Hi Everyone Again! It's been awhile.
Well, my original build plans fell the thru floor. The custom heads I had built were going to cost me $4K, and with that ticket, my "financial partner" bailed out of the project. I tried really hard to land some side jobs to pay for them, but everything just went to crap. I ended up emailing the head builder to tell him that I couldn't afford the heads and asked if there was another interested customer that would take over. Less than an hour later a gentleman in the UK agreed to purchase the heads, and is now currently putting his motor together with them.
With that said, I refuse to give up on this project and completely re-evaluated the build. I decided that if I am to do this, I want to do it on my own without any "friend's" help. Now, I am in the process of converting my original bike, my '58 Trailblazer that is already built, into a full out period correct cafe racer. The body work is coming out very nicely, and I have acquired a "sponsor" that is going to be supplying me with a full custom one-off aluminum seat pan. Super excited for that! I'm also going to speak with a local parts store this week about possibly getting sponsored from them too. As I am in need of performance tires, race fuel, leathers, stuff like that. But for the most part, all the body work is taken care off. My seat pan should be finished around the new year, clip on bars are getting ordered tomorrow, rear sets got installed over the summer. Really, the only other things I need to do is redo my wiring harness and fab an electrical box that will be hidden under the new seat, and build the new motor.
My original plans for the motor had a budget of about $7500 to make about 100hp. Now, I have a build plan that should net me about 60bhp and only cost $2000. I researched parts of other Brit bikes to try and find performance parts that are already available to try and cut some costs, it was going to cost $1300 for custom rods and pistons. After investigating and crunching numbers, I discovered that I can use BSA steel rods, just need to machine the big end ever so slightly to match the crank journals and bearings, and Triumph forged pistons. Cost for this is only $700. Also, I will be sending my camshafts out to have them custom ground for .357 of lift, which should be good for about 150cfm per head, and should be able to run up to about 7000 RPMs. With the 9:1 71mm Triumph pistons, I should be able to get the cylinder pressures up to 180-200 psi per cylinder. It won't be the insane beast I originally wanted, but it should still make some very respectable numbers.
My bike AFTER the resto BEFORE the cafe conversion
How the tank looks now: Black base coat + 3 coats of clear, White base on the handlebar dents with gold pearl coat + 3 coats of clear,
Champagne gold marbleized stripes, decals + 5 coats of clear
And just for fun, a pic of me taking 2nd place at my
FIRST EVER flat track race in the Hooligans Class this summer.