arm but there's not room here for the stock behemoth and I put in an over-sized Earth-X ETX18B Lithium-Ion battery laying on its side. It fits great and cranks the motor like a champ, even without the compression release and only weighs about 2-LB. All the wiring is under the tank and seat and inside the backbone, so very little wiring is visible.
The rear-sets and controls come complete from the donor FZR600 that I found out in the yard at Bob's Used Cycle Parts in Phoenix, it's a great place for dreaming. The foot-peg mounts are kind of hard to describe, I think you just have to be creative here or buy the Ryca items. I welded 1/8" steel tabs to the frame tubes using the existing muffler mount tab as one tab, for example. To these I mount both the battery box and separately a cross-tube for the foot pegs. This cross tube is lower than ideal and I used bicycle pedal cranks to raise the peg height and this also clears the chain. Kick-stand is a bolt on item from some long-deceased Honda at Bob's. I just welded nuts to the lower frame tube on the LH side, seems to work fine after some adjustment to keep it from dragging in left turns. I still get sparks now and then, especially with a bump in the turn, like turning into my neighborhood.
Enough already, I'm getting long winded. Here's a pic of the frame work. The FZR forks are already in, that was really easy. In this shot I'm using the LS swing arm to guess are shock mount location, etc.
Cheers,
Swede
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