Bell helmet update.

I've just spent a week in New York and I was amazed at the lack of motorcycles in Manhattan. A couple of tragic cruisers with tassels and stuff was about it. One would have thought that with all the traffic that people would turn to bikes in order not to get stuck in the congestion, but no. Very few bikes. In places like Milan and Rome, where car drivers drive like maniacs, there are bikes absolutely everywhere. Strange.

And of course: with few bikes, there are also very few dealers. I only found one, and that was small and poorly stocked. No sign of any Bell helmets. So I call Bell's support centre and even they couldn't tell me where to find a "Custom 500" in New York. Hm. When I was a kid riding motocross bikes, there were Bell helmets all over the place. Guess the brand must have deteriorated.

Fortunately, Bell has a web shop, and I now have a white Custom 500 on order. Time to order some paint. Marcus of Marcus Moto Design tells me you can get two pack in rattle cans nowadays. Weird, but if he's not pulling my leg, it's apparently true.

Air or water?

I STILL haven't decided on what to build next, and it drives me crazy. All I know is that I want something that can travel a little further than my Husky tracker. Don't get me wrong: I love the way the Husky came out, but it's not very, erm, comfortable.

I came very close to buying a mint KTM 990 motor this week. The price was right and it had only 2400 clicks on the meter – barely run in. It's a cracking engine, powerful, light for a twin and thoroughly modern, which I like. It would be the perfect engine for a kick-ass street tracker. There is however, the issue of the cooling. The Katoom engine is liquid cooled and since it puts out a lot of power, it needs big coolers. And therein lies the rub: it's very difficult to build a naked bike with all those coolers, hoses and little plastic tanks. I haven't seen one that looks good. And believe me: I've looked through the entire Internet looking for good looking KTM-based bikes. Yes, the entire thing.

I figure I need about 80-90 bhp in order to build a fun bike, if It's a torquey engine and if I can keep the weight of the bike under 180-190 kg. Which got me thinking about that Buell engine again... Now, there's no denying that an air cooled engine looks a LOT nicer than water cooled ones. Just have a look at the sketch from Bottpower above. How cool is that! They are aiming at a weight of 170 kg, which I think may be a little optimistic without spending a fortune on components like the wheels, but 180 should be attainable without braking the bank. But the best thing of all is the fact that their sketch does away with the aluminium perimeter frame, instead opting for a central tube. Which makes it possible to use a proper gas tank (incidentally the same tank as on my Husky. It wouldn't be too difficult to build either. All you need is a big, bent steel tube (preferably cro-mo) from the swing arm pivot up to the steering head, some brackets to fix the engine in place, and presto: good looking, minimal frame. At least that's what I'm thinking at the moment – I'm not sure about where the mounting points are on a Buell. Tomorrow I'm going to the local Harley dealer to take some spy shots!

More images.

I got an email from the guy who runs Bike EXIF – one of the bigger blogs for cafe racers and customs – requesting some images of my bike and I sent him some of the shots that weren't featured in Sideburn.

I must admit that it was with some trepidation I sent Chris the images since quite a few bikes get "murdered" in the comments on his blog. But people were actually quite kind and even the "Yoda" of the street tracker scene, Richard Pollock (of Mule Motorcycles) put in an encouraging post. Click here to see the images on BikeEXIF.

Preaching to the choir.

You probably know this already, but there is a new issue of Sideburn for sale, and my bike is featured! Buy it. You WILL love it. The best bike magazine, bar none.

PS: if you're working for the Swedish Postal Service, stop reading this and hurry up with my issue will ya?

Captain Sweden.

I normally use a full face helmet. But after seeing the wonderful "Riding September" video, I now want an open face one. And being too cheap to buy one from Ateliers Ruby, I've decided to go for a "Bell 500 Custom" which are on sale for about $100 in the US, despite being made from proper fibre glass.

I've always liked the "Captain America" scheme featured in the movie "Easy Rider" – even if it is a little overexploited by now. So I thought I'd try my hand at making a colour scheme of my own and throw in some Swedish influences as well.

The plan is to get a white one and then paint it myself like my Photoshop-sketch above. I'm planning to use rattle can paints and not be too fussy with the masking and painting in order to achieve a little bit of a "retro" feel – as if the helmet had been painted in the seventies by some hippie and then lost for decades, before being rediscovered by me. That way I get a nice looking lid and still get modern levels of protection. That's the plan anyway... If anyone uses a Bell 500 please get in contact with me – I need some help with choosing the correct size.

Santa was late.

