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RIP Sandy Kosman.

While I did not know him I talked with him on the phone a couple of times back in 1994 when I was interested in buying a drag race swing arm. He was a very nice guy and actually talked me out of buying one of his because at that time it was a custom job. He mailed me all the literature he had at the time and I ended up copying one of his road race arms from the pictures he sent.



www.roadracingworld.com/news/r-i-p-motor...signer-sandy-kosman/

www.dragbike.com/top-fuel-motorcycle-legend-sanford-kosman/
 

Sandy was really something special .We spoke of this last year when it happened .He built my teams two chassis    . One Funnybike with a 8 inch tire and the 2nd  a 12 inch tire frame .Here are a few pictures I had handyRIP Sandy    and Bill Hahn too for that matterDave 

He split and widened a original 16 inch rear mag wheel off a kz1000 back in the day, He made it six inches wide for a bigger tire, I still have it. Incredible work. RIP.

rivman15 wrote:

He split and widened a original 16 inch rear mag wheel off a kz1000 back in the day, He made it six inches wide for a bigger tire, I still have it. Incredible work. RIP.

 

He was the originator of that technique, he use to sell SUN brand rims that he widened to hold 7" slicks. The best welds I have ever seen!

A extremely smart and talented fabricator.

Ugh that’s sad!  I just seen a kosman framed drag bike for sale the other day on Facebook marketplace. I believe it said #001 frame number. I’ll have to go look and see if I can find it. 

Our Kosman that i rebuilt a few years ago for the nostalgia drags.
I found no frame numbers on it though..



I'm building a Z1R road bike with the exhaust routeing based on it just to be different.

Here is the ad. 

zed1015 wrote:

Our Kosman that i rebuilt a few years ago for the nostalgia drags.
I found no frame numbers on it though..

 

He made a lot of that type of frame lay down over the years, each one is probably a little unique on its own even if it was not numbered.

Injected wrote:

zed1015 wrote:

Our Kosman that i rebuilt a few years ago for the nostalgia drags.
I found no frame numbers on it though..

 

He made a lot of that type of frame over the years, each one is probably a little unique on its own.

Yes! I've never seen two that are identical.

Sandy pioneered back bone and back half conversions of stock frames as well as "club foot" swing arms. Once people started to copy his efforts he started making more frames from scratch.

Do you think the pics i posted are really #1 framed kosman?

MotorcycleMechanic86 wrote:

Do you think the pics i posted are really #1 framed kosman?
 

Probably not, he would have stamped one in or made a alloy number plate riveted.