Aprilia RSV Mille Tuono streetfighter to be ..... result unknown

[Tuonorush]

Hi Guys,

I am a newbie on the forum and am in the throws of starting my first streetfighter bike project.....

Having built I a slightly 'silly' kitcar (670kg with a 200 rwkW turbo motor) about 10 years ago, an incurable urge to build something new and above all different started to rear its head again about a year to a year and a half ago....

Milling over the options, I was firstly leaning towards building another 4 wheeled 'thing', but as fate would have it, a mate built a ZX9R streetfighter and that started the cogs turning that I actually wanted to build a two wheeled monster as my next project, but what bike to start with....

I had been campaigning my trusty Aprilia RSV Mille Tuono in various European and Australian race series for about 10 years, but where she was cutting edge in 2004, she was starting to show her age and the younger, leaner, whipper snipper bikes (like the lurvely Triumph 675's) were starting to show her up.

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With the above thought bubble already in place, I felt it could be time to pull her off the track and put her back onto the road, but not as she was before...

After much thinking as to whether I should do anything with this bike, I concluded that although she 'aint worth much' and I could probably go to the nearest bike dealer an buy a much faster bike for much less money by the time the project is complete, that this is not why we do the things we do, is it.. he he he:cool:

I have a total Gem of a wife who only had ONE criteria for the bike..... It HAS to remain a 2-up bike, so that we can go to rock concerts together and park at the front gate.... got to love her priorities...

So for this first instalment, the question to you, is how do we turn this:

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A beautiful piece of Italian design (with a number of warts that have to be eliminated) into something truly special and worthy of this web-site.....

My criteria are:

The finished product HAS to look 'factory'
2-up riding has to remain an option
Underseat pipe is a MUST
Rideability has to remain paramount
The pimple of a front fairing has just GOT to go
Carbon fibre is always nice
Do you have any ideas / details, in-terms of :

Mechanics,
Paint job
Crazy stuff....?
Will keep you posted as I progress further (will be a long slog I suspect).

Cheerio

[Gix11]

Welcome aboard mate, I know the just the guy who's going to come in and comment soon.....

http://www.streetfighters.com.au/forum/showthread.php?14066-T-Bike!

[xa-mont]

Hey mate

Welcome along! Where abouts in the Aus are you hanging out?

The RSV is a good thing, but I guess you already know that :D

I reckon the first step is to find bits that you like (a tail, a headlight, belly pan, exhaust style, wheels, a swingarm if you want to go that far etc.) and then the fun part of making it fit! (angle grinder and hammer are definitely required)

Let me know if you need any info or help and i'll do my best to help you out.

cheers,
Trav

[nick76]

^^^^yep...Trav's bike is the nicest old skool Tuono i've seen!

[Tuonorush]

Thanks for your input and encouragement guys.

As many of you will know the whole thing is a 'little' daunting at the moment, but I think this feeling will disapear once more parts start to arrive and the building starts in Ernst....

Anyway, got a pen, paper & photoshop out since my first post above and have come up the following broad stroke concept ideas:

2004-2007 Honda Fireblade's derrière - in the form of :

seat cowl, (grafted over Aprilia subframe - why make it easy when you can make it hard ;)),
underseat pipe - which might loose me a bee's little pecker in power, but more than makes up for just looking OH-SO COOL),
undertray (does anybody know where I can find one - even partsfinder.com.au is not helping),
passenger seat & rear seat cowl / cover

a SPECIAL rear swingarm.......
LOTS of carbon fibre because it just looks SO purdy
2007-2013 Honda CB1000R headlight and top fairing - although I think this item will be like the mythical unicorn, brilliant idea, but not to be seen in reality (does anybody know where I can find one - even partsfinder.com.au is not helping) - Any other ideas for something similar??
WSB USD forks (donated by me bestus mate in from the lowlands - he he he)
Motogadget light controller (key less) - almost donated by me mate who inspired me to take on this project.
Full race enclosed belly pan - as a nod back to the heritage of the bike
I could go on with more details, but heck.... why don't I just SHOW you the concept.....what do you think of the concept below (ignore colours - also wish I could make it bigger for you - I think if you click on it, it will get bigger...)


