82 KZ1000 cruiser chop

Picked up a sweet set of billet aluminum forward controls for the bike and worked on mounting them the other night. Bike has a set of "case saver" crash bars on it that i figured would double nicely as mount for them.

Here i made a bit of a mistake as you will see... I thought that the front curve of the case savers would end up being right up against my calf as i was riding so I cut them out and then fabricated 2 flat steel plates to bolt the controls onto.

after clamping the controls on and playing with their position to find the most comfortable spot, I drilled holes and bolted them up.

Thats when i realized that the case savers not only look stupid with that section i removed gone....but also that they weren't in the way after all. now i have to weld them back in!
At least the controls are mounted and i just have to add a bit of bracing to the flat plates as they flex a bit too much and then fabricate the linkages.


and a pic with a friend sitting on it... a SHORTER friend lol!

LOVE IT!! :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo:
Keep the Pics and progress notes coming man! :silly:
TennesseeZ Ed

Sick project. I like the way you think.

Finally got my headlight mounted.


mounted the rear fender too but going to have to rethink that. will worry about it more later. I decided i need to find some nice hand controls for 1" bars so that i don't have to modify those apes i have to fit the 7/8" Kawie controls. besides the original controls are looking rather ugly and i need to get longer cables anyway.

Man, that headlight is LOUD! Lovin it... Massive tank, massive light.... Definitely need a bigger sissy bar IMO

I haven't forgotten about this, just been too busy to get anything done to the bike.
I did, however, build it a new home!

My new workshop I might even get roofing on it some day. put it up almost 2 months ago and still no roofing at least its tarped for now and my project has finally moved out of my friends garage. Also I am no longer a long haul trucker as of this weekend. Start a local trucking job on monday so hopefully i can start getting time for more soon.

Ok...haven't been getting anything done for a while, with changing jobs, and then wrecking my poor old cb500, but since I have all the major frame mods done already I figured it was time for some serious dissasembly.

Now I can finally get started on the REAL work of welding, grinding, and painting the frame. Need to get started on the ceaning and polishing of the chromes and aluminums, so I can start reassembly.
Hopefully the posts will start coming a lot quicker as I focus on getting this on the road.

I havent forgotten this its still crawling along. Between work, the honeydo list, the new 750 that is supposed to be my daily ride, and the project...not really a lot of time, but after most of 3 saturdays working on the frame, i got it mostly done before my grinder died today.

Slow but sure..I WILL finish this this eventually. Tenetive goal of august.

spent 5 hrs yesterday fabricating my rear fender mounts, so that it would be mounted on the swingarm.




Today, I disassembled the swingarm and did some cleaning and painting of the swingarm, brake stay,and center and side stands.

Awesome Build!!!! :woohoo:
Thanks for keeping the pics coming!
Ed

Worked on it again today...frame is almost ready for final paint, just need to do a complete hand sanding and final smoothing.


Then I bent a new sissy bar from 3/4" steel rod. Went quite a bit taller than my original mockup. Hoping to get a nice polished aluminum finnish on it eventually.

Will have to get the bike back to roller form to see how well it works.

I HAVE been working on this....a bit here and a bit there. Just seems that every time I make plans to spend any REAL time on it something else comes up to take my day over and I don't get much done.
I did get the frame painted.




Also, I trimmed the gauge mounts off the upper triple tree.

Still need to trip off the rest of the paint and polish the aluminum.