Well, my Nine Lives Cafe Project (
http://forums.sohc4.net/index.php?topic=50490.0;all) is pretty much finished. The Nine Lives Cafe was built from ground up by Chris Redpath, who owns MotoGP Werks in Orange, CA (
www.motogpwerks.com). He inspired me to tackle this second build on my own, so once again into the breach...
Here's the bike that I bought on ebay last fall. It was pretty much a barn bike with only 10.6K miles. It was graced with a nasty king/queen seat and a sissy bar that was cockeyed/bent to the right side (as if the passenger had one two many Twinkies and leaned too hard to the right). The gas tank is battle-scarred, too; it has dents on the front edges from what looks like the result of a nasty tank slapper. Cosmetics aside, it's pretty much all there.
My preliminary thoughts are to rebuild the engine into an 836cc, replace the wheels with powdercoated Excels from Buchanans, fit the bike with some cool performance upgrades like Tarozzi rear sets (from Jim at Fast from the Past), Dyna-S ignition and coils (from Z1), and a Yoshimura-replica exhaust (from MotoGP Werks), and integrate some other creative elements I'm still allowing to marinate.
Chris generously allowed me use his garage to strip the bike down and get it ready for the rebuild. I spent a couple of hours on Saturday and today, completely stripping the bike down to the bare frame. She now sits in two Rubbermaid containers.
The frame is off to my welding friends, Ole and Grant, at Welding Works in Orange, CA, having some mounting tabs (including center stand) removed and the passenger pegs cut down to just mount the rear sets. Once that's done, it'll be time to get my parts together for media blasting and powdercoating and chrome.
