Time for another Ryca build thread. I've read through a lot of them already to try and prepare myself for what's ahead.

I picked up a pretty clean 2003 to use as the base. The previous owner had purchased the bike in 2011 with the hopes of getting his motorcycle license and using the bike around town. Well, that never happened and the odometer was only 4 miles higher when I bought it compared to the paperwork that he had from the dealer that he bought it from. I'm at work so I don't remember the exact mileage but it was right around 3100 miles on it when I bought it. The good news is that he kept it very clean, changed the oil, and even upgraded to the raptor petcock.



That was at the end of July. I put about 150-200 miles on the bike since then just because I hadn't ridden in a couple years and I missed it. I also wanted to make sure everything was running fine on the bike. I can confidently say that cruisers are not for me. The seating position is more uncomfortable for me than the sport bike position for sure. A couple times I actually ended up resting my feet on the passenger pegs just to change the position. This didn't really come as a surprise for me because I had taken a couple of my uncles' Harleys for short rides in the past and didn't like it much.

Everyone also talks about the torque and how great is is. My last bike was a Kawasaki ZZR1200 and it had gobs of low end torque and still revved up over 10k rpm so that wasn't a great selling point either. (stock was somewhere around 80ft-lbs. 65 ft-lbs were available as low as 2,800 rpm, peak hp was around 140 at the wheel)

The good news with all of that is that I'm definitely excited about converting to a cafe racer. I think the seating position will actually be moderately comfortable for me even at 6'0" and of course it never hurts that the bike is about to lose some weight.

Yesterday I started on the teardown of the bike to get to tank sent in to Ryca. I think I spent about 4 hours in the garage and ended up working on the actual bike for about 45 minutes. I tried to clean up the work area a bit before starting. Of course after getting everything cleared out I decided that I needed some more light...so the first trip to Lowe's was made. Getting the bike on the lift that I have was a little tricky just because the frame area is so small. I also couldn't find my good tiedowns to keep it on the lift and ended up using some crappy ones that were in my garage for some reason.

Teardown went fairly smoothly so far. I did things a little out of order because I was really curious what the bike sounded like without a muffler. Loud....extremely loud is the answer to that.  

The only issue that I ended up running into was that the bike wanted to fall off of the stand after I removed the rear wheel. There was just too much weight hanging off of the front of the lift. I lowered it down so that the front wheel is touching the ground and moved the straps around a little. Hopefully I'll be able to track down my better straps this evening and get things more secure before one of my kids knocks the whole thing over.



(Sorry if the pictures aren't showing up right. Work has photobucket blocked so I'm assuming that the links are typed in correctly)

Gary_in_NJ wrote on 09/08/15 at 09:24:50:


Have any pictures of the table? The jack that I have will get the bike up pretty high and it's at a pretty good level for the short little stool in my second picture.

I'm not planning on taking any long trips on this bike. I do some amateur car racing and I have two year old twins so I don't really have the time any more for long motorcycle trips. Plus my wife doesn't like motorcycles anyway so I think I'm stuck just riding around town for a while. This seemed like the perfect bike for that. The ZZR was fun but running it through two gears got you to a speed that could get you arrested in most areas.

You tore the bike down too soon......the snow hasn't started falling yet!

I am 5'-8" tall, and I have ridden my Cafe' conversion on lots of 100 miles rides, and about half a dozen or so 250 mile rides (with lots of stops along the way.  It is not comfy....but it is purposeful and can be enjoyable the entire way.  It does always feel good to climb off and stretch a bit when the ride is over.  I did have the RYCA seat modified this summer to get more padding along the edges, and that has helped considerably.  

Many years ago I did 350 in a day on a GSX1100E. The ride started to get uncomfortable around 150-175 miles. By 250 I was constantly shifting in my seat looking for relief. When the cold rain started at 300 miles I was hoping I'd crash just to end the pain.

Since that ride any bike I've had for any kind of distance has had the best gel seat I could find.

That bike does indeed set the bar high for style. Hiding the wires without side covers can easily be done using the space in the rear cowl (there isn't much room under the tank - however I did make use of the space left behind from the eliminated instrument cluster in the tank for all of my relays). Using the rear cowl will require some wire "stretching". I think if I was going to have a hidden harness I'd take the time to eliminate the unused circuits so I'd have less wires to hide.

May I make a tire suggestion since you are so early in your build?  Don't put a 130/70 tire on the normal size 2.50 wide rear rim...the tire is built to go on a 3.50 wide rear rim.  Installing the 130 tire on the narrow rim rolls the tread over onto the side wall and results in tread being rolled over where you can not use it.

If you want to keep the narrow Cafe' appropriate look - use a 110/80-18 rear tire on the 2.50 rim....or you can find some tire makers that provide a 4.00-18 size - which is made for the narrow rim and provides a usable tread shape and a tread width of 117mm (Bridgestone Battlax BT-45).

If you want to go with a 130/70-18 rear tire - then install a 3.00 - 3.50 wide rear rim (3.50 is the design rim width).

Obviously the front tire needs to be sized accordingly, and my current favorite is a 100/80-18.

Here is a link to the Bridgestone Battlax fitment chart.  Don't put a tire on a rim that it is not designed to fit.......find a tire that fits the rim you are using.  (The 130/70-18 tire is recommended for a 3.50 inch rim, and will fit on a 3..0 - 4.0 rim).

http://www.bridgestone.com/products/motorcycle_tires/products/battlax/bt45.html


The following photo shows what happens when you mount the 130 tire on the narrow rim.....notice how the tread is rolled up on the sidewall compared to the front tire.  If you look close you can see the Chicken Strips" on my bike were about 1/4" wide on the front, and almost an inch wide in the rear.....you just can't lean the bike over far enough to ever use the tread that has been pulled over onto the side of the tire by the "too narrow" rim.

I got a little more work done last night. The bike is now secured to the lift a lot better. It was much easier to get the straps around something stronger after the rear fender was removed. I got the rear fender off, and the front taken apart too. That includes the front wheel, forks, front brake controls, and the headlight with all of the electrical stuff running into it. I'm planning on upgrading to the kit that RycaShawn sells on here because the front brake was definitely lacking in the stock form.

The only problem so far was that one of the nuts/bolts holding the headlight assembly on was cross threaded. Putting more pressure on it cracked the plastic in the headlight mount. I ended up cutting the bolt off just above the nut so that I could take it apart. I'll have to take a closer look at it tonight to see if it can still be salvaged. I think it will be ok but I might just need to change the style of bolt.

I didn't get any pictures last night but I'll try to get some more before I start working on it more (hopefully this weekend)

There's no need to remove the motor. In fact, you risk scratching the frame during the removal process. If the frame looks good and doesn't need to be powder coated, then I'd just leave it be.

I left my engine in the frame for all the cutting.....and it worked out fine.  I did throw some old blankets over the engine while cutting to keep the grit and sparks out of the engine.  

I am pretty fussy about how things look, and I was surprised how just a bit of masking and spraying black spray paint from an aerosol can was able to match the black on the frame really well.