Quite a bit of progress this weekend…. While this monkey carefully tagged all the wiring and removed the loom, the other monkey was busy pannel-beating the under-belly of our pre-loved 250Z tank into a shape that will fit onto the Honda frame. With the wiring loom removed, we were also able to lower the front shocks through the tripple-clamp about 5cm. Enough to fit those (disappointingly cheap and nasty) clip-ons that I’d bought for $50 on eBay. You get what you pay for – even on eBay, and there’s no escaping the fact that we’re going to have to shell out for some better quality bars some time down the track, but these’ll do for now and it certainly changes the bikes profile for the better.
A couple of days ago these two monkeys wandered in to Sydney Motorcycle Wreckers and introduced ourselves to Jay – the boss-man over there. We were prepared for a fairly cool welcome – I could imagine him thinking “Lord, not ANOTHER pair of totaly inexperienced wannabe grease monkeys!“.
As it turned out, we were both blown away by Jay’s surprisingly genuine enthusiasm and support. He must have spent at least half an hour showing us round his wonderful store of second-hand parts. It’s a regular Aladin’s Cave over-brimming with bike-parts just waiting and begging to be re-cycled. [Baboom! I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to insert a bad pun like that!]
As luck would have it, they’d just received an old Honda CB250 that would make an ideal donor bike for our project. Jay offered to get it working and to help by giving us free access to his huge stock of parts – “Mate, just take a few tanks and try them out to see what works for you – bring back what you don’t need. Oh, and we’ll only stay friends as long as you don’t thieve from me!“. Cool!
At this stage we’ve only a vague idea of where this project is going, and this monkey is quite happy to allow a certain level of organic development. However our project bike ultimately evolves, we’re agreed that it’s got to be done on shoestring budget – but we’re also determined to end up with a very cool and (dare I say it) an elegant bike.
Will our twin goals of low-cost & beautiful bike, combined with our complete lack of experience lead to complete disaster? There’s only one way to find out….
