bensalf's 4 year caferacer build

Excellent idea, consider it done.

Beautiful work, I think you give Wizard and BigFitz a run for the money........

 

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Beautiful work, I think you give Wizard and BigFitz a run for the money........
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oh ,no , they're way above my league.
I only got this far ,from litening to them, and reading , (and taking heed) of all the info on here.
thank you all for your comments so far
stu

 

Thanks. I think future members will enjoy this build as much as the others. Camelman and Salty Dog's 1100's is another one of my favorites.

Gary H.

 

so-- on with the build,
and so to the er, -----carbs--------- the subject of so many posts on here.
and I can only endorse the advice in "the church of clean" and the whole 9 yards.
they were in a bit of a state, throttle shafts were seized solid.

soaked the throttle shafts in paraffin overnight, and managed to free them off.

broke the rack apart and started to strip each carb

whilst stripping the carbs down , I noticed this tiny ball bearing ,on the bench towel. I hadn't a clue where it came from, and there was no reference to it in the Haynes, or on here, you can see it here at the end of the ruler

then I found another bxgger,so I had to take a closer look at the carbs.
and this may help others working on carbs

what I found ,was that where the enrichment shaft slides through each carb, on #2 and#3 carbs, there is a tiny spring and ball ,that locates in a notch on the enrichment shaft ,to keep it in position, very lucky I found these

 

This is all looking f'ing pretty!

 

continued to strip each carb

marked up the butterflies for which way round and which way up
sprayed up the carb bodies, new throttle shaft seals obtained, cleaned all passages in each carbs,
started rebuilding carbs

wet set the floats using a plastic jug I made to fit under each carb, using a dummy tank, to fill the jug, and allow the floats to rise

sprayed up the carb brackets ,also had the middle 2 carb hats chromed, and stainless steel screws fitted all round


stu

 

Damm, you do nice work. Are you really going to ride it?

 

onto the carb to head boots, they weren't in too bad condition, but had slight cracks on the outside, but not all the way through. new ones were almost £100
and good used ones were unobtainium. so I decided to repair them, I've seen the innertube method used on here, but as I was an electrician by trade in my working days
I looked into getting some heatshrink tubing to do the job.
I got hold of some 4" tubing with 7 times shrink ratio.

 

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Are you really going to ride it?
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already have, only done about 50 miles last year before the weather turned bad.
stu

 

test, tried a piece on a scaffold pole

shrank it with blowlamp

all seemed ok . so onto the boots
cut some strips the same width as the boots ,put a pin hole in to slot over the vacuum tube.

smeared some black silicon sealant over the boot spigot and shrank the tubing on, but just enough to grip the boot.

all 4 done and blanking caps fitted to the vacuum tubes

test tried boots onto carbs, all ok

stu

 

This makes me want to take my bike apart ten times over and scrub with a nylon toothbrush until everything is spotless>.< I wish I had these tools! Awesome work mate

 

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thanks for your comments

having some problems with photobucket at the mo, I may have used up my allotted space,
although it says I have only used 28 %? be back soon!!
stu

 

onto the airbox now.
I wanted to keep the area at the back of the engine , under the seat, as clear as possible ,to create that open look, that is recognised as a café racer.
but at the same time didn't want to go down the "pod" route.
so I made provisions to house all the electrics in a shallow underseat tray, and to move the battery back into the seat "hump".
so next to modify the airbox, to make it smaller and much shorter.
so I cut the air filter housing ,away from the airbox.

enlarged the hole to take a circular filter

this filter is for a Honda 90------oh well ---nothing ventured.

enlarged the hole in the filter to allow more air

 

made a plate to mount the filter to the airbox

here's the filter mounted inside the airbox

plate cut out and mesh and venturi fitted

stu

 

here's the modified airbox sprayed up and fitted in frame
with filter about to be screwed in


here's the airbox all finished with venture fitted

incase you're wondering where I got the venturi,
its -----er-------- a cooling fan venturi ,from inside an old computer tower system
stu

 

next the under seat tray to house the electrics, these will be .......
battery, tci unit, reg/rectifier unit, battery isolator, card reader ignition , fuse box, ignition relay, voltage regulator for card reader. and starter solenoid
also rear reservoir for rear brake ,and tool space.
obtained some 1.5mm alloy plate


here's the tray polished and bent to shape with corners welded up, cut outs for frame tubes done

 

here it is in the early stages, test fitted to frame, also added the small alloy angle, for the seat rails.

researched the sizes of batteries and amp/hour ratings on the "yuasa" website, and made a block of wood ,the same size as the battery will be, as a test fit for the seat to fit over

stu

 

You are making the winter easier to bear.

