building custom chopper frame

[octo0072000]

Chris Ireland comes to mind

 

[addjunkie]

Twas him who used the wooden jig, very clever fellow, and a right scream to have a tipple with! But that frame is box section if i remember correctly!

Look at his bonneville bikes to for home built stuff.

 

[Gwil]

Lots of frames and mods to frames used to be done with stick in my dog days. Nothing I've done with stick has ever broken. Distortion can be the bugbear though, and unless you're good the welding can look just like a 70's Honda- also probably stick welded! Old frames, welded or brazed, sometimes do show cracking, but it's rarely fatal, and usually after years of (mis)use.

Lots of grinding and rewelding to tidy up the look will distort unless you have a mighty solid jig. A bit of subtle gusseting (no, not that kind of gusset....) can be reassuring, and also enhance rigidity around a headstock or swinging arm pivot.

Even those horrible springers made out of twisted square stock, and horrendously goosenecked frames seemed to survive. Anyway, if you want to live forever stay at home with a stamp album....

Ps; just talking on the phone with a pal who says Uncle Bunt frames back in the day were stick welded, quite a few still up and running. Found it on the net to back him up.

 

[Richard.]

I wonder if anyone has copied the chain framed abortion? Guess they probably have, as the sort of people into choppers may have been prepared to pay a lot of money for one.................lol

I WONDER how much you know about frame building Chris???
I know what you claim you know and have done but with zero media,zero photos, zero useful information to pass on and all your posts involve bitching, moaning and dissing people's method and equipment.
I'm beginning to wonder as much as you wonder.
Do me a favour will ya.

 

[Chris Stevens]

I WONDER how much you know about frame building Chris???
I know what you claim you know and have done but with zero media,zero photos, zero useful information to pass on and all your posts involve bitching, moaning and dissing people's method and equipment.
I'm beginning to wonder as much as you wonder.
Do me a favour will ya.

I know enough about frame building to have built one good enough to have won Brit trials trials championship.............Mate of mine is a frame builder, and I am currently involved with a project to produce complete frame kits to accept power units and running gear from donor bikes.

 

[Jim Davey]

He does know a lot about it Richard, I've known him for many years and he's been in motorcycle related fabrication all of that time. He's also friends with a very good frame builder too so I'm sure he's picked up a good deal of knowledge on the subject.
He is also insufferable **** at times and doesn't seem to be able to refrain from having a pop at just about anything.

 

[Jim Davey]

Too late lol.

 

[Richard.]

I know enough about frame building to have built one good enough to have won Brit trials trials championship.............Mate of mine is a frame builder, and I am currently involved with a project to produce complete frame kits to accept power units and running gear from donor bikes.

Superstar welder or not Chris your arrogance is not doing you any favours. If your that good you should be bringing value to people's threads.
You don't add value you just diss what people want to do and how they want to do it.

 

[Jim Davey]

Richard, let it go. You are a useful contributor to the forum but you and Chris are regularly butting heads.
Try to ignore each others posts as it's going to end up with all out war at this rate.

Back on topic, if the OP is still interested, I'd say use heavy wall stock, and weld with whatever method he gets the best result with after some serious practice. If you are contemplating this with anything less than a 180 amp mig if advise a rethink as due to the torsional, shock and vibration type stresses on a motorcycle frame the penetration and integrity of the welds need to be high. There is almost no good way for a frame to fail, so look at how others manufactures do things, borrow from their ideas that work and don't get too radical until you have some serious experience under your belt.
Lots of helpful advice on here and if you post up regular updates im sure you will be told (some nicely, some more bluntly) if what you are doing is ok.

 

[Jim Davey]

Just as a side note. Any opinions or views I express on this or any other forum are my own and not those of my employer.

 

[arthur]

It's a great place this, many of you are very skilled and provide a good number of members and readers valuable information, you all share a common interest from a broad range of applications, from farmyards, industry, art and much more welding is at the root of so many things.

It's also hard to get emotions into words, i.e a poster maybe like me and just throw out the odd comment or two between sips of tea, often it can read wrong or whatever...

Anyhow, I'm off to boil up that kettle again before I talk more crap about bikes haha

Peace 'n' love dudes lol

 

[pedrobedro]

I've been following the thread and reported a couple of posts which I found inappropriate. I like bikes and appreciate the work that goes into making a one off although it's not to my taste a lot of the time (being polite) I do help out at a bike shop and have done some welding on bikes, one of which has been round Iceland and various other countries. We fetched a Triumph bobber in once to get it running. It was bought on eBay for a lot of money and looked really well done but it needed finishing. My friend got it running and took it out to put some fuel in and make sure it was alright. He came back as white as a sheet declaring it unfit to ride and he has ridden a lot of bikes of all descriptions (including Harleys ), it tipped into corners alarmingly causing you to put your foot down in panic and would have fallen over otherwise. The chap who had bought it got his money back and returned the bike. None of this bickering is constructive or relevant to the original subject and anyone posting should think and count to ten first.

