I love it! This is the 3rd frame I've modified for Shawn. The first one was for his son's project, then I just finished up Shawn's frame for his build, now I'm doing this frame for another son's project. "The family that builds & rides together, abides together", or something like that.....
Here's where we started - a Santee 4 speed swingarm frame, with a 32 degree rake, and a 2" stretch in the downtubes from the factory. Shawn wanted more "up" in the downtubes (he asked for about another 2"), not much out on the neck, and wanted to keep the fatbob mounts intact, and retain the 32 degree rake. OK, we can do that!
Two decisive(?) surgical cuts, and no turning back now......
Part-timer Steve getting with the prep work. It isn't the welding that consumes the shop time, it's the cutting, grinding, fitting, drilling plug weld holes, making sleeves, cleaning the tubing outside and inside.....then the fitting, squaring, trimming. It's like paintwork, your finish is dependent on the time you spend on your prep work, framework is no different.....
Originally, we were going to stretch the downtubes another 2", but after we got it "assembled", with keeping the original 32 degree rake, 2 more inches looked waaaay too cartooney. So, off with the 2" tubing sections, some 1" tubing replacing those, and bingo! Just right. Now, how to connect the backbone? Most times when guys do this, they just join it at a "hard" angle back to the seatpost. We're going to try a junction I've wanted to do for a long time, but more work......
All the parts prepped & modified, and ready to assemble......again!
Ready to jig it up for the ump-teenth time, and do the final welding. Everything has stayed square up to now, I want to keep it that way. I think the backbone junction went great. Strong, but it "flows" into the seat area, not a "hard angle" junction, and nicely with a little seat area tubing realignment if I do say so myself. And, I do!
Here's how the backbone looks from another angle, I'm happy, Part-timer Steve is happy. Shawn hasn't see this yet, but I'm pretty sure he'll dig it, too.
3 comments:
Damn, that's sweet. Between you and PTS, how many man-hours do you think you've got in something in like that?
As for the Fat Bob mounts, is it OK to cut those off a stock HD frame? (I can't tell if that Santee is cast iron in the neck like the HD is.) I don't know if cutting cast iron is a bad idea or not. Alternately, is there a way to mount a Sportster type tank while leaving that mount there, without looking horrible?
How many manhours? Quite a few, but I've done enough of them to charge a set fee for most of the mods I do. You make a little on some jobs, and you loose a little on others. It all evens out....
The OEM H-D necks aren't cast iron, they're a mild steel forging. They cut, and weld like mild steel does. The Santee neck is a machined mild steel hourglass neck gusseted to resemble a H-D neck, and the front fatbob mount is a mild steel forging as well. Just like Paughco does on their frames, too.
Depends on if your Sporty tank is OEM, or not. Most of the time, there's enough room in the OEM Sporty tank tunnel to carefully fold the rear fatbob mounts over on top of each other, and still clear the tunnel, but it's a close fit. Paughco has about the widest tunnels in their Sporty tanks, other a/m tanks the tunnel widths are all over the place.
Thanks man. I'm working on my first serious project, and I'm trying to soak up as much as I can for future reference. Good to know about the OEM neck, I think I just saw someone say "cast" one time, and based on that, plus the look of it, I assumed iron.
I was totally fixated on the front mount on that frame, I didn't even notice the rear mounts sticking up. My bike ('98 FXSTC) had bungs mounted directly in the toptube and the tanks screwed down into it from above. Those are gone now, but the front mount is still there...knowing I can treat that like mild steel, though, suddenly opens up a lot more options.
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