You made the right call.....

Out of necessity, two hour ferry line waits, to and from work on peak summer dates, I got a bike as they just ride to the front of the line.

I bought a new Rebel even before I took the class and got the license.

A stiff tepid rider at first, my paranoia kept me from hurt.
As I got a little more wear outside the center line of the tires, I began to become dissatisfied with the rebels ability.
After about a year I took it back and got the S40. Loved it from the first ride.
Now at 6 foot and 200 pounds, I am a wee bit bigger than you and doan look as cool as you on the thing.....
Which, bugs my wife more than me, as she tells me I should buy a bigger bike.....
I have considered it, but, after reading these guys who have had many bikes and why they are riding this gal, keeps my focus away from my uh, cool pride, and on my real needs  
With some metzlers rain tires on her I ride her all year long up here in the pacific northwest.  

Quick update.  My chopper has gone through a couple revisions during the building process.  Tried out several tanks, fenders and bars. Most of my parts came from lowbrow, tcbros and some swap meets.  I am running the stock rear tire still with a Norton fender that I need to polish up real nice.

Here are a couple of parts used in the build:
Fake Oil Tank for electronics
Ignition (installed on oil tank)
3 Position switch for headlights Low/Off/Hi (local auto store)
Biltwell Kung Fu grips
Battery box (narrowed to fit my EarthX Lithium)
Bungs for Tank and Seat
Gas Tank (I believe this was the one)
530 Gold Chain, 120 links
Pangea Speed Airflow Bars
80's Le Pera King/Queen from a swapmeet

We were able to use the stock rear brake cable and modify the stock throttle cable to work as well.

The voodoo vintage hardtail conversion is not for the faint of heart.  If you do not have welding/fab skills, you will be paying someone else to do some work (my wallet took a hit!). I had to have several things fabbed and some workarounds added.  For example, the voodoo vintage frame appears to get in the way of the chain.  We had to add a skateboard wheel to lift it up a bit.  I was not happy about this, as I do not really like the look of this normally and the sound it makes gets to me.  But my buddy found a great way to kind of hide it. In the end, we only ended up removing 1 link from the chain. We also needed to fab spacers for the rear wheel as well as a tab to hold the drum brake in place and a holder for the read brake cable.  We are adding a rear motor mount as well for added stability. The frame also gets in the way of where the muffler normally sits.  So I had to twist the header pipe out over the front peg a bit to get clearance for the dyna muffler (currently held on to the frame with a pipe clamp).

I got a chance to test her out at Giddy Up Texas and ran into some other issues that I need to sort out.  I can only give it about 1/4 throttle, anymore and the bike chokes and dies. I'm gonna do a complete dis-assembly of the carb and replace the spark plug this week. It has a down and dirty wiring job using alot of the original harness and 18ga wire.  

This month I will be tearing it all down again to have some welds finished up, painted and re-wired. I'll update this thread with more photos (including close-ups) of the bike.

In the shop, almost done.


Trying to fix my carb issues on the side of the highway.

That's some pretty badass work nickythegreek.

Part of me want's to do some modding to my bike, another part says leave it stock. I'm split on it. :/ Right now I'm riding on the excuse "it's still under warranty". I'll probably ride that out for about another 6 months, after that, who know's what I'll come up with. I look forward to seeing what the future has in store for your bike.

Keep the rubber side down, man.

Nicky,
The bike looks great. Love the seat!

I'm interested to know more about the issue with the chain hitting the frame in that hardtail. You're not the first person to mention running into Something like that. I recently emailed David at Voodoo Vintage and asked him about it. He responded and said that he wasn't aware of any issue. He said that he's sold 75 of them and wasn't aware of any problem. If that's true then there must be a few more people lurking around with some experience on this? I'm assuming that you have the standard VV hard tail for the savage and that you lined everything up right down the center as he recommends?

I had the engine in my bike with the stock wheels and once I realized they weren't going to work I took it apart again. Wish I'd tried to put a chain on it before I did.

I threw the engine back into my frame today and mocked something up with a spare rear wheel so I could see the chain clearance situation in person. Definetly not great. I'm kind of confused that David at Voodoo claims that he's not aware of it. Perhaps there was some confusion but I think I was pretty clear about it. I fully understand that these are not bolt on plug and play components however there's no way that rerouting the chain with a chain tensioner was the intended design. If he's really not aware of this problem he should be so that he can fix it. I will try and explain it to him again.

FDM wrote on 04/02/15 at 11:23:24:


(1) A picture is worth a thousand words, don't explain it, send him pics
(2) is the frame designed with the chain conversion in mind? If so, it's hard to understand him not being aware of the problem, since you always mock a build up when designing a weld on kit for an existing model

Thanks Art, I just got it together with a chain today and took a couple of pictures. I will include them in the future.

Hey....I am not a hardtail guy....but it seems to me if that cross piece is in the way - you need to figure out a way to gracefully raise it up a little bit so the chain will clear.  Top part of chain goes over it....bottom chain goes under it.