monoshock

I have thought about this myself for my bike. I no longer have the gigantic airbox but do have pods and a jet kit with a pipe, little tuning required and I ran neck and neck with a maxim X to 130mph. So monoshock away, your swingarm makes sense and inside of the frame I would say there is room if you find the right length of shock. As far as stress on the frame? It is steel and the welds from the factory are sloppy at best. Bracing wouldn't be bad the frames are kind of like black spaghetti, look at a book on designing race car frames more stress there then on your bike. Take pictures lots of pictures I must see.

 

Where is Rice-Burnarr when you want him?

 

i have been thinking of cutting the whole rear frame off, and adding some steel to the 'new' backend of the frame and the shock mounting point. wish id have time to draw a picture.

ok now i get the softail approach. it would look even cleaner than the '1st gen' monoshock style, and would maybe require less strenghtening on the upper frame.. but no, i would see that the rear hub needs to be supported so it would be supported by something else than only the swingarm bolts. what do you think?


swissjon you are right. and this is a discussion board, all discussion should be welcome. but with that r1....

i had a similar r1, absolutely loved it. but that one with all that chrome.... id have to shout RAPE ! ! ! ! !






bottom line i really like this idea and only things possibly stopping me are finnish authorities, who hate garage built bikes. i would like to keep my bike road legal and these kinds of modifications might be too much for them. i have to ask...

 

RAPE? This is a visual masterpiece lol

I guess it takes all tastes to make the world turn. Personally I love it.

I'm curious, why have you gone from an R1 to an XJ?

 

yeah well i can totally appreciate the work on the r1, i just have something against chrome on motorcycles. chrome only where its supposed to be, on the forks. even though im thinking of getting those rubber protectors to hide the crome on my forks

yes swiss again youre correct, things would quickly get boring if everyone would suddenly agree on everything


i had a 03 r1, regrettably i had to part with it because i couldnt afford keeping an apartment, a car, a bike, a useless unemployed woman and a kid. so the bike had to go, unfortunately the woman had to go a week after that, meaning i just might have been able to keep the bike after all. well f***.

a litre supersport bike is extremely expensive to keep in finland because of the ridiculous insurance costs, on top of those i lost my licence many times with it and collected more than 2000 euros worth of speeding tickets.

an old xj on the other hand is insured for 1/10 of the cost of r1. besides theres a lot more to do with an xj almost as old as me

 

i think theres no room to fit softail type shocks so im going forth with my original plans heres a new scetch what do you guys think?

 

That is very similar to what I was thinking would work although I want to keep the stock look. I like things to look like they haven't been messed with. But the bracing on the swing arm is good I think, the more direct the shock is compressed the more efficient it is.

 

I think if you would fit an r1 or r6 tail on that, it'd look the dogs b*ll*cks. (That's an English expression for very nice )

Hmm. Well I ain't gay, so I'm afraid a woman is as necessary part of my life as a bike. As they say... Sh*t happens. Next time find one who earns her own spending money

 

yeah brewer, i plan to make this look slick and not messed with too



adbrewers notion of the direction of the bracing and shock is a good one, and thats what i was thinking too. since its a moving object would it be good to try to adjust it in such way that the angle of the shock/brace is near 180 wet weight with the rider? or am i on the wrong path?

theres not much i know about rear suspension geometry yet, but if someone of you really knows, let me know.

swissjon im afraid all factory tails are too big and wide for my particular taste, i have to make my own. its going to be 2 up, only a seat, not much of a tail..



continuing about women: that was shit im glad happened.

nowadays im married to a stunning top quality northern beauty from lapland. she looks after herself and supports my hobbies. in some of our discussions she said "theres nothing wrong with having three bikes."

 

You lucky bleeeeeep. You've found the perfect woman. funny how they seem to turn up second time around. Mine is the same, only I have three bikes, she says I have to sell the car if I want a forth. only trouble with Switzerland is that it's like finland. Biking in the winter is a no go, a car is essential. Oh well. Going to sell off this little Honda I have and buy a norton project bike.

I know what you mean about the tail. Wish I had the skills to fabricate something like this.

Loadsa photos please!

 

i think i have more will than skill, but that counts too..!

winter is good for two things: no insects and downhill skiing.

i will be posting a thorough coverage of all i have done with my bike in the future, the build process is slow due to so few hours in a day.



any knowledge on the geometry?

 

Are you wanting to go for the Harley Softail look so your bike looks like a rigid? If so, then in my opinion, it's not worth the effort unless you just want to do it for the sake of saying "I did it". I completely understand that and say there is no better reason for doing something. If you're wanting to get the clean lines of a rigid while not sacrificing riding comfort, then you're doing it for all the wrong reasons. The Softail type suspension doesn't work nearly as well as the dual shock set up you have now. In reality, it just plain sucks. You're willing to sacrifice comfort for looks, and again I totally agree with that. But why not go all the way and make it a rigid with a sprung solo seat? You'll have less engineering/fabricating and the difference in ride won't be all that much.

If you're going for the street fighter look, then completely ignore what I have said and do your thing.

 

I believe I have a book on fabrication for race cars still kick'in around somewhere I'll have to look. I look at the lists of bikes some of you own and wish I didn't live in North America I would love an XJR.

 

no bud i am going for the 'streetfighter' looking ducati supersport type of setup.

the idea is to try to make it work and look better. i believe a monoshock is a lot easier on the shock than a twin shock.

 

Check out what I just found - -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6WDE4pZ ... re=related

This thing even sounds like it runs good with no airbox and open header !

 

yeah ive seen that before.. thats exactly the setup im after.

may take me years though

 

It was a tad easier for them to pull off, the 550s are chain drive.

 

but only a tad..

 

I think you have a pretty good plan to brace and monoshock your swingarm. If it was me, I would probably get a Virago swingarm and shock to cut the pieces off and weld to the XJ swinger. That way I wouldn't have to fab a lower shock mount or jig up the bracing. If you have the time, you might want to take a look at Tony Foale's site if you haven't seen it before. He really knows what he is doing. He is a nice guy to talk to. I raced against him at Mid-Ohio this year and he has a custom framed Aermacchi that he built that is really cool.

http://www.tonyfoale.com/



Ken

 

thanks ken, i wasnt familiar with tony foales work before. theres a lot of information on the page that just blowd my mind. a lot of motorcycle theory. id like to dig deeper but it seems he wants some $. maybe i can send him an email and ask for some SIMPLE directions to shoot for

the virago swingarm is for a 16 inch wheel, therefore pieces needed are too short. i need to fab everything anyway and i need to weld the bracings where i want them, not where i can get them to go, if you know what i mean.



came to my mind that being a shaft drive bike the limits of wheel travel have to be critical? so i may need a shock off a bike that had linkages, since the shock travel on linkage type shocks is less than on shocks that dont use linkages.

does anyone know what would be the maximum rear wheel travel on 750 secas? a wheel travel to aim at when planning this, i dont want to ruin my shaft drive. or does it even move to a position where damage would occur?