Topic: My turbo bike build (finally)

[Sam Green Racing]

Looking good John, get some clip ons on it and DRAG IT. nice and low.

Sam.

[Laminar]

Have you thought about a Nighthawk 550 or 650 tank?

[Bamboozler]

Lovin' the fab work and progress thus far JL!  Thumbs up on getting your frame squared away. Enjoying the transformation of your bike, keep pluggin' away and update often!

[Steel Dragon Performance]

That's a nice ride. I grew up in Bowie MD. Still have friends there. Can't wait to see it done.

[JLeather]

So, it turns out that Paughco sells raw tank halves.  I picked up 2 that I think are the right size, but I may have to section them to clear the motor without sticking up above the backbone.  They're 19" long so they'll fill the area nicely.  Also picked up 2 paughco older-style bayonet filler bungs.  Gonna build a set of long and skinny ~4gal split tanks with true flatsides.  No ugly bumps for dashes, speedos, or HD cylinder head clearance.  Parts oughta be here end of the week, I'll get some good pics up.

Also picked up a killer deal on a WEGO II wideband O2 kit, so it looks like I'll be running on-board O2 monitoring.  Hope the chargin system can take it

[JLeather]

Not too much to post, just continued mockup and sheetmetal selection. After some back-and-forth on the rear fender I went with the fatbob. I gotta widen it an inch or 2 (it's forced onto the tire in the pics) but it really fits with the new tanks. The tanks are raw fatbob stampings that I gotta finish. Atleast it all fits so far. Still a TON to do in the next 8 weeks, so hopefully there'll be faster updates now. This thing looks huge with the new tanks on it. I wish I'd sprung for a wideglide, but I can change that in the future and I already got it set up for the sporty frontend, so it's stayin for now.

[traveler]

I REALLY like this build!

Looking forward to see where it goes!

Keep the faith...it's gonna be GREAT!

~Joe

[fastbroshi]

Is that your final turbo outlet and airbox setup?

[JLeather]

Everything turbo related, except the final tailpipe, is from an ATP kit and is already functioning.  That is the final intake, and all the exhaust piping you see is also final.  That carb is a 38mm bendix, which is stock for the kit.  I'm not sure yet what carb I'll be running.  I've got a couple, although I'd really like a Mikuni HRS42 Flatslide if I can afford it.  That carb might stay for now.  Also I've gotta add a bung to the exhaust just before the turbo for the O2 sensor.  The missing pipe is the tailpipe which will run from the left side of the turbo down and back a bit and just dump out of a slash-cut (or something like that).  It's also missing all the oil lines, which I'm having re-made in braided stainless.  One from the oil light sensor to feed the turbo, and a big return line that dumps into the clutch cover.

The rest of this week is being spent shaving the bottom off those Paughco tank halves so they run along the backbone again and widening that fatbob fender an inch or two.

[JLeather]

Still making some headway on the bike.  Widened the rear fender 2" for the 240 tire.  Here's TurboGrimace doing a bit of hammering after we tacked it up.  Somehow I don't have any finished shots of it, but it turned out pretty good.  Put another wider strip inside for strength.



Oh, and TG was too short to work on the side of the fender with my welding table.  Check out his "step stool".



With the fender taken care of it was time for the tanks.  They didn't sit low enough on the frame (hit the valve cover) so we had to take about 2" off the bottom.  Then I made new panels for the bottom and the inside of each tank.



Got them all tacked up.  Everything lined up really well.  There's a small gap at the lower front corners, but that doesn't matter since I gotta notch the tanks there later to clear the gooseneck.  Here's one finished.





Matt decided he needed to carve his initials into the tank with the flap wheel   Here's the finished pair (well, tacked atleast).





I wanna have someone better than me TIG them up so they don't leak.  Over the next 2 days I'm gonna get the filler bungs located and tacked up, and the outlets as well, and then drop it off at my buddy Jeff's to be finish welded.  I got my top-case back from APE so this week I'll be doing the bearings and the bottom end as well.  Guess that's it for now.

[JLeather]

For starters, here's a shot of the finished widened rear fender



Ok, so the tanks sit low enough that they touch the gooseneck now.  Before I take them to be finish welded I need to clearance them for the frame and install the bungs for the petcock and the crossover.  Here I cut the front corners out til they clear the frame:



Then I bent a piece of sheet metal over the corner of my welding table til it fit the curve I cut into the tank



A little fitting and tacking and I've got the corners finished up



Then it was time for filler bungs.  I don't like the screw-in caps so I bought new weld-in bungs for bayonet caps.  It was quick and easy tacking them in place

[JLeather]

Then I needed 3 3/8NPT bungs for the petcock and crossovers.  I scrounged 2 up off a buddy, but I needed a third and didn't have time to order one.  Lathe time.  Grabbed a piece of 1018 1" steel stock and had at it







Finished product.  Looked just like my other 2, and fit great.



