I'm an graphic designer who is going back to school for industrial design after working full time for 2 years and deciding I didn't like the career I had gotten myself into.
I have a loving family who is supporting me in the above... they however do not support what is below. Growing like many of you I'm the kid who took everything apart to figure out how it worked and hoped it would work better than before with my own "improvements". I'm still that same little kid every time I enter my garage.
GnarlyCharlie gave me this frame back in November so I could mock up the suspension alterations while I was searching for a good donor CB750 for this project, It originally was just going to be a suspension update for a CB750 with GSX-R forks and a mono shock rear. This changed after I purchased a shifter kart with the intention of putting a CBR600 motor on it. Well after a few close calls with cars and a hand full of warnings from the police. The Final blow was VIR telling me their insurance wouldn't let me run the kart on their track (the main course not the kart track) I decided it was time to move on. So I returned the kart to stock and sold it.
Leaving me with all of this.
After moving all of my crap back to Roanoke where I had a garage (parents house
) I started test fitting the motor.
The motor almost fit! but this isn't a game of horse shoes.
Removing the CB750 motor mounts and cutting the center brace/thing gave me an extra 1cm of clearance that the motor needed to sit down all the way.
This was great, the carbs even fit although cramped as hell, then I realized something.
Well Shoot... What am I going to do? I KNOW!
MORE CUTTING!
Then i decided I'd clear out the rear motor mounts and the stock pivot mounts as the GSX-R's rear pivot bolt is 25mm in diameter it sure as hell wasn't going to fit in a 10mm hole.
And I was greeted with this and it's not the only one I put my wooden spacers back in place to see how much the tubes were flexing and I saw another fracture in the tubes, currently it looks like the tubes are cracking in various places along what looks like the seam of the tube mostly on the bends. So now I'm sunk, I wont be looking for another frame, that would be nonsense. Why? you've only done work in the area where is's broken. THAT's CORRECT! why use old metal that's potentially rusted in the same way? So now I'm either going to get myself a simple ratchet style tube bender JD Squared Model 3 Tube Bender like the guys on locostusa forums had suggested and bend replacements myself or if I can get my friends in VT's Formula Baja Team to give me a hand have them bend them on a proper machine. Do this all based on the width I'm aiming for rather than force old rusted steel to conform to my crazy demands.