Go to page: 1 - The Beginning 2 - Oil tank, seat & gas tank 3 - Coils & fender 4 - Electric box & frame 5 - Welded frame & battery 6 - Oil tank, seat & taillight 7 - Painted parts & covered seat 8 - Painting and final assembly 9 - Last minute changes & starting 10 - Final bike photos Credits: Me: guy that owns the bike and comes up with "great" ideas that usually don't work. I can't weld Dad: does most of the tack welding and brings home lots of scrap metal from the weld shop where he works. (when I say "I welded" I mean "Dad welded") Brother-in-law Rich: mechanical engineer that comes up with great ideas that do work. Also has the mig welder that my Dad and I borrow when we work on the bike. Last updated Tuesday, August 02, 2005		What more welding?!?! Yes, the frame is back on the operating table again. A dude on the HondaChopper.com site, Roadrat, has a bike altered very similar to mine. After 2 years of riding, his frame was starting to crack in the tubing where the shocks mount. So, I stripped paint off the rear of the bike, Dad made some gussets from scraps...
			...and welded them in. This should really strenthen the rear of the frame. Now, time to clean up this frame and paint it again. Then it's assembly time.
			I started working on the wiring. It's not too hard to figure out. I'm using a cheap 30amp universal style ignition switch found at any auto parts store. I wired a car horn in, insead of the old stock one. The new horn is much louder. I had to use a relay switch though, to give it an extra boost, to get it that loud. I'll be making some wiring diagrams soon, and posting them to the site.
			I'm using an Electrex regulator/recifier unit instead of the outdated stock Honda stuff. I mounted it under the seat panel. I used new 16ga. stranded wire for all the wiring, but I used the stock Honda battery and ground cables.
			After getting all the wiring done, I tried starting the bike. I cranked it over time and time again. I tried kickstarting it. I could not get it started. Gas was pouring out of the 2 & 3 cylinders, so I shut the petcock off, and started investigating. I took the bowls off the 1 & 4 carbs. They were bone dry. So, I decided to take the carbs off and check out what was going on. As soon as I got them off, I found the problem. I had the gas coming from the petcock going into those little vent tubes on the carbs instead of the actual fuel intake tubes.
			That's one of the stupidist things I've done in a while. So, I fixed that, wrestled the carbs back on and tried starting the bike again. It started almost immediately. No gas leaking this time. The bike ran for a bit and sounded pretty good considering the carbs haven't been tuned yet. I noticed that the #2 exhuast pipe was cold compared to the rest. I shut the bike off, and started looking into things, and found that the spark plug wire was broken at the coil. Two weeks later, I got another used coil, put it on, and the bike ran much better. I took the bike for a test ride, it doesn't have any power in the half - wide open throttle range. I need to adjust the valves, timing, cam chain and points, then I'll read my plugs and try to figure out what's going on. Probably, the needles in the carbs need adjusted to let more gas in.
			Besides engine tuning and other adjustments, like brakes. This bike is basically done... except for the rear fender. I'm still waiting on my new one to arrive. So, I had a "final" photoshoot of the bike. Go to page 10 to see the results.