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Speaking of colours.... I am struggling in this department....

My inspiration for the current thoughts on the paint scheme were an accidental finding of this tasty beasty below - Bella Italia!

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Over the weekend my wife & I had a go at masking off the tank and the rear seat cowl to see if we could take the inspiration from the beauty above and translate this to the natural lines of the Tuono.......... what do you think?


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I think the seat looks cool (imagine that black is RED) but I feel that the white section on the tank (although following the contours of the tank) looks too big in the middle front part of the tank.

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Any ideas on how to break this up and bring a bit more balance to the tank? I love the top and back of the tank .....Obviously the 'Gold' "Tuono" at the bottom of the tank will magically be turned RED.

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(I like the 'U' horned shape the white makes in the top of the tank - el Torro-esque - or is this going to far in the creativity department... he he he)


I will post some more photo's next week when I have had a bit more of a chance to 'tinker'.

Cheerio

Oh PS I am in Sydney

[series_one]

Totally rubbish idea.

Why don't you just put pokka dots on it and campaign it in an old mans series near you.


Light controller? Would you like a pretty pink helmet to go with that??





;-) Get on with it and start posting up pics of real work happening.
More about the arm, pan & stolen forks!


And post up a pic of the wife eh!

[Gix11]

That's a pretty cool concept mate, I'll be watching this one closely. Nice work.

...and welcome TR's mate.

[Tuonorush]

Totally rubbish idea.

Why don't you just put pokka dots on it and campaign it in an old mans series near you.


Light controller? Would you like a pretty pink helmet to go with that??





;-) Get on with it and start posting up pics of real work happening.
More about the arm, pan & stolen forks!


And post up a pic of the wife eh!

Your right, what was I thinking. I think I should go out and buy a Deus.....

Or maybe not....

"series_One" I know you don't I? :confused:

Were you in the same old man's series with me...? showing (y)our age are we - he he he

No, no, no - no piccie of wife, I don't want to do that to you... lucky me, he he he :rolleyes:

[xa-mont]

love it when people get stuck right in! good progress so far mate!

Soooo... what swinger are you using??? HUH HUH?!?!

[Tuonorush]

Hi Guys,

Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year to you all.

It’s been a while since my last update, but you will be glad to know that there has been plenty of preparatory activity happening in the garage and below is a VERY LONG update (split into a number of shorter posts) to bring you all up to speed with where the project has gotten to!

Since my last post, I have been in a near permanent 'Christmas has come early’ state of mind – Brilliant feeling in other words! I wish this feeling upon all of you! How have I perpetuated this you may ask : well, I shall tell you, it is very easy really, the inter-web and namely my most favourite store on it known to many by the affectionate name ‘flea-bay’ have helped perpetuate this Christmas gift receiving state. Each day is a new surprise as to which 'gift' will turn-up and when one does, what this package actually contains is usually a mystery.. :D!

Anyway, enough with the general jibber jabber! Here are the much loved pictures and explanation as to what progress was booked on which bit of the bike:


One evening, in a rare moment of TV ‘spacing out’ after work, I was ‘multi-tasking’ (I know women say they have got the exclusive right to this…. ;) ) and found an absolute bargain of a carbon fibre front mudguard on flea-bay. For what they wanted for it, I couldn’t pass this item up. Although sceptical at first, when it arrived, I have to say that the quality of the item seems to be top notch (carbon outside skin with fibreglass inner layer). It even came with a gold 'QA Passed' sticker on the inside.... ha ha ha




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After too much unsuccessful searching on the inter-web for complete inner and outer carbon air ducts, I felt I was extremely ‘lucky’ to finally find a pair of Tuono Carbon outer skin air ducts. Despite wanting the complete carbon units, I was not prepared to pay in excess of $200.00 to Aprilia for the items. Even though I felt I still paid too much for these carbon outer skins I felt that these items were such a key factor to the final (cool) look of the finished project, that they were well worth the ‘extra’ pennies. Turns out, my set were actually specifically made for me, as these items no longer formed part of the standard stocked item list anymore.


