Customizing Your Motorcycle

Shed-Built to Show Bike

Chris Daniels

• Éditeur: Crowood
• Année: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781785003707
• Sujet: Technik & Maschinenbau
• Sous-sujet: Luftfahrt

Building a custom motorcycle has never been more popular, with even the major manufacturers keen to capitalize on the growing trend. A custom motorbike is the product of an owner using their own skills to produce an individual machine, and with the right tools and approach it is well within most people's means to take a standard machine, new or second-hand, and make it their personal statement. Providing clear and practical advice, this new book, Customizing Your Motorcycle - Shed-Built to Show Bike introduces the reader to the techniques and processes needed to customize any motorcycle. Eschewing the practice of using expensive off-the-shelf parts, it shows how the shrewd use of salvaged and alternative sources is not only economic but also results in a satisfyingly unique custom machine. Projects demonstrate how to make custom parts, while examples of how different custom bikes were built by the author show how they are designed and put together. The book covers: An introduction to the main styles on which today's custom scene was founded; Choosing a suitable bike and how to make decisions when buying second-hand; Workshop setup and tools; Components of a bike and custom parts; Basic improvements and the essential maintenance to make a safe and usable bike; Modifying frames and building seats, tanks and other components; Welding, cleaning and preparation for painting. Richly illustrated with 409 colour photographs.

1

welcome to our world

A WONDERFUL WORLD

In a world of safety concerns and risk assessments, it is not easy to celebrate the individual. Sure, individualism can be expressed by dressing differently, becoming an explorer or just dropping out, but these methods can all impinge too much on daily life. As an alternative, many people buy mass-produced items they believe will make a statement of how they stand out from the crowd. Eventually, though, there comes a time when the ownership of off-the-shelf technology and cheap rubbish, manufactured by tiny hands in far-off countries, starts to become meaningless and trivial. This is a shame, as the world has much to offer in terms of enjoyment and enrichment, not all of which is to be found on a thumb-operated screen, but the real question is, how do you know where it is, and then, more importantly, how can you participate?

While there are no simple answers to these questions, for those with a desire to leave the sheep behind, who are blessed with gumption, and possess fair motor skills and opposable thumbs, a decent solution exists: take a standard motorcycle, throw away the garbage and build a custom bike!

Who could fail to be impressed by the coolness of a well-turned-out bike? Who would not appreciate the freedom of the open road (or field) on a machine that has been transformed, by someone using their imagination and hand skills, into an assertion of life? Hopefully within the following pages, a basic understanding of working on these lovely machines will be engendered, whilst the concepts of how to tailor them using readily available tools, equipment and ideas will be set out in an understandable and practical way. Most forms of transportation – cars, trains, and so on – are designed to move people about in maximum safety and with minimum fuss. What bikers are after is excitement, style and fun. Unfortunately, as the manufacture of bikes has become a massive business, the machines over the years have been (over) developed into catering for the lowest common denominator, designed to be mass produced.

Shed-built Harley bobber, with a bold distinctive colour scheme created using spray cans, with stick-on vinyl Triumph logo. The air-filter cover was customized by drilling random holes and polished using a wheel in a drill press, with fine mesh secured on the inside with silicone rubber.

The epitome of shed creativity? This lovely machine was built using a scooter as the basis and classic-car bodywork, to create a unique and practical custom for very little cost. Imagination and experimentation are two of the best tools in the customizer’s arsenal.

UNIVERSAL CUSTOM

Classic shed customizing at its best: simple and sweet, Ben’s old Triumph would not look out of place in a 1950s biker flick, outside a Paris wine bar in the 1960s or rolling into the car park of a modern design studio. All unnecessary stuff was binned and the old worn-out seat was replaced using an old leather jacket.

Definitely not shed-built, this shop-manufactured custom is a standard bike with lots of lovely bits stuck on. It requires no more input from its new owner than looking through a glossy catalogue and getting a cheque book out; the amount it costs would buy about fifteen second-hand classic runners.

