’88 HONDA VT1100 BOBBER
My buddy Chris asked me to customize his Honda Shadow into a nice Bobber.
First thing I did was thoroughly clean the bike so I could see which parts would need a new layer of paint.
The first video contains the disassembly of the bike. After partially disassembling I cut of the passenger foot pegs with an angle grinder, smoothed the frame tubes, removed the helmet hook and welded the holes.
The long rear frame ends, with the attach points for the original rear fender, where then shortened and grind into a nice shape. After I made some covers for those frame ends (1,5mm sheet metal), I TIG welded them onto the frame.
When those were welded I started on the rear fender. I’ve made it in the desired shape and made stainless steel brackets towards the rear swing-arm. As you see in the video I temporarily mounted 3 big nuts to the inside of the fender to keep the same clearance between the fender and rear tire during the making of the brackets.
Next up: the speedometer bracket. Cut the original bracket and welded a nice bracket to fit the shape of the bike.
The wiring of the bike was a easy to fix job, only needed to reroute the starting knob, headlight, tail light and brake signal wiring.
The fuel tank and fenders were wrapped in 3M gloss storm grey.
Let’s start with the second video, I began by making 2 flanged bushings to mount the seat springs onto the lower seat plate which I made. Then the carburetors were disassembled, because the bike didn’t run the past 2 years there was some contamination in the main- and idle jets and float bowls.
When a carburetor is disassembled, always check for potential cracks in the diaphragm on top of the throttle valve. When it contains cracks, this will prevent the throttle valve to open completely due to vacuum loss and therefore you’ll lose power.
The rear shocks, wheel, brake and exhaust were reinstalled. On the front, the new speedometer and custom bracket were installed together with the freshly painted headlight.
After the installation of the grey wrapped parts and some fine tuning of the carburetors it was time for a nice test drive, it performed perfect (but what else would you expect with a Honda!?).
Have some safe trips Chris!