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Unfortunately, when I unwrapped this present, I found that even though the finish is equally top-notch to the front mudguard with a high gloss carbon outer skin and a fibreglass inner layer, as well as coming with the aforementioned gold ‘QA Passed’ sticker, the fit was less than brilliant and required more than 3 hours of gentle filing and sanding to get them both into shape to ‘factory’ fit onto the standard plastic inner air ducts.

Speaking of the inner plastic air ducts, in trying to coerce the ill-fitting carbon outer ducts above into shape and trial fitting them to the plastic inner ducts (what seemed like a thousand times), I noticed that the plastic mounting lugs on plastic ducts had started to show signs of wear& tear – after nearly 10 years of use and abuse not surprising really. I had some carbon fibre weave lying around from a previous project and used this to beef up all of the mounting lugs. Having done this, I also thought that the standard gunmetal grey colour would not suite the new look of the bike and now had the lugs have been re-shaped I would sand the entire outer side of the air duct and spray it black when the bike is finally disassembled again ready for the final paint and lacquer. I am seriously struggling with the colour scheme of the bike though, The only thing I know at about this at present, is that plastic inner air ducts will be painted black on the outside….

Next Installment : Headlight, Top fairing & Dashboard

[Tuonorush]

In terms of the headlight, I came across this headlight (any guesses as to which bike its from…) – ok it’s a Honda CB1000R and think that it is the coolest ‘factory’, mean looking headlight and top fairing I have seen in a long time. However, like many mean looking mythical creatures, this headlight and top fairing is proving mighty elusive and difficult to capture. I had a solid lead one from the US, but alas this item vanished like an ice cube in the desert. I will keep looking for one, as this is THE look I want on the bike. OEM suppliers may be the only way to go if no other mirages appear in my parts desert. I am planning something ‘special’ for this item too which should make it stand out even more and really make it ‘different’.

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With the difficulty in deciding on and then finding a suitable headlight and top fairing, the dashboard has been equally hard to decided on. Not only because of the (lack) of available space, but also for its functionality and design / looks. After deciding on the headlight and top fairing, I spent many an hour procrastination over a) whether I should change the dashboard away from the standard Aprilia dash, b) if I were to switch away from the already brilliant standard Aprilia dash, which different / new dash I should I install as it had to be a sizable step-up from the standard Aprilia dash (no mean feat).

I finally bit the painful bullet and sent my order off for a VERY cool dashboard from the UK.


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The chosen dash is fully road rule use compliant, is FULLY programmable and as just one of the bonus features of this dash, it has built-in shift lights and a gear indicator programmed into it which works AMAZINGLY. The clever bit of this feature is that the gear indication works without any form of extra external inputs / triggers what so ever. I don’t know how they did it, but the gear indicator ‘knows’ what gear you are in within nanoseconds. Even when you try to trick it by running it a couple of gears higher than you should or tapping into neutral and then tapping into gear again, it finds the right gear and BAM there it is up on screen.


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The small size should make it easy to install, but just to be sure whilst I wait for the actual unit to arrive, I made a mock-up of the dash. Amazingly one of our kitchen chopping boards was the exact thickness of the dash….. I am quietly awaiting the ‘please explain’ from the minister of domestic affairs, so far so good… he he ;)
Just to get a feel for the scale and possible positioning of the dash, here it is just sitting on the bars. The reality is, I will not be able to make up any mounts for it until I finally manage to source a headlight and top fairing, better get back to that ......


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Next update : Fireblade rear-end & rear swing arm

[kev@vcm]

What a cracker of a build mate ,you stick to your guns with your ideas ok and you will have the fighter you envision , will be watching this thread closely

[Tuonorush]

The inclusion of the single sided swingarm is going to create a beautiful clean look to the right side of the bike, I did not want to ‘uglify’ this again with an exhaust can running through the middle of the ‘picture’. I contemplated the new GP style exhausts, but with a twin that would just be a very hard and very expensive.

