Randy Rides Again.......

I got a call from a guy a few months ago, on a referral from Dennis Goodson. The guy (Randy) had this Shovel swingarm bike in pieces in his barn, and he wanted to get it back on the road. 2Wheelers had just gone thru the engine, and they referred him to Dennis, because Randy wanted his frame stretched out a little. Dennis does excellent frame work, but he was too bogged down with doing his air cleaners, so he referred Randy to me.

Originally, Randy just wanted a lot of air between his rocker boxes and his upper frame. He was thinking of stretching the downtubes 4", but I thought that would be too much. I made up some 4", and 2" downtube pieces, and let Randy make the decision. As I thought he would, he chose the 2" stretch in the downtubes. The rake is about 32 degrees now.

To give him a little more space over the rear rocker, I made him a new backbone, placed on top of his seatpost forging, and bent new seat area rails to connect everything. Once Randy saw his new frame work, he asked me if I'd like to continue on with the rest of the build, on to the final finished bike, and I agreed.

Randy wanted the bike to sit as level as possible, but wanted some ground clearance as well. I added 11" shocks in the rear, and went with a 1 1/2" over fork tubes. It looks higher in the front in the picture, because the front wheel is sitting in the wheel chock, and that raises the front about 1 1/2" from sitting with both wheels flat on the lift.

Randy also had a Knuckle solo seat that belonged to his brother, and it meant a lot to him, so he was adamant that it go on this bike. I made him a new seat "T" for it, and used a pair of Choppershox for suspension. It's not mounted in the photos, but you can see it behind the rear tire on the lift. It matches in pretty well with the lines of the tank, and works with the back fender. I'll get some photos with it mounted for you later. Next on the "major" list is a 5 in a 4 speed gearbox w/kicker, and a combination 2" Primo belt drive w/Tech Cycle starter plate, and I'll handle the motor plate to connect them.

The framework came out great, the seat "T" and suspension works with the bike, but what I'm reall proud of is this, that I'm in the process of fabbing up.......

Randy wanted a small, bare steel oil tank w/o a battery box, that he could get painted to match the sheetmetal. He looked at all the tanks out there, and they all looked the same. So, I dug around in the "I'll use this some day" pile, and found the materials to built this tank for him. I surprised Randy with it, and he's stoked!

It's about 5 1/2" in dia. and should hold a little more than 3 1/2 qts. It's rubber mounted, and if all goes well, I should have his lower rubber mount tank support, filler neck, the oil line and drain bungs welded in, within the next day or so.

Check out the nice domed ends. The ends match the front radius of Randy's Mustang tank perfectly.

The nice part is I can fab tanks just like this any dia., any length, and I could add an inset battery box for any size battery - from a small kicker, up to softail-sized Estart batteries. I could also spin the ends around, and make them convex as well. Truly modular, if you will. I'm seriously thinking of doing these for others on a "special order" basis......