The Raven

This bike is now technically more of a bobber but I am building it off an OCC 24" Chopper and it still retains a chopper look so I guess this place best fits. I like all types of motorcycles so I used bits from all over the place and depending on how you view it you see elements from many kinds of motorcycle style. Here's the pics.

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

More pics

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

More pics

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

By SixteenValve4Nur at 2012-09-15

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

By SixteenValve4Nur at 2012-09-15

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

By sixteenvalve4nur at 2012-09-15

It's still all mocked up, and I need to finish the engine mounts as well as notch the frame for the exhaust and change the rear tire. The engine is a Martin & Slater 9hp Morini clone.

I'd like to use one of those Sturmey SX-RK3 hubs with the rear wheel but I know it won't hold up. This won't need gears anyways, hoping it pulls some nice wheelies! I'll be using the same 4" wide tire as on the front on the rear stretched like the original and they certainly will be grippy.

The main thing holding me back right now is not having a welder at home, and I haven't wanted to deal with sticking it in my car to go to work to weld, I probably should as it will speed everything up. I'm about 8 hours of work from firing it right now!

Hahaha I know, just figured there are so many threads with discussion begging for pics so figured I'd do it the other way around. 1000 words each! lol

The HT blew up on an extended high speed run after I gutted the poo pipe and made a little velocity stack for the carb. Something in the bottom end went bang at about 30 mph, not sure what, I still gotta get my 415H chain out of that thing. The replacement is a Martin & Slater KTM clone AKA Morini clone like what DAX sells. The pipe is from a KTM50 which uses this type of engine. I think any pipe from a scooter or motorcycle that uses an equivalent Morini would be a starting point, there are a bunch of them.

The bodywork is pocket bike and the wheel is for a moped. This bike will be Mercedes themed so I thought this Honda wheel would be appropriate hahaha.

Gotta finish this up before it starts getting cold!

Almost 7 hp is still pretty good! I'll be happy if this thing does 35, if it can do 45 it'll be great, if it can pull 55mph then it'll be awesome. As long as I can stay with traffic and not be a rolling road block PITA for all the cars, and ride like a normal biker would around town I'll be happy. With the old engine, the bike wasn't fast enough to play safely with cars, people don't know what do do or how to act since it's a bicycle but also a motorcycle and they brainfart about the passing situation and it gets weird fast.

It's just funny that this Grimeca wheel for a Honda Hobbit looks like a Benz star, kinda. They didn't really rip off anyone since MB doesn't yet make motorcycles (they will with Ducati soon) and street bikes have had split three spokes since alloys were put on bikes. When I originally thought of this bike I wanted it to complement my car to be used as a pit bike for track days and I happen to have a bunch of spare parts like the broken hood emblem around so I figured why not. It's kind of ironic that the bike projects have taken all of my focus away from building the track car, and I really need to follow through with that so I'll need to start selling soon.

I'm going to get a Ninja or other small street bike soon since I need an M2 to ride this as I reggied it to avoid BS from the local powers, might as well get the M1 (same test). At that point I'll need to evaluate which of my bikes I'll keep, I've got wayyy too much bike stuff right now!

I'll probably finish it, break in the engine, and then sell it in the spring. I have 3 motorized projects going and realized how much that this is costing me, and I'll have to decide which is my favorite and try to sell the others. The decision will be between this, the Razor dirt bike, and the full suspension freeride bike that I'll be mounting an engine to soon. It breaks my heart, I've become attached to them all but in reality you can only ride one at a time.

I've kinda lost control of my impulses with these motorized bikes, maybe somebody else will enjoy the bikes that I've built as much as I do. I can't stop staring at them since I keep them inside for security, they're sitting in the corner, "FEED ME!". I've got ideas for a bunch of other builds I'd like to do but it'll have to be a thing where I sell them after break-in and a few good rides if the building will continue. I bet this is the same dilemma that you encountered Jake!

Got a tach to accompany the old school mechanical speedometer. If anybody knows how to hood one up please let me know, it doesn't come with instructions XP

Gotta devote some time to finishing this bike up, this is the next in priority, then the x-games bike will get started. I gotta start organizing and finalizing stuff.

I keep getting sidetracked by ideas for other projects, especially the electric ones. The brushless motors out there are really impressive, perhaps I should wait for batteries to catch up, at least in price.

The whole idea behind the gas bikes is not getting chained up to the neighborhood because of range. I hope to be able to do some touring with this thing, but I don't think I'll be able to use it on bike trails without pissing everybody off. It should be fast enough so that that's not a problem.

Mounted up the speedo and tach, they look pretty good together. I also ordered a 6v AGM battery and a charger. The tach requires external power and the halogen headlight does as well. I'll be using a turn signal switch I got from Treats wired into the bicycle turn signal set previously on the bike since it would fail to operate with the engine vibration, maybe it can be wired to the AGM battery to make all of the central electrics combined. Since there's nowhere to put a dynamo on the bike unless I start tapping power from the chain, the small lead battery will be okay. I'm not going to pedal this bike so the extra weight will serve to balance out the heavy K10 fork. I plan to get some engine mounting done this week, since it's the biggest setback, along with welding a bunch of things that need it and wiring it up. I still gotta get my chain out of my HT, the bottom end went boom so I'll have to impact the sprocket nut off to get it out since its stuck.

I can't wait until next summer, I wanted to use it this summer but became distracted. I'll be refinishing the Raven in the spring, the repaint I did to the frame back when I got it is scratched up from all the mocking up of stuff to check engine alignments. I was thinking about doing a special candy or flake paint job next year, but I really like the black, maybe a dark smoke clear over some flake would look nice.

Ebay, look up analog motorcycle tachometer.

Cool, thanks for the info and link. Once Eastwood sends my welder I can get moving on this beast, but I'm in the middle of a customer service exchange. I might just bring the bike to my old vintage shop and bum some seat time on the TIG to get it done. I just need to make some steel eninge-frame brackets as I originally was going to bolt to the bottom tube, but I would like to reinforce that tube and weld heavy mounts to it.

I finally got my welder almost ready to roll, today I will see how it works and test it out.

Trying to figure out the best method of approach before I start doing stuff to the frame. I need to add a bottom bracket for some pedals somewhere, I am tired of fuzz and having some breakdown peds isn't a bad deal.

I also have to reinforce my frame where the old bolt in HT mount was, there are holes drilled currently. If anybody is looking for one of those china girl OCC mounts I have one I can sell for cheap since I don't need it.

Prolly going to use angle iron because I want this motor held as rigidly as possible to avoid the bike "walking hard" on me and going in two directions.

engine mockup taken off

Previous owner(s) drilled holes in the frame for engine mounting in the past

cleaned it up

bottom has the same deal