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Got REALLY distracted by a couple bike builds this winter. My wife and I both ride (and both own Buells).
I turned my 2007 XB12Ss into a retro-modern cafe racer. Did some performance mods, converted to an RFID keyless ignition setup, 7" LED front light, custom made and welded up LED tail section, and a bunch of other little stuff.
My wife got to work hacking up her Buell going along more of a "rat" bike look. It was all stock beforehand, now has a cool custom exhaust that I welded up using pieces of a 883 sportster header and muffler, velocity stack intake on the carb, custom sheet metal tail, and a TON of re-wiring/re-routing to hide all the wiring. Along with new bars, and mounts and such.
If there is any interest, let me know and I'll upload some progress photos! Otherwise I'll get some good quality pictures once both builds are done and bikes are painted.
"If there is any interest, let me know and I'll upload some progress photos!"
P I C S please!
Haha alright you asked for it!
Not sure if I have any good pics of my wife's bike, at least not since this winter.
My bike started out as this:
Just a near-stock 2007 Buell XB12Ss. I always hated the way the front end looked, but loved everything else about the bike. I come from a background of track riding and sport bikes, so I've been wanting a little bit more aggressive riding position as well. So what was originally a headlight swap and lower bars snowballed into alot more...
This is the headlight I decided to go with. It's got the retro 7" round cafe racer look, but it has dual LED bulbs. I ended up finding an old headlight bucket and cutting it down to size and welding it up to make this work.
Then I decided I wanted to make a custom LED tail for the bike. I first fabbed up some frame spacers to lift the rear of the bike. Love the more aggressive stance this gave it! Then I decided to go to town with an angle grinder, dremel, and welder and see what I could make. Turned out pretty good!
Stock tail cut down and grinded
Test fitting the LED strip
Sheet metal block off plate attached and grinded down
Painted frame rails. Looks way more Bad *** if you ask me
Then I embarked upon the RFID adventure: making the bike keyless. bought an RFID setup and spent some time playing with the wiring and just got it working the other day! So now, I just have an RFID chip sown into a watch band. I walk up to my bike and it unlocks the ignition and I can just hop on and ride. I walk away, and it locks itself and can't be started. Pretty sweet!
I've also installed clip-on handlebars. Did some weight savings, got the headlight mounted, and rerouted a TON of wiring to make the front end extremely clean looking. I'll try to take some pictures tonight to show how it looks now. It's SO CLOSE to being done. Just a tiny bit more wiring and I can go ride again!
Went from the stock sealed-beam halogens to full LED high and low beams and Halos.
This mod ended up being a pain in the butt. Went through a couple headlight housings before I figured out how to get them apart without braking the glass (cheap harbor freight heat gun works WAY better than the oven just FYI).
The rest of it was just time consuming, not neccessarily difficult. Had to do some grinding on the stock headlight buckets to make the aftermarket ones fit. Had to drill a couple holes to run the Halo wires through, and then basically epoxy it all together and wire it up
These pictures are with JUST the Halos on (yes they are quite bright, could almost just use them as my low beams haha).
And yes, I know, the Vette is FILTHY! Now that the headlights are back in I can finally get it out and give it a bath!
They are so bright that the camera can't capture them that well, so you can't really see that they are Halos. But in person they look awesome!
I have Bilstein Sport shocks and VB&P front springs waiting in the garage for me to install, just need to order my energy suspension bushings so I can replace those at the same time.
Watch the RFID thing on the bike! One day my buddy and I were in his garage and decided a run to the store was in order. We each jumped on our respective Harleys and off we went!.
After our purchases, back to the bikes and his wont start!
You see, his keys were in his coat pocket in the garage next to where the bike was parked! LOL! I had to ride back and get his keys! Doh!
Watch the RFID thing on the bike! One day my buddy and I were in his garage and decided a run to the store was in order. We each jumped on our respective Harleys and off we went!.
After our purchases, back to the bikes and his wont start!
You see, his keys were in his coat pocket in the garage next to where the bike was parked! LOL! I had to ride back and get his keys! Doh!
Your wrist band idea is great!
Love the vette build!
Scott
Thanks for the compliments Scott! Glad to hear that someone enjoyed the read, gives me motivation to get out in the garage and work on it some more!
Haha! I could totally see that situation happening with RFID. I forget I'm wearing the wristband sometimes (rode to work the other day, forgot to take the wrist band off that night and realized I slept with it on), so thank goodness for something that is attached to me!
Finished up painting my wife's bike the other night, and got the carb tuned much better. Her custom exhaust is still a little louder than she likes, but WAY quieter than all the straight piped Harleys on the road haha. And for the record, I actually enjoy riding her little 500cc bike more than my 1203! Her bike only weighs 360 pounds wet (verified) which is ridiculous, and it has so much torque for it's size, you can redline it in the first 3 gears really quickly and not even get a speeding ticket! And because it's so light, you can just whip it around corners and manuever so easily in parking lots, makes for a fun ride to work!
I love my XB12 (especially now that I have it looking, feeling, and sounding the way I like), but it's definitely a more "serious" feeling bike than hers. Though it's still a total hoot on back roads. Short wheelbase and HUGE torque!
Quick update: Been making some quality of life improvements on the Vette.
The car left me stranded at a gas station with a dead battery. Turns out it was the alternator. Which is cool cause lately the battery has needed to be charged if I don't drive it every week and was wondering when it was going to go haha.
