Gas up, fire up & go!

After fooling around the whole rainy week with final little bits of assembly process this weekend was the perfect time for the first start and test drive. The bike left the garage on a sunny day so here are few shots of a brand new machine.

Baltic Bike Days best shots

As I have mentioned earlier we run out of fuel in Latvia. Usually there are two ways to gas up, drive to gasoline station with any other vehicle that still has fuel and get some or stay on a road and shoot some pictures then you can end up with a whole truck of fuel

And if you look really carefully you might notice where actually the truck driver is looking, and he is definetely not looking at the road. So while I was gone they already had a truck full. Thank you Troy, you were a good camera boy. Thank you Indra for being such a good model.

Trip to Baltic Bike Days

This road trip was a good opportunity to test the bikes on a long distance and bad roads since none of them was really ridden after assembly. We started off kinda slow on Friday morning by loosing a licence plate not even leaving Klaipeda and actually realized that only 10km after. Being very fortunate we managed to get back in town and still find it on the road. We had to stop several times on the road to upgrade broken or loose licence plate brackets, leaking forks, loose handles and loose oil cooler but we managed to go up and down to Jurmala without any major problems. We left Jurmala on Saturday late afternoon since there was not much to do. Here are a few shots on the road

Troy catching bugs

Good example of licence plate braket being loose

Running out of fuel in Latvia

Troy still catching bugs

Me and Troy joining the puppet wedding party on the way back

Keep your oil coolers tight

or mark the road

Thank you guys for sharing this trip. See you on the road next time. I still have one surprise for you which I will post a bit later.

Finally painting the sheet metall

The idea to take hardtail to Jurmala seriously pushed up the painting and assembly process. It didn't make it in the end of the line but I think the paint job was worth it.

day 1

day 2

and the Man at work

Kawa update

Painted front shock and handlebars, installed Biltwell solo seat with springs and white grips. Hope to take it on the road in a couple of weeks.

and a modified sportster tank

Jurmala 2010 Baltic Bike Days

Next weekend we are going to Jurmala for Baltic Bike Days. Finally a small but still the trip. Probably we will be leaving on Friday afternoon 2010/06/11. Those who would like to join us on the road are welcome. Post a comment, write an e-mail or call for details. More info on http://bbdays.lv/.

This means 5 days left to complete the rigid shovel. This will be a very busy week.

Inspired by Biltwell's Clubmans

Robert has sacrificed his stainless steel Softail Classic handlebars for the sake of XL1200

This is what came out of it

Back on the road

Summer is finally here and British Open hits the road!

Recent project shots

Project supervisor

Motorplate issue - "to be or not to be"

Well, not this time. I have decided to take piss out of existing BDL 3" open primary and convert it to plateless drive.

This is what we had before

This is what I ended up with after few hours of milling and grinding with sandaper and polishing