DR 650 project: It's now a Beast!

Ahhhh, no one does sarcasm like an Aussie! errr Scot

You just wait mate I've might have something coming up that'll put a horn on a jellyfish

Technically I'm a pom but don't tell anyone

bush or beach
got that little thing yet?

Nope, next month

A legend in my own mind.

I am not meaning to pick on you. I love projects. My garage is full of them and I am like you, I always have more than 1 going at all times.

Currently I am building a BMW R80GS into an HPN Dakar replica sort of bike, but on a budget...

Then I am close to done on a 1965 Yami YDS3 2 stroke twin 305cc Cafe bike. I am very proud of how that one is looking. Lots of custom welding and frame mods, not quite to your level of stuff, but complete foot pegs and brake reconstruction as well as rear frame reshaping and a hand built rear tail section.

Then in the wings I have a Honda VT700 that I have all designed a Street tracker/flat track replica bike for. That one needs a complete motor rebuild like the smoker did so I have to wait for funds...

Then my daily driver is a 1949 Studebaker C-cab truck that I bought for $580 USD so you can imaging how poor of shape that was in. I have since completely welded up a a bunch of frame mods and for shortening the frame, fuel tank repositioning, front bumper tucking and some new 2 pot Corvette master cylinder and 7" dual diaphram power brake booster stuff all custom welded up brackets.

My input was just on the line of building something that already exhists.I like modding things into what will ultimately end up different, unique. I see guys take a vintage old car or truck and just set it on a new car chassis with AC and bew disc brakes, FI motor, yada yada....It is just a new vehicle then. I get that it LOOKS like an old vehicle, but it is not. It looses those cool old idiosycracies and character that made it cool. I still run drum brakes on my Stude and straight front axle, a 1963 Stude V8 with a carb, 3 speed on the tree....keep it old school.

I see those guys on that Cafe racer show take a cool old vintage bike and put disc brakes and a single shock on it and inverted forks and I dont get it. They sell R1s and GSXRs that way out perform a CB450 with new stuff on it. It is NOT a cafe anymore.

Leave the DR a DR imho. Keep it cool for what it is.

To take a DR and turn it into a KTM SE replica is cool from a fabrication aspect, but you have probably spent close to the money it would take to just buy an SE or something similar and just ride.

I feel for you on the explody motor issue. I did a minor rebuild on my Stude, new bearings and rings with a hone, big cam, full valve job with some porting only to have it spin a front rod bearing at 1000 miles, really bummed me out and made me park it for a while out of frustration and self blame for not completeing the rebuild and just have the rods reconned and turn the crank while it was apart....tried to save a buck ended up costing me close to $500 USD. Oh well.

Get back to it and I am watching with interest as to the outcome.

I don't agree with you at all Kelly, in fact I have an opposite view in some points.

If you have an older bike that you like and want to keep for whatever reason I am all for putting newer parts on it, as long as they improve performance/reduce weight/are more reliable, etc. And to me a well modded vehicle is always cooler than even the fanciest new stock Dukayasukati.

I personally don't really get the idea of staying with stock old parts unless we are really talking about a collectors item with value - in which case I probably wouldn't buy it anyway. If the drum brakes and the leaf spring/solid axle/etc suspension on my old car were shit, you can be sure that I would put on a set of big disc brakes with aluminum calipers and independent front and rear suspension with adjustable coilover shocks and adjustable sway-bars. In fact that's what I'm doing on my Cobra kit car.

And besides, nobody makes a good middle weight twin cylinder bike. The SE gobbles fuel and is not light enough, and Joe will probably build his bike for 1/5 of the investment of what a well used SE goes for in Australia.

Sorry I'm not sure i follow you.

The bike was never supposed to be a ktm 950se replica and I'm pretty sure that no manufacturer sells a air cooled 500cc twin cylinder dirt bike so I fail to see how you think I'm building something that already exsists.

