I hadn't made any Styrofoam models since university so this was fun.
Louigi leant me a spare frame so that I could model the tank while the bike was still at Chris' workshop.
Saturday, 28 January 2012
Styrofoam Fuel Tank Model
OK, so it's been a few weeks since a post... I've been dying of ManFlu. However, even though I haven't blogged I have been doing things on the bike. Firstly I set about making a Styrofoam model of the fuel tank so that Chris (Shamfa) had a 3D sculpture to follow when he started to fabricate the tank.
Wednesday, 11 January 2012
Starting the fuel tank
We cut the seat unit to shorten it (we had ordered a long one to allow us to do just this) but it is still quite wide for the Ducati frame so a little fibre glass work will be needed to narrow it. The edge lines also need altering.
We marked out a horizontal line from underneath the back of the seat unit to the headstock. This straight line is important to obtain a true Flattrack look.
Removing the old fuel tank made a huge difference, allowing us to see the bare frame. The new fuel tank will be much smaller and slimmer. I've got some styrofoam in my garage and a spare frame from Luoigi and I've now got to find time to carve some mock-up tanks until I'm happy with the shape and then take them over to Shamfa who will have a go at making the real thing.
Saturday, 7 January 2012
Cutting and Shutting the Frame
Between Christmas and the New Year we finally started cutting and shutting the Supersport frame.
Before:
Cutting:
Shutting:
Now we're really desperate to get a full rolling chasis so that we can see the stance of the bike.
The big 19" wheels and Maxxis tyres will transform the appearance and height. These should be with us at the end of January, fingers crossed.
The yokes are being machined out to accept the Öhlins forks, and should have been ready weeks ago...
Soon we will get the seat unit offered up and start making the tank, first out of styrofoam until we're happy with the shape and then out of ally or steel.
Before:
Cutting:
Shutting:
Finished cut frame tack welded together. Lots of lugs removed to clean up the frame as much as possible:
The big 19" wheels and Maxxis tyres will transform the appearance and height. These should be with us at the end of January, fingers crossed.
The yokes are being machined out to accept the Öhlins forks, and should have been ready weeks ago...
Soon we will get the seat unit offered up and start making the tank, first out of styrofoam until we're happy with the shape and then out of ally or steel.
First Visuals
The design of the bike is taking shape. I decided not to go too photo-realistic in Photoshop as I knew the project would evolve as it went along. I started with the bare photo of the 750ss and worked up an approximation of my vision here:
Since doing this we have bought in a seat unit from Five-One Wheels and the lines are different to this visual. The seat unit is based on the classic XR seat. We also now know that the tank is a bit too low down in the frame in this visual, but still, essentially this is what we're trying to build.
Since doing this we have bought in a seat unit from Five-One Wheels and the lines are different to this visual. The seat unit is based on the classic XR seat. We also now know that the tank is a bit too low down in the frame in this visual, but still, essentially this is what we're trying to build.
Getting Things Going
Well, we at last spent some quality time on the project over the Christmas break.
After being badly let down by Devon Rim Company who very clearly didn't want to do the job, and wasted 3-4 weeks of our time I called an old friend who made some rims for me about 10 years ago... Steve Lomas at Five-One Wheels.
Steve was happy to hear from me and very enthusiastic about our project. He is very keen on Flattrack bikes and quite involved in the Shorttrack scene. He knew exactly what we wanted as soon as I asked and instead of facing an uphill struggle as we did with Devon Rims, Steve was immediately able to lay his hands on a 3x19 front rim and a 3.5x19 rear rim.
So, with this in place I cut the hubs out of the bent Sport Classic wheels and sent them off for chemical dipping prior to being painted and sent to Steve. Hopefully Five-One would receive the hubs mid-January.
After being badly let down by Devon Rim Company who very clearly didn't want to do the job, and wasted 3-4 weeks of our time I called an old friend who made some rims for me about 10 years ago... Steve Lomas at Five-One Wheels.
Steve was happy to hear from me and very enthusiastic about our project. He is very keen on Flattrack bikes and quite involved in the Shorttrack scene. He knew exactly what we wanted as soon as I asked and instead of facing an uphill struggle as we did with Devon Rims, Steve was immediately able to lay his hands on a 3x19 front rim and a 3.5x19 rear rim.
