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At the Nurburging. NBD.
On a motorcycle with no plastic fairings, the fuel tank and seat define the appearance of the bike. Having already chosen the fuel tank for this project, I set myself to choosing a seat. Modern motorcycles tend to have sloped seats that put the passenger higher than the rider; this gives the bike a rakish, aggressive appearance. Classic bikes though, tend to have seats that are flat and parallel to the ground:
Take a look at the picture above. I’ve loosely mounted the stock seat – notice how aggressive the angle is. Because this project is about backdating the styling of a modern bike, this seat-line had to change. But this wouldn’t be as easy as bolting on a flat seat – the shape of the motorcycle frame would need to be changed.
The stock Ninja 250 frame slopes up away from the rear tire, which means the rear suspension has plenty of room to move. Lowering the back of the frame could result in interference with the rear tire on hard bumps, so I first needed to figure out whether there would be enough rear suspension travel. To accomplish this, I ratcheted the rear end to the trailer (thanks Rob!) and cranked it all the way down. I couldn’t actually crank it hard enough to put the rear on its bumpstop, but I used up most of the travel. This is what I came up with:
With the rear suspension cranked all the way down, I still had about 3″ of extra travel in the rear suspension. That meant that I could lower the rear framerails at least 2″, if not more in a pinch. This might still be an issue later on, but since this isn’t really a two-up bike and I’ll be adding a stiffer rear shock, rear suspension travel should be adequate even with the modification. That settled, I whipped out the angle grinder and went to work:
With the frame chopped to roughly the right height (more cutting will be required later), I started trying out various seats. First I mocked up a seat with cardboard:
Then for fun I tried a spare SV650 seat I had laying around The Future:
It actually turned out pretty cool – a bit streetfighter/bobber-like. Unfortunately that’s not the style I’m looking for on this bike, so I went to Hayward Cycle Salvage where they let me root through their storeroom for seats that might work. I bought four and brought them home:
This is a Honda CL350 seat. It looks fantastic, fits well, and is about the right length. It also has a seat strap, which is a very convenient feature for moving motorcycles around.
This is a CB100(?) seat. It’s in clean condition, but its immediately apparent that it will be too short.
This is another CL 350 seat. This one has a different pattern in the leather, but also looks great. Even before trying the last seat I suspected we had a winner.
This is a seat from a Kawasazki KZ400. I like how the front of it is sloped forward, but the leather feels cheap, and it lacks a seatstrap.
It looks like I’m going to go forward with the CL350 seats. Interestingly enough, the two different ones I bought have different mounting provisions, so it’ll be fun to experiment with them. Here’s another angle on the seat:
PS. Happy New Years!!
A couple months ago, I finally got around to doing a trackday. Even though I had the most awful towing setup known to man, and I only got four hours of sleep the night before, I managed to have a really great time. I didn’t even crash! T and the dogs came with me, and they were very supportive throughout the sometimes stressful experience. Enjoy the pics:
Of course I’m sporting the #26.
Getting ready for tech inspection.
Barreling down the front straight for the first time. What a thrill!
Tipping into Turn 13.
Turn 5 is a blind crest that drops into an off-camber right hander. They call it the Cyclone.
Showing poor body position in Turn 15.
A photograph of the GotBlueMilk print. I think this is Turn 2. Thanks Dito and friends!
My trusty pit crew 
The dogs got to eat french fries for lunch that day. The fries gave them food coma.
Get some!
I’m not the terminator, but I’ll be back. Trackdays kick ass.
I knew that I wanted to use a 70′s-ish Japanese standard-style motorcycle fuel tank for this project, but I had no idea how any specific tank would look on the Ninja 250 frame. Originally I had envisioned walking between rows and rows of old fuel tanks at Hayward Cycle Salvage, picking and choosing ones that looked aesthetically and dimensionally correct, but later I decided that I wanted to see how the tanks look on the frame.
So a couple of weeks ago I bought a pair of tanks off of eBay. One of them was a fuel tank from a 1981 CB750SC. This is what it looked like on a complete bike (sample photo):
Note how cruiser-like the CB750SC looks. The vanilla CB750 from the same year looks more like a “standard” bike but the tank is more angular. I want curves, not angles.
Here’s what it looked like when it came out of the box:
It smells like bad gasoline, so it will probably need to be boiled out at some point. I threw it onto the frame for a test fit. It fits surprisingly well!
