Gophers and Cheese

After meeting the guys from Track-er Die at Mama Tried , I special-ordered a belt-to-chain conversion kit for my 883R.  It was far more difficult to install than I expected but that had to do with me and my Sportster, not their kit.  Here are a few photos from my first ride with it last week.

Hopefully you've been keeping up to date on my Instagram or Facebook feeds.  It's been a really busy month.  I've attended Rumble on the Deck and Full Tilt and took hundreds of photos.  I also hung out at July's First Thursday / Moto Mania.  I'll post pics eventually.  What I've really been busy with is getting my new (to me) 2003 XL883R ready for the Moto Mania dirt track event on August 1st. I bought this bike at the end of May and took it for a few rides before starting to tear it apart.  It's almost all done (for this year at least).  In the photo above taken in early June, it was pretty much how I bought it. Here's what I've done since taking that photo (and why I've been too busy to blog): Controls Drilled & re-painted stock handlebars Ran switch wires inside handlebars Baxter grips Black 5-hole levers Black round mirror Barnett throttle & idle cables Speedometer trim ring (to-be-installed) Biltwell mushman pegs (...

Much like the bracket that bolted to the front of the swingarm, the challenge with the bigger bracket that bolted to the shock mounts was getting it to follow the internal radius of the curved fender. I once again turned to the wooden form method even though the soft wood of the 2x4 wouldn't hold its shape. After lots of smoke and a few rounds of heating and tweaking, I got the curve to match.  I don't have a fancy oxy/acetylene setup so I used my MAPP torch and worked a little section at a time. Here is the new bracket lined up with the old one. I then used the torch and my vise to put the bends in the bracket necessary to clear the belt and brakes. Side by side, I couldn't be happier with the way the bends turned out. The I trimmed the bottom of the steel to make the legs even and match the old bracket.  Here it is standing up: I mocked it up on the bike and set the new fender on top and it was looking dead sexy. Next step was...

The biggest challenge I was facing, and a large part of why it took me so long, was trying to figure out how to mount my new fender to the swingarm.  My last fender had nice flat sections that made mounting relatively easy.  The new fender was all curves and I was scared to mess it up or destroy it.  I actually got some inspiration when I took my daughter to the playground and saw how curved pieces of the equipment were bolted together. I used paper templates to figure out the radius of the fender and then bent a thin piece of steel to follow it. Once I knew the small piece fit the fender perfectly, I made a wooden form out of a 2x4. Then I heated a thicker piece of steel with a MAPP torch and tried to bend it around the form.  Smoke poured out and it smelled like a campfire.  The wood was rather soft so it didn't hold its shape very well.  I had to re-heat and re-bend the steel a few times hoping some section would match my small template, ...