So, with this in place I cut the hubs out of the bent Sport Classic wheels and sent them off for chemical dipping prior to being painted and sent to Steve. Hopefully Five-One would receive the hubs mid-January.
Wednesday, 30 November 2011
Why are we doing this?
OK, this will probably be the longest post in this blog but it sets out the reasons for this project and where the ideas came from.
Back in 2008 Gary Inman launched Sideburn magazine. I had been reading Gary's articles for PB for quite a few years and especially liked the Benelli through the Sahara trip. I bought the first issue of Sideburn (and every one since) as I loved the photography and design. I didn't know anything about flattrackers or streettrackers but I loved the way they looked. My life was very busy but I liked the idea that these guys were starting their own racing series in the UK doing a form of racing that they believed in. My (probably naive) thought was that if I bought the mag and t-shirts I could support them - if I couldn't be part of it I could at least try to help them make it happen.
At the time I was doing a lot of trackdays on an Aprilia RS250 and riding a Ducati 749s on the road but I really admired the bikes in Sideburn. There was just something so cool about them.
In idle Googling I stumbled across Mule motorcycles and that was it. My love affair had truly begun. The side on profile of some of those bikes are truly works of art. The horizontal straight edge running flat from under the fuel tank, seat and seat unit. Beautiful.
By now I had a well developed friendship with my local Ducati specialist, Richard Llewellin at Louigi Moto www.louigimoto.com where they had solved some God awful problems that I'd had with my brand new Ducati... but that's another story. In 2007 I did some circuit racing with Louigi in the Ducati DesmoDue Championship and the following year started doing off-road adventures around the world. I used to take Sideburn with me and everyone on the trips would read them from cover to cover. The flattrackers and streettrackers were becoming engrained in my psyche.
Sometime later I rather offhandishly asked Louigi how much it would cost to build a Ducati streettracker but I never really got an answer. I started trying to find engine parts we would need but this proved difficult and other things took over and it was forgotten for a while.
Then in late summer 2011 after reading the latest Sideburn I sent Louigi an email saying 'OK, come on, let's get serious and build one... Let's talk it through'. Almost immediately I got an excited reply from Richard saying that he had just bought in a Ducati 750ss Supersport with the intention of building a streettracker but had decided against it as he already had too many bikes and was now wondering what to do with it. I went over to Louigi Moto the next day armed with lots of Sideburn mags and pics grabbed from that there interweb. Richard and I had very, very similar ideas as to what we wanted to build. The only thing we disagreed on was that he wanted to paint it in stars and stripes with big tassels hanging off the handlebars!! I did not!!!
So then it started. We had a look around the workshop and found some Ohlins front forks and various other bits and bobs, struck a deal, bought the bike and forks and set about stripping what was a pretty immaculate 750ss. The hope is that selling the bodywork, wheels, tank and forks will virtually pay for the initial cost of the bike.
My son Alex and I spent a day at Louigi's stripping the bike of everything we could. We then photographed the bike naked so that we could get it into Photoshop and start visualising what we wanted it to look like.
I knew from the outset that I wanted to run 19" spoked rims and flattrack tyres. We knew the easiest way to do this was to buy some Ducati Sport Classic rims, cut the hubs out and lace on new 19" rims. However, these wheels are not only expensive but also hard to come by. And then the first bit of amazing luck happened - an old friend of Richard's worked at a scrap yard and put a set on eBay. Richard called him, got the auction removed and the next day we had our donor wheels. The rims were bent from a crash but that didn't matter to us.
Richard wanted to have cartoon like K&N's coming out of one side of the bike and the exhaust on the other. The only trouble with this on a Ducati is that it can't be done with 90% of engine heads. You need to use Ducati Pantah heads and these are hard to come by. I had tried to find some a few years earlier but failed. Richard had also been trying to find some for the last few years and had amazingly just acquired a set the week before! These were thrown into the mix and the project took another step forward.
So, the brief:
To build a flattracker / streettracker with minimal road legal requirements. The bike is to be Ducati based and wherever possible use Ducati parts. It should look and be fit for purpose. The bike should have almost comedic elements such as BIG K&N's and a feature exhaust system that doesn't just go from A to B but rather winds it's way from A to B via Z, J, M and C!