Hence, grafting a ‘04-‘07 Fireblade rear-end onto the standard Mille / Tuono seemed like the right ‘old school’ idea. I knew that trying to graft the two together would be a bit of a challenge, and it is proving to be just that although not in the form I had originally envisaged. Rather than a purely mechanical challenge, this has turned out to be more of a ‘real estate’ & ‘packaging’ challenge, something I did not expect. This is caused by the practical conundrum that the standard Mille / Tuono underseat storage area is very generous (some may even say cavernous) whilst the blade underseat storage is, well, challenged. A 50c stamp would struggle to find enough space to stretch out under there …..


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Fitting the rear seat and the cowling around it has been a really fun technical challenge. As both the Honda and Aprilia cowlings are very similar, but totally different at the same time… Where to start….
By simply ‘placing’ the cowling over the rear subframe to get an idea of how it would sit I found I really liked the look and so drilled some holes to position it on the rear frame ‘permanently’.

One area of concern right from the beginning, was how the pipe would fit under and into there and how far down could I mount the pipe to leave enough gap between it and the rear wheel so that this could fully articulate through its entire range of travel. Remember, the ministry of all things except garage design made her criteria for the bike that it HAD to be able to be used for two-up riding.


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Trialling my old exhumed can for size, it found I needed to mount it pretty much all the way up into the subframe to give me all of 12 mm’s worth of gap between the rear wheel and the bottom of the can at full compression. Just enough I say.

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In order to make the transformation complete and still keep the area under the rear seat serviceable, I want to be able to use a standard Blade pillion seat release mechanism. I have to admit, it took me three attempts at welding the necessary aluminium plates in place before the rear seat mounting brackets were in the exact right places for the rear seat to click on and off effortlessly. The challenge in fitting the cowl is not so much the cowl per se, but more the fact that the cowl had to come forward significantly in order to close the gap between the back of the riders seat and the front of the cowl compared to how it would sit on a Blade, as the Blade has a much longer riders seat to bridge this gap. Here are the results of the fit with a standard blade exhaust – Tasty – no?

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At this stage, the exhaust is only ‘packing taped’ into place and I will try to weld in some mounting lugs for the exhaust in the coming week or so.

With the exhaust (mentally) mounted as low as it can go, the next challenge is where to leave all of the contents of the rear-end package. Ie, where do I leave the ECU given that this is decidedly larger than ‘modern’ ECU’s?

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Where do I leave the battery, as this is taller than an average bike battery and where do I leave the plethora of relays (seems like more than what the Apollo 13 Lunar rocket would have had), all of this without the exhaust frying everything like a delicious Sunday Morning English breakfast. Space is at a premium.
Some of this space saving will be taken care of thanks to the advice (and more importantly the donation) from a mate of a very clever bit of German digital engineering in the form of a MotoGadget M-Unit which will take over all of the control duties of all of the bike’s fuses and relays – here here.


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This unit also has also got some very tasty add-on optional features, but I’m still thinking about the cost / benefits of these items….will keep you posted.

The other main space drain is the battery. I wanted to find a better, smaller and more powerful solution to this age old problem. I succeeded in my quest and found a very cool new concept in lithium battery design. So cool that it is even used in MotoGP…. Should be OK for us mere mortals then shouldn’t it… he he he.

What the clever boffins have done, is turn the standard idea for (lithium) batteries on its head… No longer do you need to allocate premium underseat real estate for this (crucial) part of the build. The concept, is that depending on the actual cranking grunt you need, you add more (or less) of these smaller batteries together to suite your particular needs. To give you an example, a car may need 5 of these tiny batteries to start. A 4 cylinder bike only needs two, whilst a 2 cylinder thumper bike will take 3 units. The MOST awesome bit about these batteries, is that if you need multiple units (like I do), they don’t even need to be placed together, as they can be linked together and be mounted in ANY position all around the bike. Imagine the freedom!
I will leave the job of trying to fit these units till much later as the concept has given me soooo much install flexibility, that it is not really an issue any more. Check out the size difference between my old std (yellow) battery and the new concept (3 units together at this stage – but will probably split them on the bike)….

