Testarossa's 78 KZ1000 Fighter Build

testarossa wrote:

Extra fab work is not my idea of a good time at the moment. Work continues on the rearsets. Also I get to look forward to fabbing a taillight/license plate mount, battery box/dyna 2000/fusebox mount, rear shock nitrogen resivoir mount, rear master cylinder resivoir mount, exhaust mount, passenger footpeg mounts, and oh yeah gauge mounts. Did I miss anything?

Headlight and front turn signals, unless you already got that covered :ohmy:

Yeah, I just got the headlight rings in yesterday. Like a puzzle trying to figure out how to assemble that. Obviously, the original mounting ears won't fit around the fork tubes, so the mount will be custom. As for the front blinkers, I need some inspiration. All of the replacement parts on ebay and the cycle shops look the same. Plastic fantastic. I don't have any original front blinkers, and they wouln't fit anyway. I would like something led and fairly small to match the smoothed apperance of the bike. However, they do need to throw some light. Anyone got a suggestion. I'm all ears.

Some actual progress to report. I have finally got the DIY rearsets rigid enough to feel comfortable using them. As you can see from the pictures, I have made "I beam" sections out of them, instead of flat plate. My hope is to skeletonize them as much as possible.





Also, fabricated the taillight/license plate bracket this afternoon.







Finally, I repaired the broken baffle in the exhaust pipe that Tony gave me.





Had to clean up the damaged mating surface.



After the most difficult welding that I have ever done, I have a one peice baffle again.

Excellent job on the tail lt, and silencer.
I'm not understanding the i beam rearsets thogh?

Mark, the rearsets are made from 1/8" plate, and were quite flexible. I added in some cross bracing to correct the flex. If you took a cross section of the rearset mount plate it would look like an I beam. Next I plan to cut out some of the meat between the braced areas to lighten and for the coolness factor. I'll get some better closeups after I do that, and it will make sense then.

Try to supersize image number 1, and you should be able to see that there is a 1/2" wide peice of steel wrapped all the way around the triangular mount plate. Also there is another peice that bisects the larger triangle across the center section.

Awe yes, i see it now. good idea .
did u have any plan to alter the face of the pegs? I’m wondering if they may feel a little slippery under foot, in some circumstances?

The pegs are due some modification. Right now they are just proof of concept. I plan on putting a slash cut on the ends, and who knows what to the tops. I definantly think that they would be dangerous if wet or oily in the current form. It would be foolish of me to think that I would never get caught in the rain in Houston.

that's not rain it's really just very humid there. same with most of south texas.

a simple knurl comes to mind. I’m sure u will come up with something.
I had knurled ends on the shifter and brake peddle.and took them off because the shifters, knural was chewing on my boot top. Now I have smooth ones shaped like 50 cal bullets and the brake side is slippery. Cant win?:lol:

That tailight sure tucked up under there nicely! The rearsets are certainly comming along too. If you're anything like me, you'll get them mostly finished then figure out some changes you'd like to make, but won't because of the amount of work it wold take to start from scratch again. I'm already planning what I would do different when I adapt that Duc 1098 swinger to another project... :laugh: Great job too on the core repair: that is thin sheetmetal that takes more finess to mig weld PLUS the tight confines of the cap would be a challenge. Good work so far Josh, you're getting closer

You aren't kidding about that baffle being thin sheetmetal. I'm guessing that it's 24ga. As soon as the arc would stabilize I would start to burn a hole. I resorted to using loads of small tack welds. I bet I put 150 tacks on that thing. Next time I'm gonna make a new baffle from scratch.

Mark, I'm kicking myself for not knurling those footpegs before I welded them up. Knurling steel takes a lot of tool pressure, and it helps to have a sacrificial section to chuck on that will be cut off. I'm not sure how I'll handle it yet.