V649HP-Kawasaki's new gravel runner

JD ship your bike west. I'll take REAL good care of her for the winter. Then come out and pick her up and ride some.

Dang she is purdy!

thanks, came through in good shape. rain quit at midnight, blue sky today. i got 14" of rain at the house from this storm. no trees down, as opposed to 60 trees down in the yard the last time.

my best generator story from my days as a Caterpillar dealer was during a big power outage a few years back. i installed a 45kw LP fired Cat genset at one of our big new homes and the emergency panel was set up to provide power to the main house, guest house, and pool house, all of which had big SBS refrigerator/freezer units. it was a summer home, so i sent a crew up to check the house the day after the storm, no damage, but the generator was purring along, fueled by a 1000gal underground LP tank. i called the client, and they said they would be down the next day, so i told them to clean out all the frig units and do a manual shut down on the genset if the power was not on when they left. trees down on their access road, they would have to walk in.

a week went by when i realized i hadn't heard from them. they never bothered to drive down and the genset had been running 24 hours under a minimal load for a week. they asked if i could empty the frigs, so i went back up there with a crew of laborers, cleaned everything out into garbage bags, shut down the genset, and hauled everything out back out to the main road. sent them a bill for $900, which they paid. it was just a bunch of crap in those refrigerators, my laborers didn't even want the stuff that was unopened.

met one of the neighbors struggling through this long power outage. he could hear this genset running 24 hours and knew no one was home. he wasn't pleased.




enough with this storm distraction...i'm headed to the shop, fab some parts for the beast.

yeah, we should ride down to Cabo. after all this weather, my tan is fading.

had these on the list for awhile, seemed like a reasonable place to start.

turned these...



into these...



after all the riding this season, figured i needed to add a pair on the beast.

Nice looking pieces.

What sizes are those holes, and what are you using to make the large holes in the steel pieces?

You win, your operaters are the general public. Fortuneately all our operators are employed by the utility company, which is good as our mainline units are 750 to 2500 horses.

Glad you weathered the storm. Hope to see some progress on the Rat. - David

so will i. i'll be trying to hire a painter soon, fired the last guy.

10, 25, 55mm, larger ones cut with a hole saw.

some guys have all kinds of trouble cutting holes, but very slow RPM and cutting oil solves most of the problems. much less heat too, makes your hole saws last 10X longer. you know when you have the right combination, the shavings often come out in nice long curls, and the piece is cool enough to handle without gloves.


so i have two new pieces, four new pieces must be way mo betta...





this stuff all cut from scrap steel. if you enjoy fabbing parts for your ride, never walk by any usable metal scrap ya can liberate without stealing it.

fine tune the fit a little, then these will be ready for paint.

JD, glad to here you made it through the storm, man that was a monster.

Nice looking parts, what the hell are they for?

I seem to remember that conversation about the last guy. Hope the new one works out better.

You might like this link. Still a couple pages of writing left, but going strong.

-david

thanks. a friend called from Madison area to check on us Tuesday, said the Sandy wind was really blowing on the farm. he's 1000 miles from us, it was a big storm.

parts need to be fitted, then i'll put up a photo.

shooting urethane in a cold shop, always an adventure.


nice ride report, i miss that country.

Thanks for the hole cutting info. I'll have to grab some of those hole saws.

You use a hand drill for that? My drill press doesn't go below 600rpms (lil' 12 delta).

in the home shop environment, 600RPM is too fast for all but the smallest hole saws and small diameter high speed twist bits. speed means heat, and heat kills the tooling. unless you can safely add a variably speed switch to your drill press, you're better off using it for accurate pilot holes only, finishing the cut with a variable speed electric hand drill. same goes for larger diameter holes with conventional bits. use cutting oil, it's cheap, good quality tooling isn't.

almost all hole saws accept a 1/4" centering bit, commonly a 1/4" high speed twist bit. i never drill a hole with this bit, instead drilling a 1/4" pilot hole with a regular twist bit, then finishing the cut with the hole saw mated to a piece of 1/4" drill steel or a broken 1/4" bit ground flat on the end.

you can download a PDF of recommended cutting speeds for common bit diameters used for drilling the normal materials you encounter.

hole saws are notorious for binding in the work if you're not careful. observe safety precautions.

i use hole saws with both a variable speed drill press and a variable speed hand drill.

nice bar clamp assembly for the rat bike dudes running the Versys fork clamps, replaces the proprietary Versys bar riser/clamp.



since i tend to, ahem...flop the bike on occasion, and bend bars, i'm in the undecided column.

would be a cool little swap, even on a stock Versys.

maybe i'll get kajj to machine the base mount for me over there in Sweden and mail it to the States...cheap.

Thank you for that post. Excellent information. I'll have to pick up some hole saws.

no problem, any questions, just ask.

Nice bar clamp.

It seems lower then the original Versys clamp? I guess you could mount some risers.

Cheap! here in Sweden

If you have the right contacts it could be. I think it would be cheaper for you to get them machined in the states.
Rater then have me send them to you. But that depends on how much cheap is

might be as much as 40mm lower at the bar center.

yeah, the machine work would be cheaper here, so just send me the CNC file. i'll even give you course credit and an honorary degree, it would look really good on your resume.

I guess I could send you a 3D-model of the clamp. Just need to find some time for it.

Do you have any more pictures of it?

Or any ideas of improvements?

Ii would be a fun project to sketch one from scratch.