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ANYBODY INTERESTED IN A GROUP BUY? (not sure if I have to mention this in a different section of the site - pls advise)

Speaking of ‘special’ parts, and because I am a softy who cannot keep a secret (according to my wife anyway), here are some photos of the very special SSSA (Single Sided Swing Arm) as requested.

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This particular swing arm and rear wheel combination will be used (instead of say a Ducati or Honda equivalent) as I found after many more hours of nocturnal web research, that the Italian Aprilia engineers in their infinite wisdom, had recycled the RSV Mille frame and engine in other models…..of particular interest for this project, is the Aprilia RST 1000 Futura.

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I can only guess that the Italian engineers who gave birth to this bike thought that this otherwise fairly bland looking, two-up, heavily laden, trans-continental cruiser needed a little spicing-up, a party piece was needed….. Of all the things they could have done, they decided to give this particular bike a SSSA! Fortunately, in designing this bit of eccentricity, the engineers did not want to lose the sublime handling qualities of the RSV Mille and as such, designed this swing arm to have the exact same dimensions for rake, trail and mounting points, as the standard Mille / Tuono double sided (standard) swing arm. Even the linkage underneath the swing arm is identical across the range!
I know some of the technical boffins (endearing term) reading this will now be thinking “but won’t the torsional stiffness of this SSSA be less than that of the standard Mille / Tuono swing arm?” and “don’t Falco riders in Europe give their left testicles to shady underworld bike chop shops to get their hands on the standard Mille / Tuono swing arms for their superior torsional stiffness and handling qualities?” Well, you may be right on all accounts. However, I have two side notes for you, A) I believe the difference in performance will not be noticeable to us mere mortals. If it were, Aprilia would not have fitted it to the RST in any case. B) If the performance difference were noticeable, then I also believe that this would only be at the extreme end of the performance envelope – ie at the track and then only by guys who’s last names sound like : “..ay-liss”, “..or-ser” & “..to-ner”……..

Next Update : hand guard

[Tuonorush]

I know that this subject can be a hotly debated topic, but for me a streetFIGHTER is not complete without handguards (hereafter ‘guards’).

The Enduro guys cottoned on to this concept early whilst trying to find a way to have their control levers making contact with the bush. MotoGP & WSB seem to have come up with a half arsed attempt of the same thing, I believe they will eventually come to the same conclusion as the endure guy that the only way to ‘protect’ the control levers is to fit fully fledged enduro guards. As such I believe that the only way for us to avoid control lever contact with the inevitable mirrors, and other ‘objects’ on the roads, enduro guards are the only way to go…

In trying to clean-up the front-end of the bike I decided that I didn’t want any ‘stalk’ indicators messing up the ‘cleaned’ lines of the bike. To be able to do this, I wanted integrated indicators into the handguards.

Ducati designed and made almost what I wanted with the Hypermotard guards. These are very nice, but the the fold out mirrors are a clear after thought and the guys at the factory MUST have been smoking their pasta rather than eating it when they were setting the pricing levels for their guards as how else could a set of these guards end up costing a staggering $1,200.00 or there abouts!! Although the second hand market was a little better the prices were still ridiculous! A plan B was required. Many hours searching the web brought me to the conclusion that the road bike / streetfighter market just hasn’t developed in this area and I woulfd have to risk making something up myself…..

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I ordered some ‘basic’ guards from flea-bay which are basic enough to be a platform for my idea, but hard enough to go with the finished look of the bike I am looking for.

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I found these cheap-uns and took the punt to see whether they would work. The retailer actually told me not to buy them as he thought they would not fit on a road bike as the levers would hit the guards. Luckily I am a stubborn bastard and ordered them anyway, plus a set of optional ‘fat’ bar extensions. Although they don’t fit the way they ‘should’ be installed, when keeping the bar end weights in-place, all is good!


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Unfortunately I also hit my first ‘snag’ on the project…. I knew these guards would be a bit of a challenge to get right and … I need to buy a new set of guards PLUS a new set of LED lights…. D-OH! To give you an idea on the concept, check this out.