We have a donor bike, a Ducati 750SS Supersport. From this we will keep the swing arm, engine, some of the frame... and that's about it! Everything else will be fabricated.
Wish us luck...
Back in 2008 Gary Inman launched Sideburn magazine. I had been reading Gary's articles for PB for quite a few years and especially liked the Benelli through the Sahara trip. I bought the first issue of Sideburn (and every one since) as I loved the photography and design. I didn't know anything about flattrackers or streettrackers but I loved the way they looked. My life was very busy but I liked the idea that these guys were starting their own racing series in the UK doing a form of racing that they believed in. My (probably naive) thought was that if I bought the mag and t-shirts I could support them - if I couldn't be part of it I could at least try to help them make it happen.
At the time I was doing a lot of trackdays on an Aprilia RS250 and riding a Ducati 749s on the road but I really admired the bikes in Sideburn. There was just something so cool about them.
In idle Googling I stumbled across Mule motorcycles and that was it. My love affair had truly begun. The side on profile of some of those bikes are truly works of art. The horizontal straight edge running flat from under the fuel tank, seat and seat unit. Beautiful.
By now I had a well developed friendship with my local Ducati specialist, Richard Llewellin at Louigi Moto www.louigimoto.com where they had solved some God awful problems that I'd had with my brand new Ducati... but that's another story. In 2007 I did some circuit racing with Louigi in the Ducati DesmoDue Championship and the following year started doing off-road adventures around the world. I used to take Sideburn with me and everyone on the trips would read them from cover to cover. The flattrackers and streettrackers were becoming engrained in my psyche.
Sometime later I rather offhandishly asked Louigi how much it would cost to build a Ducati streettracker but I never really got an answer. I started trying to find engine parts we would need but this proved difficult and other things took over and it was forgotten for a while.
Then in late summer 2011 after reading the latest Sideburn I sent Louigi an email saying 'OK, come on, let's get serious and build one... Let's talk it through'. Almost immediately I got an excited reply from Richard saying that he had just bought in a Ducati 750ss Supersport with the intention of building a streettracker but had decided against it as he already had too many bikes and was now wondering what to do with it. I went over to Louigi Moto the next day armed with lots of Sideburn mags and pics grabbed from that there interweb. Richard and I had very, very similar ideas as to what we wanted to build. The only thing we disagreed on was that he wanted to paint it in stars and stripes with big tassels hanging off the handlebars!! I did not!!!
So then it started. We had a look around the workshop and found some Ohlins front forks and various other bits and bobs, struck a deal, bought the bike and forks and set about stripping what was a pretty immaculate 750ss. The hope is that selling the bodywork, wheels, tank and forks will virtually pay for the initial cost of the bike.
My son Alex and I spent a day at Louigi's stripping the bike of everything we could. We then photographed the bike naked so that we could get it into Photoshop and start visualising what we wanted it to look like.
I knew from the outset that I wanted to run 19" spoked rims and flattrack tyres. We knew the easiest way to do this was to buy some Ducati Sport Classic rims, cut the hubs out and lace on new 19" rims. However, these wheels are not only expensive but also hard to come by. And then the first bit of amazing luck happened - an old friend of Richard's worked at a scrap yard and put a set on eBay. Richard called him, got the auction removed and the next day we had our donor wheels. The rims were bent from a crash but that didn't matter to us.
Richard wanted to have cartoon like K&N's coming out of one side of the bike and the exhaust on the other. The only trouble with this on a Ducati is that it can't be done with 90% of engine heads. You need to use Ducati Pantah heads and these are hard to come by. I had tried to find some a few years earlier but failed. Richard had also been trying to find some for the last few years and had amazingly just acquired a set the week before! These were thrown into the mix and the project took another step forward.
So, the brief:
To build a flattracker / streettracker with minimal road legal requirements. The bike is to be Ducati based and wherever possible use Ducati parts. It should look and be fit for purpose. The bike should have almost comedic elements such as BIG K&N's and a feature exhaust system that doesn't just go from A to B but rather winds it's way from A to B via Z, J, M and C!
We have a donor bike, a Ducati 750SS Supersport. From this we will keep the swing arm, engine, some of the frame... and that's about it! Everything else will be fabricated.
Wish us luck...
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