Decided since I can't afford Fuel Injection or an LS swap yet I would make this quadrajet as close to fuel injection as possible. So I bought Cliff Ruggles book. Holy cow. I can't believe how much I DIDN'T know. I felt like I am halfway decent with Carbs nowadays after rebuilding the carbs on an old Yamaha XS750 triple (try getting three carbs perfectly synced... yikes!) my wifes bike, and old Kawi, and this quadrajet a couple times. Let me tell you, if you haven't read Cliff's book, you probably aren't even scratching the surface of how tunable a Quadrajet is! Especially if you invest in a Wideband 02 Sensor (which I did a year or two ago).
I can upload pictures if anyone is interested, just let me know! But basically got a numbered drill set and drilled out the idle restrictions and feed tubes a few thousandths to richen up the idle and cruise circuit a bit. Got some of Cliff's custom tapered primary Rods (constant taper instead of stepped so you have more control of the fuel mixture via the APT setting), drilled out the idle mix screw holes to .093" to give more idle fuel control, replaced my power piston spring and seal, replaced my secondary cam, bent my secondary hanger down a few thousandths to lean up the secondary side (my secondary was rich, primary was lean), fine tuned the secondary air valve spring tension, changed all my gaskets while I was in there, and fine tuned the electric choke, choke pulloff, and fast idle.
HOLY COW. What a difference. I still need another hour or so of free time to finish dialing in the APT screw and get the secondary spring tension perfect (I drilled and tapped the plug on top of the car so I can adjust the ATP without removing the top of the Qjet). But I've never had a carbureted vehicle run so good. Starts up with just a pump or two of the pedal. Sits on the fast idle for a minute or so at about 1500 RPM, then idles down to about 750 RPM where you can hear the nice cam lope. 14:1 A/F at idle. 12.5:1 at WOT (stayed fairly fat and safe), 15.5:1 at cruise.
I would still LOVE to have fuel injection, but now it's mostly for the electronic timing curve control and data logging functions, and the better fuel atomization. Which is kinda hard for me to justify $1,000+ for. All in all, pretty happy with how this 40 year old carb runs, and it's making me want to drive the car more. I used to only drive it on a nice weekend when I had time to warm it up and "deal with" the rough idle and hesitations on acceleration. Now, it feels more like a car that I can just start up and go drive (except that it's loud...)!
Sorry for the book, but basically, if you are less than happy with your Quadrajet, it is actually pretty easy to work on if you are even slightly mechanically inclined! And it's nice to know you can diagnose the issues yourself and fix them with a little research.
Did some more quality of life improvements in my current quest to make the Vette more reliable and more of a car I can drive every day.
Installed the new alternator and belt and spent some time shimming and getting the belt alignment just right (it would occasionally throw the fan belt at 6,000RPM). Wow is it nice to see that multimeter read 14.5 volts with the car running, an alternator that actually works is underated haha.
Spent some time playing with the shifter console/center console. 3rd gear on my Hurst shifter has always hit the front of the console a little bit. Enough sometimes that third was hard to engage or it would grind going in because it went in slowly. Found a few mounting bolts were missing, got the correct ones and was able to mount the console correctly, now the Hurst shifter has JUST enough room to get into third without hitting the console (my car was originally an Auto but has an 4-speed swap with a hurst shifter so the alignment is a little off from stock).
My car was dieseling a tiny bit after turning the key off (literally like 1 second). Learned something new! That solenoid near the front drivers side of the car is an idle stop that you can adjust so that as soon as you turn the key off it allows the throttle blades to fully close and prevent dieseling. Not sure if I'm the only one who never knew what that was for!
Last couple issues I want to nail down before I declare the car an "everyday driver":
1. Fuel drain back. If I let the car sit over night, I have to crank it for a few seconds to get some fuel in the float bowl, and then pump the pedal 3 or 4 times before it starts. Not a big deal, but my wife likes to drive the car too so I'm trying to make it as easy as possible for her. I will check the float bowl wells (I don't think they are leaking though), but my guess is just the nature of using a windowed float bowl seat and no check valve in the fuel filter. I may try one of those Qjet fuel filters that has the check ball in it (some people say it restricts fuel flow, but they are cheap enough that I can try it and see).
2. Hood latching. Ever since I got this car, the passenger side of the hood has been tough to latch. You have to press exactly on top of the latch mechanism to get it to click in. And the front of the hood isn't very well aligned (lower on passenger side). Haven't really dug into this yet, but will very soon.
3. Alignment. I've made quite a few suspension changes over the winter and haven't had the car aligned. It is fine around town, but there is some distinct vibration and "wandering" around 70 mph. I need to inspect my bushings first and make sure none of that needs to be changed before I pay for an alignment.
I was so happy that the car was running so well after all the carb work lately, that I gave it a bath and vacuumed it out as a reward! I still don't really like the two-tone paint, but somewhow in this lighting I don't mind it
Its an 81 American Motors Corporation Eagle SX/4. Its got an inline 6 that I put a hotter cam in, a header, and a 390 cfm Holley 4 barrel. Its 4 wheel drive too.
Its an 81 American Motors Corporation Eagle SX/4. Its got an inline 6 that I put a hotter cam in, a header, and a 390 cfm Holley 4 barrel. Its 4 wheel drive too.
12-04-2017, 09:48 AM