I didn't get pics of the tank with the bungs tacked in place.  I was in a rush to get over to the welder's place.  I'll post pics of the finished product, and I gotta put mounts on still.  Ok, that's all for now til I get the rest of my engine parts back.

[MRieck]

You and Matt are funny. I stumbled upon his bike the other day on HondaChoppers. It certainly is the part I'll say. Looked retro cool. I appreciate him mentioning my name too.

[754]

Jeez buddy, take care of that lathe chuck.

 my eyes!1.. my eyes..

 You have a lathe and you buy the bungs..??
 am I missing something.?

[JLeather]

yeah, yeah, the chuck came to me looking like that and since all the moving parts are in good shape the "cosmetics" haven't bothered me yet.  I suppose if I'm gonna keep taking pics of stuff I'll have to have at it with some steel wool.  It's a Buck adjust-tru too, real nice.

I only recently scrounged a 3/8 NPT tap off of TurboGrimace, and since I don't have a taper attachment I didn't have any other way to make petcock bungs.  I wouldn't mind coming up with a full set of NPT taps sometime 


MRieck, Matt's engine turned out great.  We got it fired up again today for the first time in months (had a lot of loose ends to tie up on the bike first).  Man, talk about throttle response.  Can't wait to really see what it'll do, but his cheapo rear m/c bit the bullet in the first hundred yards and we had to pack it in again.  When I get to assembling my motor I'll definitely have some good pics of the process.

[754]

Not syre why you want a taper attachment, if you can use a tap..

 I used to make em by the hundreds, a lot I tapped using NPS F taps.. that is straight actually works good.. that was 1/8 and 1/4. for 3/8 npt I hand tapped.

[hondaface75]

Wow coming along great! Cant wait to see more on the turbo.

[traveler]

This is a cool little build.

If you can get the internals to handle the boost you'll be good....I wonder how the tranny and shift forks, etc. will handle the torque increase....

~Joe

[JLeather]

If you can get the internals to handle the boost you'll be good....I wonder how the tranny and shift forks, etc. will handle the torque increase....

Oh, the internals will be plenty capable    The shift forks don't really handle anything extra with a hopped up motor as long as the dogs are in good shape.  On my trans the dogs have been backcut to make certain it stays in gear with the hi-po motor.  Everything else is brand new and overbuilt.  Pistons, Rods, Head, Primary Chains, and the list goes on.  The motor build is just about starting.  Got my top case back from APE, just about to do the bottom end and then when my topend comes back it'll be a race to the finish to get her fired by June. 

[JLeather]

Alright, some pics are up.  Kicked the day off with a shop cleanup and a couple beers



Matt was doing some stuff on his bike, so I plastigaged the bottom end on mine.  Nice new set of green shells



Laid a strip of green plastigage in each half.  This is the top case, cuz you gotta do it all upside-down.





Managed to get it assembled, torqued, and pulled apart without moving anything.



~.0015" clearance across the board which is great.



After it was done I cleaned the plastigage off with brakleen and wiped the shells and crank with a bit of motor oil to keep 'em until I was ready to move on.  I'm still waiting on primary rubbers for the clutch (last minute decision) so this is as far as the engine's gotten for now even though I do now have all the topend machine work done.

[JLeather]

So, the tank mount was tricky to figure out.  I wanted the backbone to be pretty clean looking, and with the tanks sitting so low on the frame I didn't have much I could do to make standard tabs without them looking really out of place.  Matt and I hashed a few ideas out and ended up with this.  Started by making a pair of bungs for recessed 5/16" capscrews.



While I worked on that, Matt drilled the backbone.  That was the only drill I had with a 3/4" chuck in it



Here's one welded in and ground flush, with the capscrew in it.



With both of 'em in we made a set of tabs that bolt in place with clip-nuts so you don't need to get to them to tighten the whole thing down.

[JLeather]

Blocked the first side up and tacked it down.  It's 3/16" above the camchain cover.  I might have to grind the corners down a bit on the final one, we'll see.





There's no pics of the in-between step but we made a set of tabs to hold the nuts in place (since they were welded to the other tank) and repeated the process of lining up and tacking.  Here's the finished result of the two tanks.





All in all it was a real clean setup, just what I was hoping for.  The two tabs aren't quite enough by themselves.  They're plenty strong, but I'm worried about vibration so I need to hide a third mount underneath somewhere.  Figure that out later.  Here's how she stands for now.

[zzpete]

Can't wait to see this one!! If you can please post a video and I'll turn up the volume.

[Soos]

Your project has come a LONG way so far, along with others awaiting that vid of your first start!!


L8r