Of course I haven’t actually modified the tank to fit the frame yet, I just threw the tank on to get an idea of what the final product might look like. I thought it looked fantastic, but I wanted to see how similar it was to the concept sketch I drew, so I superimposed the two images:
As you can see, the CB750SC tank and my concept sketch tank are almost identical in both size and shape. I could hardly believe my eyes! The second tank I bought on eBay hasn’t arrived yet, but I have a good feeling it’s going to go back up on eBay.
Adapting the tank to fit the frame will be my first attempt at sheet metal bodywork. There’s a very good chance it will end in disaster, but sometimes you have to run before you walk.
When T was looking for a starter bike she had three main criteria. The bike had to be light (less than four hundred pounds wet) so that she could keep it upright without using too much arm strength; the bike had to look and feel sporty, because that’s the kind of riding she wants to do; and the engine needed to be small so things wouldn’t get out of hand while she was learning throttle control. What we quickly discovered was that there are very few bikes that fit those demands. Our choices boiled down to “buy a Ninja 250″ or forget it.
Accordingly, “Ninjettes” are very popular starter bikes and are often recommended as such. Among their positive qualities are that they’re cheap and easy to find. But their cheapness and ubiquity are also the worst things about them; they look dated and –seriously– every other chick rides one. Those qualities are bearable if you’re looking to move through the Ninja 250 on the way to a bigger bike, but T wants more character and cachet in her bike. After all, people don’t buy motorcycles to fit in, right?
Enter TFG’s Ninja 250. Over the next five months we’re going to develop a sexier, more beautiful small displacement bike. The goals are to:
- Increase the curb appeal of the bike. Make it attractive, unique, and desirable.
- Upgrade the stock suspension to something that isn’t terrible.
- Do #1 and #2 without spending a fortune.
To start the design process I bought a parted-out Ninja 250 on Craigslist. I then photographed the frame’s profile, printed them out very lightly, and began pencil sketching some concepts:
Only two things have become clear so far. First, I’ll need to cut and weld some of the frame. The Ninja 250′s frame is a single piece, tubular steel unit, and the passenger support portion of that frame is very long. Because this will almost certainly be a “monoposto” (single seat) style bike, the frame will have to be shortened. Second, the stock wheels will have to be retained. Aftermarket wheels of any kind, whether they’re wire wheels or RSD custom alloys, are a big ticket item; there is no room for them in our budget. Unfortunately, the stock 250 wheels have a very distinctive look, so the final design will have to work with the “double tri-spoke” Ninja wheels.
Stay tuned for further developments!
Since I heard the tragic news of Marco Simoncelli’s death there has been a dark, sinking pit in my chest. I don’t think I have ever grieved so deeply for any passing celebrity.
When Michael Jackson died, I didn’t feel much at all. I think I understood how important he was to musical history, and I had certainly enjoyed his songs, but neither of those things brought the sting of the King’s death into my heart. More recently when Steve Jobs died I was very sad, but that grief was mirrored by a sense of celebration. The effect of Jobs’ life’s work was profound, and I was sad that he would no longer bring his light into our lives, but the sadness of his death was offset by a pervading sense of recognition and celebration for his accomplishments. Somehow the light balanced out the dark. And in any case I hadn’t watched Steve Jobs invent the iPod, or OSX, or Powerbook. I rarely even watched his iconic press conferences.
When Simoncelli died, it felt like the passing of someone I knew. I imagine the feeling was similar to what I would feel if a fellow law student – someone I shared the classroom with but didn’t know personally – had passed away. I had never quite realized how much modern TV racing coverage brings watchers into the world of racing. Before the race we are taken into the pits to watch the smiles and frowns of the racers. We watch their mechanics stress and rush to prep the bikes. We see the attractive women and we can almost hear ourselves saying, “hey de Puniet, I saw that pretty girl in your pit in FP1. Umbrella girl, girlfriend, or both?”
When the racing begins the intimacy grows. We watch the landscape blur as the riders unleash thousands of horsepowers with their right hands. My beloved gyrocam conveys the thrill – and fear – of the extreme lean angles the riders brave. When the bikes crash, we take a visual ride onto the pavement, into the grass, and then into the gravel. We smile knowingly when the mechanics throw their hands up to protest the misfortune of their riders. For some reason, we sometimes watch shots that consist mostly of their butts.