But then again, what's a day or two when you get something like this! I mentioned earlier that I tried a Keihin FCR flat slide carb on my bike during the summer and I just could not believe what a difference it made compared to my old Del' Orto. It was as if the old jerky and vibey Husky big bore lump had suddenly been transformed into a modern, smooth and really powerful weapon. It also made the bike a doddle to start – hot or cold. I've been on the lookout for a 41 mm FCR ever since, but come across a lot of dodgy ebay-sellers that refused to send images or otherwise behaved strangely.

Then I found this Dutch website: http://www.frankmxparts.com/ and got in contact with the very friendly and helpful owner Frank. Not only did he find the carb I needed, he also got it jetted to my specs, changed the wire operated (from the handlebars) hot start mechanism to a simpler and nicer button on the carb and changed all the transparent tubing for black ones. The cost of all this, including shipping: €360. Considering that the carb I got is almost new (and really looks as good as new too) and that the throttle and cables were included, well, I think that is awesome value.

If you want to transform your thumper, buy an FCR. And do buy it from Frank.

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!

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.

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".

One liquid cooled framer - done!

Without further ado, here it is...

(low res pics taken with my compact. Proper studio shots to be taken later).

Victory!

I'm very happy to report that I'm now the proud owner of a fully legit, road legal, street tracker. My framer passed the final inpection about an hour ago. Now I'm going to mount the proper tires and the ISR brake stuff and take some pictures for you of the finished article. Then it's time for a professional photo shoot (if everything goes according to plan you might see the bike in one of our favorite mags in the not too distant future).

BTW: It wasn't the carb that was acting up, it was a faulty ground wire.

Buggeration!

Believe it or not, but I missed my M.O.T-appointment this morning since the bike absolutely refused to start. This is the first time ever that I've failed to get it running. I kicked the damn thing for 40 minutes and got it running for one (1) second only for it to die again. I've now bought a new plug and have another carb lined up if it turns out it's the carb that's acting up. I've managed to get a new M.O.T-appointment already on Monday morning. Fingers crossed.

I'm now on the look out for a flat slide 39 or 41 mm carb. My friend changed his Dell'Orto for a Keihin flat slide and it runs like a dream now and start first kick every time. So if you've got a spare one, drop me a line.

Damn it! (part 2)

Well, look what I got in the mail today... Yes, I went for the radial one. And yes, it is a little bit on the large side. But as "Road Warriors" pointed out: the rest of the running gear is really modern, so I decided continue my theme of juxtapositioning old school elements like the tank and seat with bang up to date engine and brake components. I think it's this mix of 1975 and 2010 that makes my bike stand out somewhat among other trackers.

I won't mount them until this weekend after the final MOT on friday. Will post some pictures of the finished bike then, including some other minor touches I've been busy with. Then it's on to the next one. I'm working on a Photoshop composite of a café racer at the moment. I hope you'll like it!

Damn it!

I promised myself that I would keep my old Brembo brake pump and clutch lever, but I just can't resist ISR's stuff. It's just so... bl**dy gorgeous in a Mies van der Rohe "I didn't intend for this Skyscraper to look this good, I just paid a lot of attention to the proportions" kind of way.

So... I called Acke Rising (owner of ISR) to hear what I should buy. He suggested the old style brake pump (he knows I'm building a tracker), but I had my heart set on a radial one. What do you think: radial or old school?

Free distort.

I like italic racing numbers on bikes. They look like they are forced into leaning backwards as the bike accelerates. At least if you view the bike from the left side. The problem is that if you put italic numbers on the right side of the bike – then they lean the wrong way! Not nice. Thankfully there is a workaround. You will need Adobe Illustrator (or another vector graphics application) and a little patience. But it will be worth it.

Step 1 is choosing a font that you like. I very much like a font called "City" that was designed in the 1930s for the Berthold type foundry in Berlin. So I chose that.

Step 2 is firing up Adobe Illustrator. Make a new document and write your desired numbers two times. “Create outlines” of the numbers (It's under "Type" in the top menu). This will turn your numbers into easily manipulated vector objects.

Step 3: select the effect called “Free distort” (Effects/Distort & transform/Free distort). You can now distort the numbers into pretty much any shape you like. In order for mine to fit in with the lines of my tail piece I made my numbers a little bit lower towards the end of the bike, which will emphasize the "leaning" effect. I added a black outline to my numbers for that "Nascar" look.

Step 4 is saving your document as an Illustrator eps-document and then emailing it to your local digital printer who will print them on vinyl and cut them out for you. There really isn't more to it!

polymimetic alloy.

No, the part in the picture is not manufactured by Skynet in some sort of potential alternate future. It's actually made in good old Sweden by a firm called ISR.