 

ha,ha, yes I'm already well into my # 2 xj600.

stu

 

back to the tray, here it is with the seat hinged back over, the battery-- er---block of wood, and concealing the tray.

and here it is on its final fit

here's the tray , later , filled with the gummings.


stu

 

now , onto the exhaust and footrest hangers.
this is the original pig-iron hanger, so I decided to move the footrests back, and up ,to make the caferacer position easier with the
new clipon and lowered handlebars, to give the laid down look.
so the hangers had to go.

I mocked up some hangers out of white conti-board. to try the position.
also I bought 4 shorty silencers, so I could have 4 stainless steel exhaust pipes custom made, into a 4 into 4 system




at this , I loaded up the bike, and took it 80 miles to a firm of stainless steel fabricators to have the 4 pipes made.
they had the bike over a month, as they are normally out on site ,making stainless steel pipes for the food industry.
bikes are their spare time work.
eventually collected the bike with the pipes fitted, all pipework was tucked underneath the bike as instructed.




stu

 

Hey now...those hangers are made from the highest quality pig-ALUMINUM.

 

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Hey now...those hangers are made from the highest quality pig-ALUMINUM.
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quite right!!----- but they're piiiiiiiiiiiig ugly
stu

 

I obtained some 10mm alloy plate from a local scrap metal dealer," quite cheap".
after reshaping the wooden hangers I made, and working out where the pivot point should go for the gear linkage and brake pedal, I marked the shape out onto the plate.


first test fit on r.h. side

extra holes drilled and started to polish up

here it is fitted ,with brake pedal and master cylinder fitted and footrest bracket and exhaust bolted on.

l.h. side, with pivot hole for gear linkage ,footrest bracket and exhaust hanger

stu

 

now for the gear linkage, as I moved the footrests backward and upward, then the original lever would not reach my foot.
heres the original set up

note the lever moves on a dummy shaft and is not fitted directly on the splines.
so I needed a longer linkage, and also to keep the linkage away from my foot I needed a lever with the pivot on top.
I managed to find one on ebay , from a Kawasaki gp500, that was the correct orientation, and length, also it meant the gears were still in the original place.
i.e. 1 down and 5 up

cleaned up the lever and had the linkage rechromed

result.
stu

 

onto the chain guard, which is a bland plastic one.

 

Stunning work!

 

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thank you for your comments, apologies for some of the blurry pictures.

decided to make a new chainguard form ally plate.

marked out the shape of the plastic one ,onto the plate ,and cut it out.


drilled some holes along the length, and bent it to shape.

wired the bent bit at the end, and had it ally welded up

 

polished up and fitted.


stu

 

next onto the oil cooler. matrix was pretty well mashed up

split a clothes-peg in half ,and shaved the ends down, and began the painstaking task of straightening each fin out,


nearly there


done what I could, and sprayed up

also found out the oil cooler pipe ends are brass!!, polished these up

made a mesh guard for the front of the cooler


stu

 

Just stop it, for goodness sake!

You're making the rest of us look bad........

 

This bike is gonna be insane! Magazine quality!

 

can't stop now ,, otherwise it never happened
stu

 

onto the electrics now , and this was my trade till a few years ago, when I retired from house bashing!.
first I unravelled the outer tape from the entire harness, and replaced with zip ties.

then I pulled out all the wires I wont be needing, like feed up to the front ignition switch, auxillary feed for parking lights .
and run in new wires for ,sump temp sensor, wires for card reader ignition, and for acewell digital dash.
taped back up with new loom tape.

next the handlebar switches, they were pretty gunged up inside



sprayed up the housings also painted the switch knobs yellow.
had some new stickers made up at a local sign shop, these applied and clear-coated over



stu

 

Did he say "card reader ignition"?

Yes. Yes he did.
Mind fully blown.

 

NOICE!


Ive thought about making new stickers for my switches but instead of the general stuff I would put something like this.

