Gsx750 cafe/street bike

Made some progress today, got The exhaust sorted so it doesn't hit the frame.

Finally after weeks of searching I found a thread with a bandit 1200 motor swap. Looks great, subscribed

Funny you should say that, cause I searched for ages to to try find a build like this but never did. Found a gs550/bandit swap and heaps of katana ones but no gs/gsx bandit conversion....surely it's been done plenty of times before.

Finally after weeks of searching I found a thread with a bandit 1200 motor swap. Looks great, subscribed

Right... Got a bit of stuff done, got my bottom shock mount/chain clearance cock up sorted. Got all my engine mounts made and tacked in, was a big day of cutting and grinding! Next step is to start doing frame bracing and sort out my chain line.





I bolted the exhaust on and chopped the muffler off the gsx pipe and sat it on to see what it would look like. I'll be wrapping it in heat wrap like the old one, in this photo I have the back of the muffler kicked up a bit, but it my look quite good with the muffler level with the ground??? I might get my rear sets on before I commit to the alignment of it. Also, the left hand header pipe hits the frame... We made a real mess of trying to get it straight, so that's one more issue to fix, otherwise everything is falling into place:-) cheers for all the positive comments too, makes me feel like I'm on the right track with this mission!

[pete]

We started off with steel GT beach cruiser bicycles cause they already had springer forks and some other old looking bits. Chopped out the down tubes and anything else we didn't like the look of and made up new ones.If I did it all again I would use a really old frame and customize that... With a bigger engine of course!

Cool, cheers for that, gives me some more food for thought on what to do with it.

You can go back to your GS conversion now (which is awesome by the way)

Niiiice... thanks for clarifying! I have a Ducati Cucciolo motor here that'll be my next project which is why I ask... and I got no idea what to do once I get the motor running.

Hope you don't mind an off-topic question but did you make those frames or buy them from somewhere? I'm not sure if I want to hunt down a 1940/50 bicycle frame for the Ducati or if I want to do something like a board tracker...

We started off with steel GT beach cruiser bicycles cause they already had springer forks and some other old looking bits. Chopped out the down tubes and anything else we didn't like the look of and made up new ones.If I did it all again I would use a really old frame and customize that... With a bigger engine of course!

[pete]

Niiiice... thanks for clarifying! I have a Ducati Cucciolo motor here that'll be my next project which is why I ask... and I got no idea what to do once I get the motor running.

Hope you don't mind an off-topic question but did you make those frames or buy them from somewhere? I'm not sure if I want to hunt down a 1940/50 bicycle frame for the Ducati or if I want to do something like a board tracker...

Here's my real dirty one:






And here's Ed's real clean one:

Mate that's lookin' real good!

But I need to know... what's the old lookin' bike in that photo on the left there? Looks almost like a board tracker?

Good spotting. That's a replica board tracker, my mate Ed and I built two of them a few years ago, I'll take a phot of them and post it up.

[boontonmike]

Looking good man! Real clean.

Impressive!!

[pete]

Mate that's lookin' real good!

But I need to know... what's the old lookin' bike in that photo on the left there? Looks almost like a board tracker?

Got the swing arm/ shock and forks in, and the bike sitting on its wheels under its own weight. Did a bit of rough checking out of the chain line and engine mounts. Discovered that the gusset I made for the lower shock mount is gonna interfere big time with the bottom chain line!!!! Will have to do some grinding and rethinking of that! Otherwise everything is looking good, sat the exhaust in place and I have about 125mm of ground clearance( which is about the same as I had prior to the bandit parts swap). Will try get heaps more done this weekend...watch this space...

Didn't get much done tonight, managed to finish grinding off the bandit rear engine mounts. Got the engine back in, so next step is to align everything and make new engine mounts. I'm gonna get the swingarm and rear wheel on to make sure the chain is gonna clear the swingarm before I finish weld the engine mounts in.

Yeah, my focus is on good penetration rather than prettiness, I fully understand that much better looking welds can be achieved with a tig, but I have done major modifications to my truck, doing all the welding myself (all of which has been certified) and have had no breakages or issues and man it's seen some punishment!!!!

At the end of the day, my welds are just as ugly as suzukis factory welds so they look stock