As I'm waiting for the beuraucratic paper mill to return my paperwork, I've been busy making some decals and surfing the web for a replacement for the crude looking Tochico brake caliper I've been using so far. And beeing Swedish, there just is no way around the fact that ISR makes som pretty impressive and affordable stuff. At least if you compare to other calipers of the same quality (I won't post the price here since I suspect my wife checks this blog now and then, but it was about a third of the cost of a comparable Brembo caliper.). ISR makes six piston calipers as well, but I went with four pistons since I think it looks better. And besides: who has ever seen a race bike with six piston brakes?

It needs new spacers, but the very friendly proprietor of ISR, Acke Rising, has promised to turn some for me. I'll post a pic of it mounted when the spacers arrive. Now I just have to resist the temptation to buy new master cylinders from ISR as well...

Thrilla in Svedala.

Put on the kettle and get comfortable, cause this post is going to be long. In my last post I wrote that I had booked an appointment to get the final SFRO-approval for my frame. What I hadn't expected was that this final inspection would turn into such a palaver.

But before we proceed I thought I’d just take a minute to explain the process of getting what is to all intents and purposes a scratch built framer through the Swedish M.O.T/approval procedure. The Swedish government has outsourced the responsibility for inspecting “amateur built” bikes and cars to an organisation called SFRO. SFRO consists of a small number of Swedish car and bike enthusiasts who, by being fiercely thorough make sure that no dangerous or badly built contraptions reach the streets. And by making sure of that, they protect the hobby from bureaucrats who would like nothing better than to put a stop to our beloved hobby. I just wanted to make that clear from the outset to make sure you don’t get the impression that I in any way have a beef with SFRO. You can see where this is leading now can’t you…?

In order to get a bike like mine approved you first have to get your frame/bike SFRO-inspected in an unpainted state. At this point the welds must be left untouched (i.e. not ground or sanded). This to show that the craftsmanship is up to scratch and that the overall geometry of the frame is sound. I passed that one with flying colours. Next step is to paint and assemble the bike and have the bike noise tested. And as you know, I somehow managed to pass that one too. The third step is where the SFRO inspector actually rides your bike and makes sure that it handles and that the brakes work and so on. If it does, you can then book an appointment to have the bike M.O.T’d and get your official papers and your registration plate.

So, with that in mind, let’s rewind the tape a month or so. I loaded my bike on my rental trailer and drove the 75 clicks to Svedala where I was meeting up with the SFRO guy. I unloaded and the guy complemented my on the looks of the bike, the components and the overall craftsmanship. After taking some measurements he mounted a G-meter on the tank and drove off. He came back after 15 minutes or so and I got compliments on the brake performance. Not surprisingly really since the brakes are a bit oversized, to put it mildly. He then checked the paperwork once more and was just about to put his stamp of approval on the bike when he decided to have one last look on the receipt I got from the place where we bought the frame tubes…

As I may have mentioned, SFRO doesn’t like Cro-Mo tubing, so we decided to opt for regular steel tubes to make sure the bike passed with as little fuss as possible (the bike is so light anyway that it makes little difference on the street). Now, SFRO publishes a book every other year where all construction rules, permitted measurement etc are listed together with a list of all the different kinds of tubing that SFRO prefers. What we didn’t know at the time when we ordered the tubes, was that SFRO, in their latest book (that we didn’t have), had inserted a paragraph where it stated that cold drawn steel tubes should be avoided due to possible problems with brittleness resulting from bending the tubes.

The SFRO-guy looked up from his papers and said in a sombre voice “we have a problem”. He explained the issue and my heart sank. Suddenly my frame was unusable anywhere outside of a racetrack. I loaded the bike up again and thoughts of torching the bike and trailer and leaving it by the roadside to burn went through my head. My wife told me later that I looked completely gutted when I walked through the door.

After a few days of almost clinical depression I got a text from the SFRO-guy where he stated that there was one possibility we could try: a Brinell-test to see if the tubes we had used perhaps would fall within the permitted tolerances after all. He would start looking for the test equipment that was supposed to be somewhere in Sweden. The weeks came and passed. And with them the best part of the Swedish summer. Until finally this week when I got the call: “Can you come to Svedala on Saturday? We have a bit of a SFRO-conference and I have been able to locate the Brinell-test equipment”.

I felt a bit like I was presenting my bike to the Spanish Inquisition as I rolled my framer into the large garage where the SFRO-guys were having their meeting. I was told to leave and come back in two hours. I drove to a press centre and picked up the new PB while I waited for the minutes to tick down.

I hour, 59 minutes and 50 seconds later I pulled into the court yard and was met by “my” SFRO-guy who, not unlike the emperor in “Gladiator” slowly raised his hand in front of him, stuck his thumb out and gave me a slow-motion thumbs up… It passed.

In the image above, you can see where they scratched off the paint in order to test the steel. I guess I will have to repaint the frame, but I’d much rather do that than start all over from scratch!

I know I've said this before: but this time it really is close to finished...

The sound of silence.

