The xs400 as it appeared at Cyclemania last year. I couldn't find any pix of my charging system, which sucks, cause I was running a car alternator (from a Chev Sprint). It was mounted behind the engine, and was driven by a chain which ran from the crankshaft. The crankshaft was exposed by taking the stock charging bits out, and replacing the cover with an aluminum block off plate that held an oil seal. Wiring the alternator in was a simple matter, as was calculating the gearing from the crank to get the proper rpm. Was was hard was getting the mounting for the alternator nice and solid, and keeping everything from coming apart at the seams at high rpm. There were a few sprockets flying off before everything started running smooth! Sucks that the engine blew the moment everything else was running smooth. I'll be watching ebay and Kijiji for a new one, but until then, it's a good excuse to build a new bike. Enter the cb750...

Some more specs on the streetfighter: Front rad: aftermarket austin mini (no fan). Copper pipe runs to an aux rad under the seat, made from the heater core from my wrecked Cadillac. Wheels have been polished around the rims, and painted metallic copper inside that. I tried doing the engine case covers in copper flake, but it's not holding up very well, so I'll have to paint them. The swingarm has been polished and modified with extensions, as well as modified to hold the battery inside. The tank has been shortened to facilitate the new tailsection. The subframe for the tail was made out of aluminum, and the main frame modified to not have the stupid vulcan ear type projections to hold the subframe. The main frame is about half way to being fully polished, but that's on hold until the new chopper is all buttoned down! The bodywork for the tail was taken from one of those little 50cc chinese made mini sportbikes. I split it down the middle, added about an inch in width and length (and strengthened it) with fiberglass. Picked up some dirtbike bark busters and wired in some signal lights to them to keep the local authorities at bay. Modified the peg mounts to accept bear trap bicycle pedals.

So it's been a year (almost to the day) that I published anything on this blog! I have a hard time stopping and taking photos when I'm working on shit, and an even harder time taking 20 mins at the end of a day to post some words and pix. I've got a lot of catching up to do. Finished the xs 400 chopper last spring, but worked on it for most of the summer, getting gremlins out. The charging system earned the bike the name "battery killer", bastardized from it's original moniker "zombie killer". The bike you see in these pics is my streetfighter, however. After several months of pissing around, I finally got shit buttoned down with the chopper, only to have the engine spectacularly hole a piston at 110 kph on a shakedown run! So I quickly rebuilt the streetfighter, which was in a million pieces being "worked on". The main frame is still in the process of being polished, and I'm still working out some cooling gremlins. The motor, however, being an 04 honda cbr600rr, is bulletproof, and despite being only 600cc's, rocks 110hp! I welded a new aluminum tailsection (with my new aluminum spoolgun), and fabbed up the bodywork from a minibike piece. I also modified the swingarm to carry the battery inside it! Oh, and I picked up a new streetfighter type headlight off ebay. I've learned my lesson this year. The streetfighter stays together while I build a new chopper! What's the point of having more than one bike if none of them are running properly!