Kaw 900

Photo From Here

I got some work done on the 900 over the weekend. Started welding the pieces together for the swingarm bridge. I had already bent up the pieces to run under the arm but they needed to be cut to length and spliced together in the middle. I ordered some spools to bolt on to it so I can put it on the race stand. When those come in I'll make a couple of threaded bosses to weld to the swingarm and weld up the remaining bits so that will be complete. In the photo above the bike has a reinforced stock swingarm and the bridging runs above the chain. Mine will be under the chain in the front like the photo below. Additionally, I made my swingarm out of 1 x 1-3/4 chrome-moly tubing. I used to make a lot of those for drag racers. Because the drag bikes ran struts, most of the swing arms had an additional arm that mounted outside the frame on the chain side. Occasionally I'd make one with the arm on both sides.  

Photo From Here

If you look closely at the top photo you'll see an outboard clutch release plate. I've got a similar one for my bike but the piece that it bolts to has been damaged by a chain that broke at some point in the life of this motor. That was a pretty common occurrence back then. The chain would break and then get wadded up around the countershaft sprocket and break a big chunk out of the aluminum piece behind the sprocket. I can patch mine up with out too much difficulty. I need to get a couple of metric Allen head screws first so I can bolt everything together like it should be in order to make the missing piece properly. Might be a little tricky to find 6mm x 60mm Allen heads. Especially when you only need two.

It's going to be a busy week again. Don't know how much I'll get done on the projects but I feel good working on the 900. That was going to be the first thing I tackled when I retired. While that didn't work out quite like I figured it's showing signs of life finally. I'd like to have most of the fab work done before it gets cold. When I finish the swingarm I'll tackle the exhaust. It's got a 4 into 1 header so I just need to run a pipe from the collector back and out the side. It'll be mostly wrenchin' after that.