If you've ever heard a big bore Husky at full chat you know it's loud. Proper loud. Little children screaming, car alarms going off at 50 yards - loud. Then imagine that you have an 84-decibel limit to adhere to. That's exactly what I was up against today when I did the mandatory noise test for my street tracker.
I always thought that passing the noise test would be the hardest part of the whole M.O.T-process and I knew from the start that there was no way in h**l that I could get my bike under 84 dB at full throttle – not unless the test was done in deep space. So first on my list was finding a way of making it impossible to give the bike the full beans. After some head scratching I found a nice little hole on the underside of the plastic carburettor lid. I put a 50 mm long screw in there, which made it impossible to lift the throttle more than about 40 % of the way. That went some way towards getting the noise down. Next up was filling the SuperTrapp silencer with sound deadening fibre glass "wool" and taking out 11 of the 12 discs at the end of the silencer.

At this point I was kind of happy with the results but the induction sound from the carb was still too loud to my ears (I was guessing at this point since I didn't have a dB-meter). So yesterday night I started panicking a bit and began botching together a sort of external air box over the exposed KN filter. And when I say botch, I really mean botch. Or how does cutting out plastic pieces from IKEA boxes, filling it with cell foam and gaffer taping it all up sound? Botch Engineering Ltd.

After a few hours sleep I brought the bike up from the garage to do a test start before I was to load it and go to Malmö (some 65 clicks away). It absolutely refused to start! No matter how many times I kicked the thing – nothing. Obviously it didn't get enough air and I had to modify my "air box" one more time, with one hour to go to the test. I finally got it started and it sure was quiet:-) I also ran like Chitti Chitti Bang Bang with a bad cold. Ah, to hell with it I thought and loaded up.

After waiting in line for an hour or so, watching all sorts of machinery go through the sound trap, I handed my bike over to the guy who was going to do the test ride past a dB-meter and watched him "speed off" with the engine coughing and farting on "full gas" (40% throttle). On his return pass I could see the frown on his face and he gave me the bike back stating that it "just wasn't working". I felt the panic rise since I knew that there wasn't going to be a new test for some weeks. I told him I was going to do some mods and could he please give it one more go? At this point the other bikes and cars had passed their tests and it had started raining. So I started tearing frantically at my "air box" to try to give the bike some more air. Guess what? The bike refused to start. I kicked and kicked. I checked the plug, the fuel and everything else I could come up with. Nothing. After some 15 minutes of this I was drenched in sweat. Seconds from giving up, the last remaining biker told me to throw away that stupid air box since "I was screwed anyway". I did and the bike fired up and I handed it over to the tester, expecting disaster.

But do you know what? IT PASSED! I was actually one dB under the limit even without the stupid airbox. I haven't felt so relieved in years. On Monday I'm going back to get the final clearance on the frame and then the final M.O.T will be a mere formality. Wish me luck!

It's a wrap. Or is it?

I spent a few good hours yesterday wrapping my exhaust. A pretty fiddly job, even with the coolers off. The headers turn and twist and the clearance is marginal at best. Now, I know that exhaust wrap isn't strictly in keeping with the flat tracker-style, but the Husky exhaust isn't the prettiest in the world and I like the way a wrapped exhaust looks. So sue me.

It looks like a piece of cake, but it is actually pretty difficult to get the wrap to fit perfectly. After having finished with the light coloured wrap (picture #1) I took a step back to admire my handiwork. And quickly realised that it looked too retro. And that the light wrap clashed with the colour theme of the rest of the bike. Damn!

30 minutes later I had purchased a new wrap (another 50 Euros) and started over again. This time, with the darker wrap (picture #2), I think I got the look I was after.

A word to the wise: use a long sleeved sweater and maybe even latex gloves when you wrap your own exhaust. Those little fibre glass strands itch like a son of a *****. I washed my arms three times and still couldn't stop the itching. In the end I had to resort to using my wife's body lotion. Yuk.

BTW: the new Öhlins spring is now in place (after having been powder coated black). It's 60 Nm instead of the 110 Nm standard spring. Hopefully this will smoothen out the super stiff ride.

Under cover.

The traditional flat track frame (and trust me: I've studied quite a few) uses a turned up metal loop as a connection point for the rear bodywork. Or in the case of a Woods frame, the rear frame loops around the bodywork. The loop makes the rear frame stiff and light.

I knew however that I needed an easy way to fix the rear light, reg plate and indicators on my street tracker, so I opted for a slightly different rear frame with a small "shelf" at the back. Not quite as light but it makes for a convenient place to put some of the electric gubbins that are not needed on a race tracker. None of these components are visible once the rear bodywork is fixed in place and the "shelf" protects them from rear wheel spray. As you can see from the image, the horn was relocated backwards as well.