Oh if I owned a 950se I wouldn't leave it stock, I would throw just as much time and money at it as I have done with the dr.

And if the human species never had a light bulb moment, or two, and thought to themselves, 'what if', among many other things, we wouldn't be having this discussion in any form.

Life could of course be a lot simpler if we all thought the same too. Boring perhaps, but we wouldn't necessarily know any different would we, so would it be boring? Arrrrhhhhgggg........

The DR has a unique combination of worthy core characteristics which is why why we like them. And then they have fundamentally crap suspension.

Get on with it Joe, people need to know

I am for improvements. Did not say NOT to improve things. My Stude has a V8 where it had a flat head straight 6.

My Cafe has about 20% more HP than it had and cool home made expansion chambers.

I love creative stuff and custom builds.

I guess I am just confused as to what you are trying to accomplish here. You started off talking about a KTM killer, not me.

What KTM are you killing? A nonexistant middleweight archaic tech aircooled heavy beast that does nothing well and is gutless. You are correct then, THAT KTM does NOT exist.

To have a built up DR motor in a cool customized chassis is SUPER cool to me. Nice simple air cooled and reliable bike in a good handling and welll suspended chassis is a GREAT idea. A gutless, heavy, overly linear powered, old tech air cooled twin is a mediocore chassis to begin with is nothing exciting now. Dont see the point. Then to brag about it being a cheap KTM killer is just BS talk. You can not have it both ways. You can not brag about something being a "killer" of something then have it suck and not admit it.

Build something cool. Have fun with it. But stop knocking other peoples bikes by saying yours is gonna kill it and then your bike does NOT do that, and THEN cry foul that it was never in the same class...this is a middleweight air cooled twin.....duh.

Just NOT into unjustifyed lip flapping I guess. I am more of a "put up or shut up" guy.
I just like seeing a cool build and that build standing on its own merit. Digging the hard work you are doing and the creative design, but it is NOT a Corvette or a Turbo Carrera. It is an old bike with an old twin motor in it, COOL. Dont make it what it is not and what it NEVER will be.

I overtook a ktm 65 the other day does that count?

Mate i think your taking my ktm killer comment a bit to seriously, even given the fact ktms a re buckets of crap i still wouldnt have been able to build a bike that could actualy kill one.
Even if we ignore the fact that bikes arent living things my bike doesnt have arms so it could never ring a ktm's neck

Geez mate joe's built a few killer ktm's
so ktm killer would be a walk in the park
that other dr he chopped rides like its on rails
but i believe all this time in the aussie sun has had a effect on on his humour
back to normal programming

I have had 3 KTMs in 12 years, NONE of them was crap. Sure they required a bit of set up to get them right, but once that effort was made, they were fantastic. The only bikes I have liked better have been my race YZs.

I have had 2 REALLY bad Kawasakis, total CRAP. I was racing MX then and had a shop give me 2 to race and after that year of racing them I CHOSE to PAY for Yamahas so I could finish a race. Hell twice I did not even get to start the race because they were crap.

I also had 2 Suzuki RMs in the late 90s that would buck you off for NO reason, Just random frame flex would kick sideways and spit you in whoops no matter who or how the shock was set up the frame just flexed like a noodle.
Never had that in a KTM. By FAR the best set up street legal dirtbikes on the market!!!! NOT perfect. BUT BY FAR the best we have now.

KTM bashing always cracks me up. Jealousy is an ugly beast. Bergs and Huskys are of course in the running with KTM for great DS bikes, but there is NO Asian bike out there that even comes close or is in the same market as as these Euro bikes.

If you want a good "middle weight" twin DS bike, get a BMW F800GS. That is a decent bike, still far from great.

The "perfect" bike does NOT exist and I do not see one anytime in the future. You just can not engineer a bike that turns like a CR450R, is stable like a YZ450 in the rough, street legal like a KTM, reliable like a DR {VERY unproven according to this thread}, comfortable like a BMW RT, long haul like Goldwing, Range like GSA, fast like a GSXR or a Ducati, and CHEAP to purchase...it is not there, not possible to build in this age of tech yet. Maybe in the future but not now.