 

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stu

 

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Did he say "card reader ignition"?
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ok, ok, the card reader ignition, its nothing flashy or complicated, its a standard card reader, normally used to open security doors.
as I did away with the yoke mounted key ignition, to make way for the digital acewell dash. I mounted the card reader under the seat, to the underside of the electrics tray
When you think about the positioning of the electrical components on a motorcycle, for example the feed for ,say, the rear lights.
the feed goes from the battery, (in my case in the rear seat hump" ), up to the ignition switch, back to the fusebox, back up to the light switch, and back to the rear lights
this circuit is somewhat shortened by moving the ignition switch, near to the battery.
any way here's the card reader.

there's a little red light on the reader, and basicly , you push the card inside ,red light turns to green, this switches a relay, turning on the ignition.
the only difficulty was the reader needs a 9 volt supply, which I obtained using a small electronic voltage regulator, they're only pence, from a local ,radio shop.

here's the complete ignition circuit

this is a voltage regulator, they're only tiny, but they get hot, really hot, they need a heatsink to stop them overheating.

you can see it here on the top left of the seat tray , mounted on the heatsink.

stu

 

next I decided to fit a battery isolator, as this will be only an "occasional" bike, so I could turn everything off when not in use.
you can see the isolator knob in the above picture, to the right side under the battery
here's a stand I made to sit the battery on top, and the isolator underneath.

stu

 

found a nice ,new 7" chrome headlight on ebay quite cheap.


stu

 

I also decided to fit a couple of small front running lights ,either side of the headlight.
looked at various types of lights, but found most automotive led lights were too large and expensive.
but found that the small led torches can be found in all sorts of sizes and very cheap.
I settled on these tiny torches, but they run off small 6volt button cell batteries, so I would need to convert them to 12volt.


I needed to reduce the voltage from 12volt to 6volt to run the lights, there are a couple of ways to do this.
one is to use the small "transistor" type voltage regulator, that I used for the card reader.
but these were too large to fit inside the torches, and the heat would be to great to dissipate from inside.
I could have mounted the regulator and heatsink inside the headlight.
but I decided to use 2 small 1 watt resistors, inside the torches ,to reduce the voltage.
I got rid of the torch batteries and push button switches, from the torches , soldered some wires directly onto the led circuit board, to test try them

here they are lit, from a 12volt battery charger

made some small brackets and mounted the torches onto the indicator stalks

here they are running from the bikes 12volt system with resistors soldered inside

stu

 

YES!

 

pretty sure when you turn off the battery your Acewell is going to loose it's wheel circumference setting. better write it down somewhere

 

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pretty sure when you turn off the battery your Acewell is going to loose it's wheel circumference setting. better write it down somewhere
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nope,! I enquired from acewell before I bought it, the only thing that is lost is the time clock, used it several times and all other settings are retained.
stu

 

here's the acewell mounted on a bracket I made, on top of the triple tree.
I made some tiny led idiot lights for the L and R indicators (orange) headlight (blue) neutral (green) and oil level (red).
and mounted them in the acewell surround

here it is powered up with most of the sensors set up

this is an amazing little machine , it cost around £130 all in, with the various sensors.
it does, ----- mph,,----- rpm, bar graphic and analogue,------ fuel level,----- engine temp,------ clock,------over rpm warning, light------
--over temp warning light, ----gear indicator, (haven't set that up yet), -------volt meter, ------2 x trip meters------riding time ------ highest speed.-----
neutral indicator------average speed, and possibly some more indicators
stu

 

next up were the rear lights, I decided to incorporate these in to the back of the seat

I bought some led rear ,stop/tail bulbs, and set about finding some 19mm inside dia, plastic tubing to house them in
I found that the legs off kitchen cabinets were the correct size.

I cut 3 lengths and cut 3 holes in the back of the seat, to resin the tubes in.


here's the finished article

stu

 

If you find that the LED warning lights are too bright for nighttime use they can be dimmed by coloring over the lenses with a black permenant marker. It's just enough to dim them for nighttime use and still let them be easily visible during the day.

Your patience with the details shows.

 

OK....wow...just wow...that is one fantastic build, nice work.

 

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If you find that the LED warning lights are too bright for nighttime use they can be dimmed by coloring over the lenses with a black permenant marker. It's just enough to dim them for nighttime use and still let them be easily visible during the day.
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yes, apart from the turn signal indicator lights, the only other one that will be lit at night whilst riding would be the blue, headlight indicator, oil and neutral would be off.
I could increase the size of the in line resistor for any that are too bright.
but the felt pen idea may be worth a try
stu