No other form of motorsport brings personalities into the living room like MotoGP does. Jeremy Clarkson once suggested that F1 drivers wear clear helmets so that race fans could watch the joy and anger on the faces of the drivers as they circulated the racetrack at speed. He thought it would help make F1 as exciting as MotoGP to spectate. By watching the body language, racing lines, and paddock-side behavior of the riders, MotoGP fans get to know the riders’s personalities. We know who the calculating riders are and who the emotional riders are; we know which riders push for every inch and which riders are just content to finish; we know who the loud ones are and who the quiet ones are.
What made Simoncelli’s death so salient to me wasn’t that I loved him as a rider, but that I often disliked him as a rider. With such respectable riders like Spies, Dovi, and Lorenzo going on the record to denounce his “dangerous” riding, I quickly decided that his aggressive style (and frequent crashes) were unacceptable. I celebrated when he received that black flag penalty this season. I cringed at every park-it-on-the-apex inside pass he forced and I often hoped he wouldn’t take another rider out with his stupidity. I thought him brash and unapologetic.
Despite all that, by the end of the 2011 season I had come to expect him to start from the first two rows of every race. At Phillip Island I couldn’t help but cheer when he passed Dovi (one of my favorite riders) for the second step on the podium. Any way I looked at it, it was an incredible feat of skill and courage. Did that one excellent pass make me like him as a rider? Of course not! When T and I watched qualifying for Sepang we still boo’d Simoncelli when they cut to him in the pits. But watching that pass cemented what I had already begun to suspect: that although his skill had not yet matured, he had the fire of a champion.
In some strange way, the fact that I disliked his decisions as a rider made it so much harder to receive the news of his death. I hadn’t just formed a visual image of Simoncelli, or even just an opinion of him as a rider – I had formed an emotional bond with him. Sure, that emotion was more paternal disappointment and annoyance than love, but somehow those negative emotions created an emotional connection that was stronger than I would have expected. Stronger, perhaps, than the connection I might feel with a racer who I like very much. You might say that being angry at Simoncelli made him real to me.
I am young enough and lucky enough not to have experienced the death of a close family member or close friend yet. In that way, Simoncelli’s passing was a morbid preview of the many years to come. And from the selfishness of my own perspective, his death foreshadows my own inevitable death. A sad reminder that I will not live forever. I cannot change that somber truth, I can only try to face my life and death with the courage that Simoncelli showed on the racetrack.
Rule #58: Always ride like a champion.
Rest in peace, Super Sic.
You rode every race like you were fighting for the title.
That courage and fire deserves our respect.
Rule #58 – Always ride like a champion.
Being with T is one of the very best things in my life. Scrump, my MINI, is another. A logical third is our dogs, but we didn’t bring them with us on this trip. Not coincidentally, not having to worry about our dogs for a whole week is also high on the list.
The plan was to have no plan. After three months of incessant studying, writing, and planning in anticipation of the California Bar Exam, we were ready to just wing it. We set a start date, an end date, and a midpoint destination, and started driving. The destination? Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Excited to be on the open road, we almost immediately hit stop and stop traffic. And I’m not kidding, there was some kind of accident up ahead and we were stationary on the highway for about thirty minutes before we decided to make a highly illegal turn across the dusty divider and take a frontage road. Luckily, we got stranded next to an immaculate Z with nice owners. I popped out of the sunroof of the MINI and took some shots.
The rest of the first day was uneventful. We made it as far as Redding before we decided to eat dinner and find someplace to stay for the night. Redding turned out to have a vibrant restaurant culture that consisted of four different cowboy-themed steak houses. We chose the “Lonestar Inn,” ate some greasy steak, and headed to bed at the Motel 6. The motel was not cowboy themed.
The next morning we headed out for Portland.
On our way to that liberal paradise we saw some interesting messages:
agro 76 station opining on Chevron with Techron
Scrump says, “I’m old.”
I say, “I’m sore.”
Does the license plate refer to how fast the Corvette is, or how fast he’s losing his hair? You decide!
behold, the miracle of modern optics…and rogaine!
bridges in Portland are sexist!
good night, for now.
check out the tire marks on the wall
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you want karate datsun?
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where’s waldo?
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this car belongs to MotoLiam, who happened to be at the meet!
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<3
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POV
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Tiffany’s blue, a surprisingly good color for 510′s