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What do you reckon…

[nick76]

Jeez.....alot of words there for someone like me........
I like where its going so far.
Yep Hyper handguards are dear even second hand,i recently just sold off my set.
Here's a cheap alternative.....has the looks and protection....but probably not as tough as the ones that clamp at both ends...
http://www.thirdgear.com.au/products/Black-Universal-LED-Indicator-Handguards.html

[Tuonorush]

Putting some of the bits together.

Me likes what I am seeing!

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Next time more words.... ;)

[Tuonorush]

I know I have been very quiet for far too long. Since my last post A LOT has happened, although most of it is under the skin and as such not visible (too much). Most notable however is the following:


Chassis Update:

The tired chassis has been paint stripped back to bare metal so I can see how much gravel impact pounding the chassis has had during its years of track service. Unfortunately although the paint did a good job of protecting the paint, there is a lot of pitting in the frame that will need to be lovingly sanded, bogged, painted and clear coated to make it disappear. Oh yay, lots and lots of sanding! SO looking forward to that job when it comes to that time… NOT! ;)




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The subframe has been modified further for mounting more bits n bobs that need to be hidden out of view.


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In attempting to get a clean undertray look I decided to use more aluminium (because I can). An interesting challenge was the location and making of the ECU mounting tray. My first real foray into Aluminium TIG welding. I can confirm it is definitely as difficult as people say, but not impossible. v2 will be better still.


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Another challenge, was the extension of the undertray that sealed the bottom of the tank off from the muck thrown up by the back wheel and somewhat shielded the tank from the hot exhaust gases from the rear cylinder header. My colleague at work helped me shape and bend this piece to which he proclaimed that ‘she’ll be alright fabrications’ had not done a bad job….


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Shipment Arrival of goodies

My mate managed to send me a fairly sizable 100kg’s of goodies to screw onto the bike – unfortunately the friendly folks somewhere at a Chinese airport had seen fit to leave the beautifully packed cardboard boxes out in the rain for a couple of days …. What I received was… well shall we say a bit of a cardboard disaster zone… Fortunately not much of the water had actually penetrated the boxes, but unfortunately the water did manage to oxidize the beautifully polished Magnesium triple clamps to a dull grey colour. Guess there will be plenty of elbow grease to go to make these babies look the part again. On the bright side, long live the Land Rover Discovery! The entire pallet of cardboard mush was forked straight into the back of it without fuss!




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Running Gear

One of the more exciting aspects of the shipment of parts was the BEAUTIFUL Aprilia Futura Rear swing-arm and rear wheel. This set REALLY looks the business (I have to admit it even looks waaaaay beter in the flesh than any photo’s can really do them justice). As this was one of the most prominently visible parts of the bike, I couldn’t even wait to unload the car completely before fitting the swinger & wheel. My childish ‘tare open the Christmas presents prematurely’ mantra gave me the biggest incentive to drive on with the project thus far. ‘Bellicimo’ as the Italians would say!




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Next out of the car came the WSBK WP forks with custom magnesium triple clamps – Beautifully engineered and rather special in their own right. The interesting technical aspect of these forks, is that each leg only focusses on one function of the suspension action. I.e. one leg solely looks after the Compression control duties (whilst also having spring preload) whilst the other leg solely looks after the rebound duties (whilst also having spring preload of its own). I know of no other forks that have this and as such I am super keen to go for a ride to see how they perform. When my mate put them under his bike many moos ago, he was able to shave a seconds of his best laptimes simply after having screwed these beauties under the headstock ….I think that they will be worth MUCH more in terms of just being SOOO cool! I mean the bottom triple clamp is no less than 30 mm thicker than the standard Aprilia Showa unit it replaces …Talk about Beefy!


