Foos and his 2004 Dyna Low thread

[speedfoos]

Hush. Two wheels and your hair in the wind is all that matters.

I'm TDY and Mindy sent me this pic. Puppy misses me.

[Reindeer]

I'm excited to see this done. I've got a basket case CB750 that unfortunatly is still a basket case. Someday...

[speedfoos]

There's nothing like today! Do it!

[speedfoos]

Right, since I'm away from my bike I've been sitting here drawing up one on graph paper to get an idea of how the cafe section of the bike will look. I'm not a very good artist so I won't be posting it up - it looks just like an XS400 with a cafe rear section, nothing terribly unique, but that's not why I'm posting right now.

Over the past couple hours I've been looking at pictures of my bike and those on the internet and I noticed something about the front forks.

Hmm...

A stock XS400 looks like this:




Note the orientation of the axle on the fork.

And now a shot of mine.




Looks a little different don't it?

My best guess from looking at different bikes 'round about the same year range is that I have a set of front forks from either an XS650 or 850. I'll have to see if I can't find a serial number or some other marking when I get home, but this solves my bearing mystery as to why the bottom bearing on the steering neck pokes out of the bottom a little bit. The neck doesn't match the frame. Not that big of a deal now that I know what I'm dealing with.

It's always something.

Oh, here's an XS850 whose front forks are nearly identical to the set I've got.

[speedfoos]

Somehow, I think this guy's job is much cooler than mine.

[speedfoos]

So here we go again.

Couple bits showed up while I was gone, namely a minty speedometer and the tail hoop from an XS650.

Not much good in its current configuration! Bunch of extra bits, it's all bent wrong...




But with the power of science, oxygen and acetylene - and a couple steering rack bolts from a 1976 Mustang - it becomes a u-shaped frame tail for a cafe racer!







I cut the rack bolts to use as plugs, melted off of all that superfluous bracketry and heated things up to bend them the way I wanted them. I still have fill the rear where I sectioned it to expand to match the width of the stock frame, but the hard part is done!

[DaGriz]

Cool! Very nice fabrication work BUT...................... when iit's all done it' STILL a rice burner! ;-)

[DaGriz]

The Harley god is gonna get ya!

[speedfoos]

Well, you know what I have to say about that.

Anyway, it was 27° when I road to work this morning. Time to do something for my hands as that was brutal.

[speedfoos]

V1 of my handguards is complete.

I patterned them off of these but my design is a touch different.

Someone else's guards

I did some eyeballin' and some figurin. Then I did a little drawing, followed by a cardboard mock-up/template, and then I moved on to 18-gauge sheet. Wish I had some extra 16-gauge laying around the garage, but it appears I used it all up. Oh well.

Left side cut out and mounting tabs being figured out, almost looks like a stop sign.




Another angle:



I seem to be suffering from a distinct lack of metal brakes in my garage so I had to improvise.




Same goes for a bead roller. No shot of the process, but I used my previous "metal brake" pieces with a small spacer and hammered the center "bead roll" into the guard for some stability.




A shot of both now that they're done:



Sprayed them black with Plasti-coat and popped the windshield back on:






We'll see how they perform tomorrow on the way in to work. If the design is sound, I'll make two more sets (one for my Dad and one for a buddy) and call this one a success!

[raycwheeler]

Very nice with a ton of options..

Raycwheeler
Performance Editor
Bikernet.com

Originally Posted by speedfoos

V1 of my handguards is complete.

I patterned them off of these but my design is a touch different.

Someone else's guards

I did some eyeballin' and some figurin. Then I did a little drawing, followed by a cardboard mock-up/template, and then I moved on to 18-gauge sheet. Wish I had some extra 16-gauge laying around the garage, but it appears I used it all up. Oh well.

Left side cut out and mounting tabs being figured out, almost looks like a stop sign.




Another angle:



I seem to be suffering from a distinct lack of metal brakes in my garage so I had to improvise.




Same goes for a bead roller. No shot of the process, but I used my previous "metal brake" pieces with a small spacer and hammered the center "bead roll" into the guard for some stability.




A shot of both now that they're done:



Sprayed them black with Plasti-coat and popped the windshield back on:






We'll see how they perform tomorrow on the way in to work. If the design is sound, I'll make two more sets (one for my Dad and one for a buddy) and call this one a success!

[DaGriz]

Those look really good! I do believe they will work great. Keeping the wind and rain from your hands will make a big difference!!

Good job!!

[speedfoos]

Made a couple more sets of hand guards yesterday. Sent my original set off to my Dad and then made two more. One for me and one for a buddy of mine who initially laughed at them. Well, two days ago he was dancing around the subject like, "How hard was it to make those guards? Does it take you very long?" Hah! Sucker. So asked him if he wanted a set why didn't he just ask me? People are funny some times.



And then I found out what happens when you hit a decent sized scar with a 2-pound mallet. Makes a mess.

[DaGriz]

OUCH!! Bet you won't do that again!

Hand guards are great. Thanks for making me a pair They will get lots of use up here!

[DR.SCOTT]

don't count on that! lol!