What's wrong with this picture?

I'll give you a hint: there is something missing.

I've had a bad really bad day today; suppliers screwing up, customers complaining, horrible [even by airline standards] food on the plane from Stockholm etc. So when I got a call from the powder coaters that the pieces I gave them a week ago were ready for pick-up, I envisioned a weekend locked in my basement, finally assembling my tracker. Suddenly my other worries melted away. But, alas, it was not to be. And it's probably my own fault. You see, I wanted my frame, swingarm and a couple of other brackets and stuff painted with a kind of powder that leaves a rough, semi matt, almost crackelated finish. The guy had limited experience with the stuff, but told me he would give it a try.

To say that it looked shite is like saying emo-rock sucks. Rather than the slightly bumpy, semi matt apperance I was looking for, it looked as if the frame had been left out in the rain for ten years and then coated with a thin, shiny black film, exposing the rusty, pitted material underneath. I was gutted. The shiny pieces (see image) where fine, but the rest has to be redone. To his credit, the painter didn't argue, and promised to media blast the pieces again and redo them. Plain old satin black this time. Oh well, what's another two weeks?

Flake.

I got a paint sample in the mail today from the guy who is going to paint the tank and seat unit. It turns out that flake paint is not like ordinary paint in the sense that you can mix in some other colour in order to change the shade – like add a bit of white to turn a blue colour into light blue. Instead, it's the small flakes themselves that are coloured. So in order to change the hue of the finished paint, you have to use different background colours "behind" the flakes. The left part of the paint sample was painted red before the flakes were applied, and the right part was painted black. As a result the right part of the sample looks darker from some angles, but not all (you cant really see the black base paint). From straight on it's hard to tell the difference, but from a more oblique angle the difference is clear. I really like the "red flake on black background"-colour. It looks a bit like the old Husqvarna "Ruby red" paint (image here). I think I'm going for that as the base colour.

Yokes 2.0

After getting some excellent feedback from #15 (among others), I've decided to change the design of my yokes. The "integrated indicators"-design that I had in mind is now out. I got a little bit carried away with that and maybe it was a little bit to elaborate for a street tracker? I now have a different idea for how I'm going to mount the front indicators, involving a bent aluminium tube that will sit under the yoke (more on that later). And yes: I need indicators for my bike to pass the final M.O.T. After that they can, err, fall off. I guess...

While I'm at it, I'll add 10 more mm of grountrail by shortening the offset to 30 mm, giving me a total of 100-105 mm ground trail.