PLEASE prove me wrong, I want one if it does come around. But NOW, and for the forseeable future, ALL bikes are a compromise on many aspects. A person needs to prioritize what he wants to do the most of and what he is willing to give up, then pick the closest bike to that he can find.

I am far from wealthy. I am just a carpenter that works for a company. agerage middle class family man. I LOVE MX, I raced it for MANY years and that is my riding style. I want an MX bike that has a plate on it. I have a BMW RT for my street touring and that is fine, but the KTM 450/525/530/new 500 is THE bikes for me. I change bikes every 2-3 years always looking for that next great bike that will fit more of my needs, it just is not there yet. Bikes are a priority to me and I ususally buy new because I want to ride and not have problems, it gets very expensive, but my ride time is valuable so crindgingly spend the money for new or newer good bikes.

Have fun, I really am not a dick here, just sharing my feelings. GO PROVE ME WRONG and build a 275lb MX bike that is plated for street and can comfortably tour for 500 miles a day back to back and get 300 miles out of a tank of fuel....PLEASE.

Kelly...

KTM bashing? Jealousy? You just don't get the humor here.

Joe - amongst other bikes - has a very trick built up KTM EXC rally bike (he built his own subframe tank, nav tower, composites fairing etc), and gets to work and improve his customers bike every day, among them 950 SE, 690 Rally etc. When he says he would throw time and money at those he means it.


Just let it go now, follow along if you want, or maybe stop by in a few years to see if Joe will actually build a bike that could kill a KTM. I'm still doubting that myself to be honest.

I think we're going to need a bigger boat.

Lukas,
I have let it go...

I am HOPING Joe actuall CAN and DOES reinvent the wheel here and build a better bike for less money.

I am the first guy to put my deposit down on his first production bike that accomplishes the task at hand.

Build on Joe

Bait's working well...

Hi Kelly lets put an end to this bull plop shall we.

Just for your clarification ill explain what the design brief was/is for the bike.

Firstly all I wanted to do was build my version of the dr650 and at no point did I believe it was going to be better than any other bike other than a stock dog rooter.
The ktm killer name tag was a joke, now humour seems to be a forren concept to you so I forgive you for going off the deep end about the ktm killer remark.

Once that engine went pop I decided I'd rather put a different engine in the frame, if you read back through the thread you will see that one of the requirements of the new engine was it had to be a low tech air cooled motor.
A few people suggested the gs500 motor because of it reliability and similar weight and power.
After trying to fit the gs motor to the dr frame I realised to many compromises had to be made so I decided I would can that idea and do some learning so that i can build my own frame.
The bike I want out if this is a light(ish) simple, air cooled, fuel efficient and good handling adv bike that I can take to the dessert with some gear on the back.

At no point did I ever seriously say that I was going to build a bike better than everything else out there (that project is for a different thread).

And you are correct about ktm's I actually spotted a real one yesterday from a distance and it looked ok.

And just so you know the point of this thread and bike build is the point is you don't have to get the point only I do.
Get the point now?

Have a nice day

Joe

Look out joes just had a cup of tea.
Watch out if has a long lie down ,way to much sense coming .

I am all good here. I do get alot of your humor and have not been offended. I do realize that you are just hassling us orange koolaide guys. I am just hassling you guys back more than actually having my panties in a bunch.

I have been on discussion boards way too long to get my feelings hurt of online differences...seriously, If I ever get down to Oz I will look you up and buy you a beer.

I want to ride whatever it is you build....I better plan my trip there for a few years down the road though then ehh...

I hope that if you went back and looked at my posts here imaging that I am laughing as I read and type you might see a funnier side...you are poking...I am poking...it is all good.

I am DEAD serious here, if you end up building something really cool I want to ride and maybe buy one...

Build away oh Wizard of Oz.