Pepe’s Moto Guzzi has a wealth of shed custom details: the brass and copper fitments, electrics box made from an old motor housing and rustic seat all give it a singular charm. Some might prefer more minimalism and tidiness in the routing of the cables and wires, but most are happy for them to be an integral part of the whole scheme.

Basically, a motorcycle is an engine slung on a metal frame between two wheels and it is this simplicity that allows it to be light, nimble and easy to work on. Well, that was true when they first came out and it carried on for many years, allowing creative people to take the basic layout and expand on it. The manufacturers, seeing that there was a definite market for the ‘individual’ bike, set to with a vengeance to create mass-produced custom bikes; they have flooded the world with creations that range from the sublime to the ridiculous, capturing an audience that totally ignores the irony of purchasing a factory custom.

Consider the differences between the bikes of days gone by and the new wave of factory output; while this may appear to be an exercise in cynicism (or critical examination if you will), it is quite important to appreciate constructional evolution when choosing a bike to customize. The most appreciable difference is space, older bikes tend to have a lot more room around the engine, be skinnier and look lighter.

Newer bikes have been computer-designed to fill out all the spaces with cleverly located components, shiny gewgaws and acres of plastic; the result is often a stolid, boring and complicated machine devoid of character. Other obstacles on newer bikes are electronic and fuel systems, which can be a pain to organize. This is especially the case when going minimal, as many of them need computer control, or to be set up via a computer-controlled system.

It makes sense to use as your basis a bike that can actually be worked on at home, so the first piece of advice is this: do not buy some overly convoluted, electronically controlled spaceship of a bike, but keep it simple and go classic.

DO IT YOURSELF

This book is not intended to be an instruction manual on exactly how to customize a particular bike; that is up to you. Instead, it will demonstrate and explain techniques that should help when working with bikes, engines and tools in general.

The basis for anyone working on mechanical objects must be grounded in the simple tasks of an average workshop; these used to be garnered at school or by finding out as a youngster on pushbikes and old wreckers. Unfortunately, the time of the ubiquitous garden shed full of the tools needed to keep the family vehicles and appliances running has gone; the drive to always buy newer and shinier stuff means that people don’t look after things as they used to. A sweeping generalization, very vernacular and full of holes, but there’s a truism in there somewhere – trust me.

The book will feature a couple of project bikes shown as examples, as well as pictures of interesting bits of bike and of bikes themselves, all of which will be included with a strong bias towards what I personally like or admire. The two are not always the same – it is easy to like a bike, without being impressed by certain elements of it; on the other hand, clever engineering or details may exist on a bike that, to my senses, is a complete dog’s dinner.

This brings up another point that is quite important to me but, from what I’ve seen, not everybody: aesthetic style. Now this is getting subjective, it’s obvious we can’t all like the same thing, and while that is almost the raison d’etre for customizing, it is quite difficult to say nice things about something that has as much attraction as a mangled gate.

What I will attempt is to describe why I like particular bikes, or how something mechanical quickens the heart, so when the inevitable matter of criticism occurs, be aware that it is not personal. In fact, not being keen on something means it won’t be something I’ll copy, thus preserving its individuality.

The details are not the details. They are the design.
CHARLES EAMES

IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

Hopefully, you already have some idea about the type of bike you would like to be riding. There is no way you can be helped to choose without knowing what you find cool about bikes, where you live and how you plan to spend time out on the road. As a start, it is handy to try and identify these aspects, amongst all the other factors that have made you decide that this is the life for you.

The range of what can be termed ‘custom bikes’ is huge, with new sub-groups or designations constantly popping up, probably as a result of people’s need to be part of an exclusive group, while still being able to explain how individual they are.

The original choppers were named thus simply because all the junk was ‘chopped’ to lighten the bike. This developed into a catchall title for almost any custom that made the bike different, with the difference sometimes going way over the top.

The most iconic of the choppers is Captain America, built for the film Easy Rider; recognizable by everyone, it is a beautiful bike of the era, only suited to the long, straight roads of America.

Once upon a time, many years ago, large numbers of very similar motorcycles were pushed off the new-fangled factory production lines, intended to be an economic and efficient means of transport for the common man. This led to generations of working-class lads, and a few lasses, owning and, more importantly...