G'day all.
Another n00b signing up. My name is Lee and some of you may know me from the twowheels forum where I am the Moderator. I thought I would join up here after meeting a few of you on the Putty Road during your April Fools day run.
I live out in Orange in Central West NSW
I currently have 4 bikes. Well three bikes and a Vespa.
The bike that some of you may have seen while I was on the Putty was called MR T dm. The Rat Camo TDM850. It's my shitty touring bike that has over 217,000km on the engine. And no rebuilds yet. everything on it is just about shagged though.
It was a normal looking bike. Read on and see the transformation.
[u]STEP 1</u>
Take one perfectly serviceable TDM and wash it on the way back from Bunnings.
Here it is pre paint job:
[u]STEP 2</u>
Remove the lower parts of the fairing that you've never really liked any way, paint the engine while it's nice and clean, and start to sand the paint back.
[u]STEP 3</u>
Mask up the bits you don't want painted and then apply base colour to the bike.
[u]STEP 4</u>
Once the base coat has dried, get out the other colour that you want applied. I chose flat black.
Here you can see the results and how the bike looks now!
I know you are wondering just how much this paint job cost and how I could possibly afford it. Well here's the paint I used. A total cost of $27 including sandpaper and $2 at the car wash on the way home.
Yes that's right, the green is chalk board paint! :lol:
Two and a half hours inlcuding going to buy the paint, washing the bike, pulling it apart, sanding, masking, painting and reassembly.
After I had taken the pictures I realised I had forgotton to do the front guard. So I took it off and painted it afterwards. If I had remembered it to begin with, the whole job probably would have been done in two hours!
I then modded it more for touring.
As bought from the wreckers:
I then needed to make up some mounts for them. So I stripped back the subframe and welded on some uni-strut:
Once the uni-strut was welded on I cut down the tail piece and bolted on the panniers and an old first aid box I found lying around as the Top box I had on wouldn't fit anymore.
The final step was giving the left pannier a coat of black. They are slightly different, but close enough for a rat. I also painted the first aid box with flat black.
The first aid box. Notice my missing indicator lense. It fell off while riding a pile of dirt roads near Taree on the weekend you guys had your April Fools run.
and the top:
The highway pegs:
Mr T's "eye's" are getting there coating of bugs back again too:
Anyway, not real streetfighter, I know. Neither is the Rat Black Vespa of Death:
but it gets me to work and back.
It started out as a write off when I bought it. Here's how it looked when I first got it and shoved it up the back of my garage.
I just slapped it together again, gave it a coat of flat black, added the pillion pegs of my R1 as highway pegs (I'm 6'4", I needed more leg room) and got it regoed and thrash it all around town.
The REAL reason I'm here is because I'm planning on Streetfightering my '04 R1. It had far too much plastic on it and it needs to go. Anyone here done one? I could use search, but maybe someone can point me in the right direction if it's been done already. Otherwise I'll make it up as I go along.
I don't have any pics of my R1 or my Yamaha RD250LC at the moment, need to take some now I have a digital camera.
Anyway, I've rambled enough for now.
Cheers,
Lee
