Sunday 28 November 2010

Got it!

Now I know what I want to build next. A Porsche 909 Bergspyder. The pic is from Porsches' own museum and doesn't it look great? It was built in 1968 "specifically for competing in hill climbing competitions" and it weighed an incredible 385 kg! That's a 100 kg less than the weight of a modern Formula 1 (sans driver and fuel)! The 909 encompasses everything I like; light weight, no nonsense styling and of course: black rims. Now I just need to work out how it would look as a motorcycle. And what engine it should have. Back to the drawing board!

Friday 19 November 2010

Help please.

Can anyone tell me where the wheels on this KTM comes from? They're obviously 19-inchers (which we like), but I can't place them. Any help appreciated.

Friday 5 November 2010

Quo vado?*

Now that the Husky tracker is finished [I've unofficially christened it the "Sidetracker" since it proved such a distraction from my other obligations like work and my other projects], I find myself in the most enviable position there is: with a blank slate in front of me. This means I can go in any direction I want, and I find that feeling quite exhilarating.

I have a mental short list of bike projects I want to try and one of them is building a really nice café racer. A month or so ago I found a Buell engine on the web that was for sale at reasonable money and I did what I usually do in these circumstances: I fired up Photoshop and tried a couple of ideas. Now, there is nothing at all wrong with a CB750 special or a nice Bonneville, and in fact I may come back to those bikes later on, but I felt I needed a bigger challenge. The Husqvarna tracker was challenging since most street trackers are either Harley/Buell, Triumph or Rotax engined. There isn't very many Husky street trackers around. With that in mind I sketched a new frame and borrowed bits and pieces from other bikes to see how it could look. You find the sketches above [with and without bullet type fairing].

The scale and measurements aren't a hundred percent correct, but I still think it could have turned out pretty nice. But... the Buell engine turned out to be less good than advertised and I lost interest in the project. Now I'm thinking of doing 4 cylinder tracker along the lines of the R1 street tracker that Gregg's Customs made last year. Mine would be less "blingy" and perhaps use a smaller engine (like from an R6). What do you think?

*First person version of "Quo vadis" - meaning "where are you going".