79 LTD with a couple of mods

Body work is being painted. Hope to have it back this week. For now, I've got some old bodywork on it for test & tune riding.

Started with

2 79 LTD's

Another

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Just a couple of mods!! Very nice.
Where did you find that swing arm lift?

Thanks for the kind words

Forks, Arm, Shock, Wheels & Brakes are 96Kaw ZX7R components.

1166 Pistons
Web 493 Grind cams
37.5 / 31 valves
100 CFM @ 10" head
33 Mikuni's until I install MicroSquirt
1980 OEM ignition
MKII cases, crank & trans

It's a collection of parts...for sure

I just can't wait to see this all together in images 360* around the finished project....

That just looks so damn sweet! As for the engine, hell I already know that you have her dialed in to perfection...

Once you get her all done, we'll require a small listing of the modifications and an AVI clip of her kicking into life with a little throttle twist... :evil:

As always brother, freaking awesome...

OMR

:laugh:

all of a sudden, pennsylvania aint so far away.....the gears are turning.......

How do you decide where to put the shock? I mean...does it always go in straight up or do you build an angle into it? How did you decide to put in the mounts...location, placement of mounts and height you put them in at? I figured you used the bottom frame tube to mount the bottom of linkage to but how do you determine the top mount? Spring is mounted slightly compressed so how do you determine the space between the top and bottom mount? Now...love the way your wheels look. Can't wait to see some paint work on this thing. Everything looks like it's falling together great. Looks like things have been thought out way ahead of time and as it comes together, those things are starting to blend. Nicely done! Lets get some paint on this thing! I've heard rumors of riots, turmoil and grevious harm to someone if it doesn't happen soon!

racer54 wrote:

How do you decide where to put the shock? I mean...does it always go in straight up or do you build an angle into it? How did you decide to put in the mounts...location, placement of mounts and height you put them in at? I figured you used the bottom frame tube to mount the bottom of linkage to but how do you determine the top mount? Spring is mounted slightly compressed so how do you determine the space between the top and bottom mount? Now...love the way your wheels look. Can't wait to see some paint work on this thing. Everything looks like it's falling together great. Looks like things have been thought out way ahead of time and as it comes together, those things are starting to blend. Nicely done! Lets get some paint on this thing! I've heard rumors of riots, turmoil and grevious harm to someone if it doesn't happen soon!

Heheheheheh.... I assure you, NOBODY want's it 100% more than me :laugh: Paint is supposed to be on this week.

Those are good questions! Each swingarm & shock will have it's own unique issued to overcome.

When I first set out to do this, I asked myself similar questions. Long story short, here's what you have to keep an eye on.

Get lower frame rail heights from a stock bike. Also get other location measurements so you can have some reference values. Freddy sent me some MKII and I measured an LTD.

Get chassis configuration specs from the doner bike. If you want it to approach the handling characteristics of the doner bike.

I would include axle to axle length in my data aquisition.

The rear shock passes through the arm. That's really going to determine the angle you can mount it at. It can't rub anywhere.

Take header clearance into consideration.

Rear dog bones generally sit parallel to the ground. That's something to keep in your thoughts as you fit & adjust.

So if you start with a rake angle & rail height, plus try to keep the dogbone parallel, you'll be in the ballpark to being figuring out where the lower and upper rear shock mounts will locate.

We worked on the lower shock mount first, then the top. Reason being I didn't want anything funky under the bike hanging down. There's room to fudge the top mount location.

You should have the front forks fitted and the wheels you'll be using before you do your rear shock mounts.

I can't imagine doing this without some help. Possible - yes...but much harder. My long time friend Kenny is an absolute wizzard at fabrication and has everything right at his shop. He was KEY in helping me make the brackets.

I figured out where everything had to go and we just dived in and did the rear shock mounts one afternoon. Knowing how it had to sit made fabricating those brackets relatively easy.

So, Rake - Dogbone parallel - rear shock no rub...then start fitting things together.

Will do an AVI of the finished bike and post. Wife has to be dragged away from her horse to do that for me...These Australians and their horses...can you imagine

PS - Theres a very nicely done 900 another guy posted recently that he did with Suzuki components. He's probably got things to offer as well. Looks good from what I saw so far. Hope he puts up some more pics. Probably will if people ask...

In this pic, the bike is using a piece of 2 x 6 under the side stand with no motor installed. Once the motor went in, that all changed.