Ok another thought

So the bike is complete and put together. I have about two miles on it and man is it rough. I forgot about how hard a hardtail bike rides. The last bike I was on was a ultra glide classic just for a point of comparison.

So onto the wiring. It was not kikker but the motor. It was grounding out is some weird was and killing the spark trigger. So I need to apologize on that one.

It now has a upgrade Ducati scooter CDI box for more power. No Baffle, and the carb is reall dialed in. Loud as hell now.

Also I did a little trick to the clutch cable, where I put a little bit of tygon tubing ~1 inch near the clutch leaver so that its a bit softer on the takeup and it makes dragging the clutch out a bit on hills easier.

So all in all it was a fun project. The bike is done, I can now operate a suicide shift with some regality and its now for sale on the kikker forum and craiglist so I can clean out some room.

I have the SSR up for sale as well, and with the sale of the viper a few months back I am done to just my daily driver. So thinking of buying a ultra glide or a street glide and doing some major fab work on it. Nothing like this bike where I built it to look like a rat bike but clean solid custom work like from the old days.

 

Wiring Wiring and more Wiring.

Ok got to get this off my chest. KIKKER WIRING SUCKS like bottom of the barrel terrible. Nothing is labeled right, nothing is standard on color, nothing makes any sort of sense from someone who has been doing wiring for the least 15 years. 

Reassembly.

So the bike is going back together. I now have enormous respect for people who manage to get a bike reassembled without scratching everything along the way like I did. Also the paint colors are looking pretty good, I think if I do another one I am going to go all black, and keep the oil can and battery. It balances out the rear of the bike. If this had a twin it would look more menacing but right now it looks like a old cutdown boardtracker.



Learned a few things too.

First.
Powder coat the trees the handlebars if you can manage. The paint is fine on them but man was it tough getting everything back together without scratching. I cringed every time I put something on.

Don't put you motor mounts in backwards. Nothing lines up.

Clutch adjustment on assembly not after.

Safety checklist, IE bleed the brakes. (I totally forgot)

Paint in big batches. I have been painting each little thing as needed, I broke down and spent about 3 hours prepping all the black bit and another night spraying them. Much faster now.

I managed to break the eye bolt which hold the rear axle in place on the left side. It was already cracked a bit as the paint had seeped into the bolt.

So the big errors found, two broken motor mount bolts a cracked rear eye bolt, EKK, one brake bolt cracked. I have no idea how this thing has stayed on the road, it must have rattled like the dikens.

So what's left. Mainly paint the tank and the rear fender, (Prepped and dry)
Get the plates on the bike (Easy)
Finish the wiring harness and hide all the wires (Not so easy, not so fun)
Decide on the front headlight color (More then likely another batch of rust)
Buy a new helmet. (Old one got dropped so I tossed it 10 years ago)
Locate new eye bolt.

Finalizing "Rusty Nail"

Ok so I have finished frame/mount painting and the front tin. Basically I am trying to get it to the point where I can get the motor back in and start the basic wiring that I need to do and get the wheels and tires back on. Then it will be a little bit out of the way and I can finalize some of the custom details. 


I am using a Rustolium primer base with a metric ton of additives to get the look that I want. The front fender is standard auto glossy black for inspection with the insurance company. On a better note I got the new license plates, and plates for the SSR which means after three months of waiting I can finally drive the darn thing. Its been a 25K paperweight because of the CA DMV. 


So I am hoping to have the bike fully legal and drivable thanksgiving weekend. Ambitious but should be doable if I don't start tearing into the LS2 for the planned upgrades. 


Also I f;d up the lower tree due to a bad mix or scratch coat. So I have to spray that AGAIN, which is another mess that I need to curtail. 

final Breakdown before custom stuff.

OK Bike is fully broken down now. Took about 7 hours due to the rust and the trees not behaving due to corrosion.

Boxes from the left

1. Stuff to be polished.

2. Powdercoat box (unknown color)

3. Tins, (Sprayed with ETOH)

4. Tires/Rims (Right is cleaned with one wipe of some cleaner I made years ago, Soaking chrome in B. Acid tomorow ) Will take at least two days at 0.2N concentration till I can polish and clear them.

5. Trash, and there is a lot of it. All turn signals, all wiring beyond the CDI Coil and Mag. Front fender, front light, battery box, oil bag, shopped part of the rear fender, assorted debris.

Bucket. All the hardware to be soaked in B acid then Zinc Plated at home.

Still no idea on my paint options, black would be the common choice with maybe a PVD like coating on the trees but that would be boring.




In the OHH SHIT category two of the motor mount bolts were cracked all the way through and one had major issues that would result in a crack. Glad I took them out and checked. 


I also ran a few numbers in COSMOS I doubt that I am going to stretch the frame just to risky without  some major structure reinforcement which would ruin the lines of the bike and raise the visual look of it which is the exact opposite of what I want.

WIring, wiring and more wiring. Plus rusty nuts

So this will be a short one. I have started breaking down the bike, the more and more that I look at this, its basically its a XR200 in a hard-tail. Now just how much its a XR200 remains to be seen. It looks like it has a magneto system hidden in it like the good old dirtbike but until I get a better look at it apart I will not be sure.

If it has a magneto then I can ripe out most if not all of the wiring, Including the battery. 


As for paint and powder, the frame is in remarkable good shape, everything thats painted is good. Everything raw looks like this crawled out of a pit at the bottom of the ocean. This includes the chrome,
I intend to powder coat just about everything anyway or anodize it worst case.

I will also have to zinc plate all the replacement bolts, plus I will be going to grade 8 the structural stuff if I can track most of it down.

I also fabbed up a plate in solidworks for the starter motor cover. This runs just fine but I hate the look of it on the motor. I also want to eliminate the battery box and oil bag for ascetics as well which is what started the whole wiring ideas

Start of the Kikker 200cc Project!

Where am I going with this. 

Well hopefully something in the long term like the bike above.... (Stolen from Jalopy Journal)  

I have helped build hotrods, lots of very strange custom/kit car stuff over the years, and spend a good chunk of my working life with custom robotics. Motorcycles have been lurking in the back but I have been afraid due to financial/time/risk constraints. When the kikkers started arriving at a few of the local show I was smitten. The price was right, the power seemed reasonable for around town stuff and it would get me some experience designing parts for bikes......

So here is the start of my kikker 5150 200cc project. I picked it up from a very nice guy in Cardiff after I started looking about 2 months ago. It really is the perfect start, its all there, it is legal and well cared for. It has cosmetic issues which need to be corrected but that will be corrected in due time. Its bone stock with the required add ons for legality.  

So what it is missing, in reality not much mechanically. Design wise the flow is weird to me at least. It looks like a mash-up of every big idea in the bobber culture thrown together. If the original designer had picked a single theme and went forward I think it would be a better product, though appealing to a significantly more limited audience.  It is a good start and I realize the limitations of trying to produce a compliant product at a respectable price.


Its definitely not as bad as the all flat black CBxxx fake hardtail bikes running around and should be a good learning experience.






I imagine the next posts will be some designs that I like along with the timeline for breakdown paint choices and such. The big things will be converting to a clutch lever on the suicide shift along with bring that closer to the frame. Stretching the seat back a good bit as I am 6 foot. Plus some interesting rust removal and anodization options., powder-coating and getting my airbrush skills back and lace painting the tins.