Frame Surgery

When my folks moved out to BC, I inherited (more) of Dad's tools.  One of those items was a nice sawzall.  He had only used it on wood (maybe to trim a stubborn tree).  Either way, it came with a brand new metal saw blade for steel.  As a result, I made light work of the subframe.

It was one of those tools I always wanted to buy, but some aggro with a hand hacksaw usually had the same result, but with the bleeding knuckles, buckets of sweat, and broken blades to go with.  Not so in this case.  It is not as heavy as it looks, but it still weighs close to 20 lbs, I think.  Good riddance.








The next step was to take out the trusty angle grinder and clean up the areas that I lopped off.

While a new subframe will be fabricated, I'd like to do it with the bike still pretty much intact.  The engine will be dropped to strip the frame for powdercoating... but we're a long way off from that.  In the end, the material came off OK, and I was also able to remove some paint as well in areas that I know will be welded later.  Note the "best use of an old pair of underwear" -- covering up the carb mouths.

I had some leftover 4130 Chromoly steel left over from other projects.  Some 1.25" .058, along with some work with a "fishmouthing" tool, had this new brace slot into place nicely.  I am still not 100% sure of its location, so no tack-welds yet.  As it is, it's not possible.  I returned my O2 and Acetelyne bottles a few months ago, as I wasn't using them (d'oh).  I have the mig welder, but no gas, so tacking with that makes for a real mess with spatter.  I need to decide whether to go back to bottles, or get the mig set up for gas.  I might choose the latter, as I will likely get the rear subframe tig welded by IronCraft.  Tacking it in place helps them at their end, and saves some money at my end.
Why am I already chopping this up?  Good news is that I got the bike running.  An auxiliary tank, after cleaning the carbs and putting in new plugs had the bike fire up pretty easily.  Once I knew it ran, off came the extra stuff that would get in the way...
It's all in good shape, so if anyone wants any of it, let me know.  Prices will be minimal, but you need to pay for shipping.