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With the forks fitted, I was now finally able to actually screw the carbon mudguard into place. Unfortunately I hit a ‘beautification problem… I mean do you guys sometimes look at a particular aspect of your bike and then feel that it wasn’t ‘just’ quite right…? Well I had that feeling after I had fitted my new carbon mudguard. After fitting it I felt, I felt it was just a smidgen too high above the centre of the tyre for my liking – all of 10 mm, but as with many things, beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder and that 10mm just looked like an ugly wart to me, totally out of whack. A little drilling, filling and about 4 hours of procrastinating later, the mudguard was on as I had envisaged! Unfortunately, nobody will notice that I ‘slammed’ the mudguard, but I will know ;).


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Finally to finish of the front running gear the fitment of the Tuono risers onto the triple clamp. I had my reservations about this, as it would loose some of the sexy look of the top magnesium triple clamp, but the new triple clamp was also machined 5 mm thinner than the original aluminium jobbie and did not have an extra rise of 5 mm like the original. After consulting the guys who had made the new triple clamp in Holland, I mounted the risers, but made a custom ‘load spreading washer plate’ for each riser bolt and accepted that the bars would be 5mm lower than what I was used to before.


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Headlight & top ‘fairing’ cowl

Not long after the goodies above landed, another package arrived. This time, from the US of A, containing my brand new Honda CB1000R headlight complete with mounting frame and very tasty LED pilot light. I spent an amazing amount of time on this thing. Not trying to figure out just how I was going to fit the dash onto / into it, but also how to mount it onto the bike (not quite as easy as first thought) and then how to package it with trying to fit the (WSBK WP) steering damper and a whole lot of wiring behind it. I have now nutted out the dash mounting onto the cowl, the mounting of the whole unit onto the bike as well as mounting the steering damper behind it all – despite the fact that this proved to be a right pain the royal behind. The next challenge will be how to fit the necessary electrics behind the headlight too.




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Unfortunately, I was intending on using the fantastic Motogadget v2 in the project (and even bought the RFID switch for it), but I will not realistically be able to fit it as it will not give my bike the advantages I had hoped. Anybody looking for a brand new Motogadget v2 for their project? Unfortunately this means that I now have the challenge of trying to hide the myriad of (big) relays and fuses around the bike.
Exhausting exercise

I bought a second hand carbon silencer and not knowing the exact age or usage of the pipe I thought it best to repack it to try to give it that nice and deep 2 cylinder Boom.




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Do any of you EVER have any second thoughts about any of your customizing ideas? Well I had a BIG re-think about my exhaust and where it should sit….. I had almost convinced myself that I should join the current exhaust styling fad and get onto the ‘GP’ style / ‘side exhaust’ style (as they call it in car land) bandwagon… What an absolute folly! As is often the case, your first instincts are often the best. This was not different. I stuck to my original design guns and had my mate at Tuffy Mufflers knock-up the connecting piping between the exhaust ports and the silencer. WOW is all I can say!! From the back and side it is just dripping with cool. One of his colleagues actually commented that the bike looks so skinny and sleek with this exhaust configuration over the standard side exhaust. I made a timelapse video of the job located here:


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and




http://youtu.be/1VScmPf_Kio.





Finally, I will be putting together a short time-lapse video of the entire build once it is completed – probably sometime from now. To date I have 2900 photo’s for the video. Don’t worry, once mounted this will only be a video of a couple of minutes.

[Gix11]

What a great post! Thanks mate. That bike is coming together nicely. Keep us updated.

[Cruisecontrol]

Is that Tuffy auto in Epping?

[xa-mont]

i reckon you have to have the best Quality to Quantity ratio of posts of anyone on here :P

[Bob]

Looking good mate,

[fimpBIKES]

thanks for the detailed update
2nd thoughts dont tend to worry u once the thing is flying down the road

[Tuonorush]

Is that Tuffy auto in Epping?

Hi Mate,

sorry for the SUPER tardy & slow response!!

Yes, that is indeed Tuffy Auto Centre in Epping.

He was gold in knocking up the exhaust with me!

He is actually the guy that convinced me that the blade rear end would look oh so cool !

[Cruisecontrol]

I took my VTR zorst there to get a crack welded up. Upon seeing the stainless he said he didn't have a tig and couldn't do it...