Let’s see. Some of the people who read the first article have passed on by now, but the bike is finally finished. Ok, nothing is ever finished, but you know what I meant.

Here’s how I got there from the last part.

Joel, who has been the best friend a Biker could ever have, did some more welding for me. We’ve talked about most of this, but here is how it went down. The seat, which was built for this frame didn’t fit correctly. It rocked on the backbone in front, and no matter what we did with the fender location it never matched the fender curve.

Joel welded up some mods to the end of the backbone and replaced the loop of metal to grab the seat’s front mount.

Next we added a welded on exhaust mount that Joel made. This mounted behind the pipes and can’t be seen unless you walk up and look down at it. It’s much stronger than the piece of tin that came with the pipes. We bent that into a pretzel with a couple fingers. I’m sure that would have lasted a week to 10-days.

The internal fork stops, as I mentioned before, use a bearing race with a tab on it.

The kit comes with a disk to bolt to the lower triple tree. It has two grooves in it so you have some choice in how much travel you get. The tab from the bearing race rides in the groove. In my case, like everything else in this build, it just wouldn’t fit. The mounting screws would have run into the neck stem. This is not a defect in the kit’s design. It's just not compatible with my custom neck stem. We fixed it by clamping the lower triple tree into Joel’s CNC mill and machining a groove.

After the mill work we used the original plate as a template. With a bit of dremel magic we added a matching groove to the dust shield.

Now, back to the problems with fitting the seat. After fixing the rocking problem up front, there was still the problem of the seat not fitting against the fender properly. There was always a gap at the bottom, which caused the seat to fold when I sat on it. Joel welded a piece of sheet metal the to fender and created a great-looking contoured adapter. Once it was finished and painted, it looked like part of the original design. I can’t say enough about how well this came out. You be the judge.

I took my time on the prep work for the paint. We shot many coats, with careful sanding between each one, until I had a baby-smooth surface. I used different primer colors so I could tell the different layers apart and know when to stop. Busting through to the metal is not an option. I’d guess there were six, maybe eight coats of primer on it. Before I started with the primer I used a good quality sealer on the metal. The tank was prepped, a while ago, with a metal etch bath plus sealer on the inside. I used the same etching material to prep the metal outside to take paint. That way I didn’t have to worry about the sealer sticking well.

Here’s a shot to show you how even and smooth the surface has to be before it’s ready to paint. You will NOT cover your mistakes with color or clear. Spend the time and get it smooth during prep. This is the stage to go over and over to get it right. Yes, it takes time. Yes, it’s worth it.

Although most of the oil tank isn’t seen, it got the same prep work as the fender and gas tank. Here’s a quick shot of that.

Next, it was time to start painting the frame. This is something you have to decide on. Are you going to paint or powder-coat? In hindsight I probably would have powder coated, if that was really an option. The paint job is cool, but I’m not sure it will last anywhere as long as powder. Money matters, so the frame got painted. Shit, if my Brother Joel hadn’t volunteered to paint the bike I probably would have rattle-canned it. Thanks Joel. It was a lot of work for both of us, but with plans to build more bikes he got some valuable practice on me. Powder-coating frames is much cheaper than paying for liquid paint, but there are drawbacks. If I used powder the frame needed to be perfect. Generally body-work won’t hang, although they have recently developed a bondo product for powder applications. There are also paint and color limitations; however, that’s also changing, and there’s more and more color choices. The code calls for handling the powder first and making a sample for your sheet metal painter to match.

We shot primer, then a Ditzler 2000 base coat, then topped it off with urethane clear.

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