making a dummy real!

for Animal (the Savage) Thijs had found a gas tank that is very near to the shape he wants.
width and length are spot on.. it is the "fuel tank" from a Honda Magna, but it's a somewhat dummy tank.
a Magna has the actual fuel tank somewhere else. so the "tank" looks big, but actually isn't.
The Magna has a wide double wishbone frame and that takes up most of the room of the "tank", the Savage has a single boxed backbone, so we have plenty room to give the tank some more capacity.
time to make some more room in the tank!
I told Thijs where to cut and what to cut away and he went on it!

after that i made some templates for Thys to cut, and once they were cut i could start welding.

and there you have it... a fair amount of fuel capacity added to the tank!
(yeah.. i won't win any prices for my welding... i know...)
next time i will clean it all up and do a pressure test..(i'm sure i will have just a few pinholes, the welds look like crap.. but they are airtight!)
and now the tank "pockets" fit neatly on the frame.

and i was cold in The Garage!... my water bowl was frozen!

cardboard time..

the Savage from thijs is just a bare roller with some left over engine in it.
as seen as thijs wants a somewhat prostreet look, although i don't really think it suits the bike, i got cutting some cardboard.
first some preliminary tank lines.

just to get a little looky looky of how it would look like with more metal on the frame i cut some more cardboard.

wow, that looks like shit!
now it's up to thijs to find a donor tank that i can cut apart. and after the tank is one the bike we will look at the rest of the metal work.  i like it to be as bare as possible, because in my opinion it's the best looking option. just a tank and some fenders and that's it for the metal department! but it's not my bike... so it's up to thijs.

new project.

it's that time of the year again, temperatures are dropping below freezing, rain and snow are waiting to fuck up a good ride. riding season is over......Chopping season is open again! 

this year there are 2 projects in the Garage.Toxic is getting some engine work and will change his appearance again.

but that's not the only project this year. Thijs has a rugged old Suzuki Savage, which he wanted to change.

the savage will go by the name of "Animal" the muppet show drummer.

so this week the machine has been brought to the Garage!

here's the savage brotherly next to Toxic in past:

once the bike was in the Garage it was undressed quickly!

10 minutes in the garage:

 and after one hour:

the bike had a nasty sound in the head and was leaking oil as a madman.

so i opened up the head and got a little sneak peak at HELL!!!

 

looks like it had been running without any oil feed to the head! total devastation in there!

before any chopping will take place first thing to do is make the engine healthy again!

yups, it's getting crowded in the Garage!