 

[Richard.]

My apologies gents.
I had reasons but it was inappropriate. Sorry to the op.

 

[Gwil]

I've been following the thread and reported a couple of posts which I found inappropriate. I like bikes and appreciate the work that goes into making a one off although it's not to my taste a lot of the time (being polite) I do help out at a bike shop and have done some welding on bikes, one of which has been round Iceland and various other countries. We fetched a Triumph bobber in once to get it running. It was bought on eBay for a lot of money and looked really well done but it needed finishing. My friend got it running and took it out to put some fuel in and make sure it was alright. He came back as white as a sheet declaring it unfit to ride and he has ridden a lot of bikes of all descriptions (including Harleys ), it tipped into corners alarmingly causing you to put your foot down in panic and would have fallen over otherwise. The chap who had bought it got his money back and returned the bike. None of this bickering is constructive or relevant to the original subject and anyone posting should think and count to ten first.

Could've have been bad geometry on the bobber rather than a bent frame? My pal came back white as a sheet from a ride on my bobbed VL1500, and mechanically that's just about as it left Suzuki's factory! He normally rides a Guzzi with impeccable handling and the culture shock was just too great....

 

[Wendelspanswick]

A youngster from the village asked me to pop round to have a look at his hard tail chopper as one of the welds had broken. I chucked my MIG in the van and drove round and to my horror the broken weld was one of the tubes going to the rear axle gusset plate.
It had been ground down so thin for cosmetic reasons that the tube was paper thin, as were the other tubes in the same area.
Seeing as this was a chopper with a Yamaha 650 engine so capable of a ton the results if the rear wheel had collapsed at speed would have been horrific.
I refused to touch it as I said I couldn't guarantee that after the repair that another tube wouldn't fail in a similar way.
I do know that he sold it awhile later so he must have found someone to do the repair, if I had my way I would have condemned the bike.

 

[Gwil]

A youngster from the village asked me to pop round to have a look at his hard tail chopper as one of the welds had broken. I chucked my MIG in the van and drove round and to my horror the broken weld was one of the tubes going to the rear axle gusset plate.
It had been ground down so thin for cosmetic reasons that the tube was paper thin, as were the other tubes in the same area.
Seeing as this was a chopper with a Yamaha 650 engine so capable of a ton the results if the rear wheel had collapsed at speed would have been horrific.
I refused to touch it as I said I couldn't guarantee that after the repair that another tube wouldn't fail in a similar way.
I do know that he sold it awhile later so he must have found someone to do the repair, if I had my way I would have condemned the bike.

Horrible story- the other thing to avoid is ANY frame to which filler has been applied in the interests of smoothness- bondo we used to call it. Many sins lurk unseen beneath it....

 

[Robotstar5]

This thread prompted me to find and scan a photo from a custom bike show I went to in the 70's, this was a prize winner but was a "trailer queen" as there were no internals in the engine

 

[addjunkie]

Sadly, think the origional poster has run away to buy a clarke en 90 and some old conduit to build his frame as he believed a guy in the pub!

Again i say dreams should be encouraged, not slapped down and beaten out of dreamers. Even if he fails miserably some one will benefit from an unfinished project!

 

[outofthefire]

I chucked my MIG in the van and drove round and to my horror the broken weld was one of the tubes going to the rear axle gusset plate.
It had been ground down so thin for cosmetic reasons that the tube was paper thin, as were the other tubes in the same area.

Seeing as this was a chopper with a Yamaha 650 engine so capable of a ton the results if the rear wheel had collapsed at speed would have been horrific.

I've cut up a few jap bikes and their frames can be scarily thin from the factory.

 

[AdrianH]

A few years ago and a reoccurring thought in my mind was to build a streamliner to run at Bonneville, nothing serious, then thought I should not be stupid, then the BBC program about the bikes at Bonneville with one of the builders being on the locostbuilders site set me off again. But again common sense kicks in and I think where the hell would I do it, I don't have the space to swing my arms around.

But I would like to follow a build thread where the OP goes through and explains, how they come up with a design, what techniques they use and all the rest, watching the progress as things take shape. But it does look like the original poster has been put off with only 2 posts in 60.

I really must build my second Kit car, I have most of the parts, just have trouble getting in and out of the dam seat of my first at the moment.

Adrian