| Author | Message | ||
     F_skinner |
Rickie_d, all I have to say is WOW!!!!! Great skills. | ||
| Capital_g |
Rickie_d - Great stuff! How 'bout making me on of those swingarms?.... | ||
| Phelan |
Rickie, my dreams are now filled with your machinework. Simply amazing. | ||
| Pammy |
This is the best thread EVER! | ||
| Mick |
Awesome stuff mate , I'd love to have your skills. | ||
| Rickie_d |
Thanks for all the compliments on my work! Unless someone would like more detail on something, this is about it for now. When I get back out to the shop next month I will post some updates as the project(s) are refined. Pammy – You just like what us crabby guys with a room full of machines turn out while babbling about millimeters & decimals… (Message edited by Rickie_d on December 28, 2009) | ||
| Pammy |
You betcha!  | ||
| Brother_in_buells |
Here are some parts i made for the XB ,from aluminium sheetmetal!    | ||
| Brother_in_buells |
And some i,am working on!    | ||
| Aaomy |
nice work guys,, i was hoping to post some picks of stuff i machined but working the computer is hard with three badly burned fingers on my right hand... a very strong base we use at work to strip magnet wire at 730 degrees kinda cooks them quick. they will all be ok,, maybe some nice scaring on the middle one,,it got it the worst.. maybe tomorrow i can try to post some.. best wishes,, aaron | ||
| Twowheeldream |
 I want a workshop so bad... hell, I would love to work in someone elses workshop just sweeping the floor. Metal fab does it for me, I would love to have a mill and lathe, drill press and band saw.... welder, smelting pot (is that what its called?) english wheel, press brake, plenishing hammer.... mmmm. It would be so satisfying to be able to make my own clamps and brackets, do some sheetmetal work.... cast my own trinkets and pins... someday someday (Message edited by TwoWheelDream on December 27, 2009) | ||
| Rickie_d |
It can take a while to put together a nice shop. Working full time to support my family came first; 33 yrs in project management and process design. This has always been hobby that evolved into a secondary job that I worked on when the family was busy or sleeping. Including muscle cars street rods… I have been custom building parts and complete bikes for 40 years. At first for my own projects, but when builders and individuals requested my parts and bikes, I scrounged shop time at others facilities to produce them more economically. On pay days for the design work, the profits were always used to invest in shop tools. This eventually led to a nice shop, and working almost full time at a part time business which for various reasons, I decided to close. This was not for lack of income, just personal priorities. In the end, I have a small two room outbuilding that is a perfect playground for my personal projects and occasionally I coach someone through theirs. It is a nice place to be, but it was a lot of work and time to get there by the path I took…Good luck with yours.    Keep the “coolest parts” coming; I like all the ideas focused on and the ones in the background! (Message edited by Rickie_d on December 28, 2009) | ||
| Blazin_buell |
Ebutch , trust me , she gets her time carving corners. Now if I could figure out how to get her to carve metal like Rick. Last year I was blessed with being able to buy a house with a big shop. After 15 years under a carport let's just say I'm spoiled now and it's been fun to finally start buying some tools to practice getting to the next level. I finally built some workbenches and last Christmas I treated myself to a bandsaw and drill press. Now I have to see about a replacement welder and eventually some metal carving tools.  Storage bay side that one day will hopefully have two lifts, one car and one for the bikes. | ||
| Twowheeldream |
You have a really nice setup Rickie... is that vice on a ball mount?  That's fancy stuff right there! Looks like you could make all kinds of things happen in there... I think I am headed down a similar path... aquire as you go, make time when you can. I just wish I could find a more direct route to doing what actually interests me. such is life | ||
| Joesbuell |
Ricki some nice stuff there mate Makes my dream of getting a mill for my ideas greater! Keep us updated  | ||
| Kmbuell |
Time to keep this one alive. There have to be more great one off parts out there! I have been lucky enough to have had Rickie make many parts for me over the years. My orange S2 is an absolute dream because of his vision. I don't think his shop pictures show enough of where he came from. I can remember him painting his first Lowrider in his apartment second bedroom, with a window fan for ventilation and the carpet rolled up. This was in a pretty big complex in the dead of Minnesota winter. How about him melting a dozen drill bits putting vent holes in a used rotor. Damn things get hard! I don't mean to pick on Rickie, but his has been a journey. I've been lucky enough to ride his coat tails and watch! Just because you don't have a dream shop doesn't mean your parts are less! Let's see more! Kevin | ||
| Aaomy |
 here is a small teaser,, the billet shift assembly on my s2t,, will try to post some more later,, gotta take the kids sledding for now.. latter, aaron | ||
| F_skinner |
Sweet!!!! You could make a little extra change with those kind of talents. I think I would be your best customer. Great looking shifter. Have fun sledding!!!! Frank | ||
| Benm2 |
How about we ask Blake to make this a topic under the old-school Buell section? It seems there are a bunch of folks that make their own parts for these, and that is only likely to increase as they age. | ||
| Bluzm2 |
Rickie I don't even have a clue where to begin. HOLY CRAP comes to mind though (insert the other word for more dramatic effect). That is some amazing work. We all can't wait to see it done.. And I sit here wondering how I'm going to get a couple of shock reservoir mounts made up. WOW! Impressed doesn't even begin to cover it.. Brad | ||
| Rocketman |
I'll give it a go then. I bought a nice shaped rear light off eBay a few years ago. Billet and LED. I knew there was a good chance it would be a good shape to fit the S1 bracket - taking the angle of mount into consideration. I wasn't wrong, and it fits great. I made a backing plate from the flat section of a broken carbon fibre Buell belly pan I had, and it came together well. Anyway, a few years passed and the light lost 5 of its LED's to bad connections. I fixed it a couple of times but in the end I gave it to a person who claimed he could put it right with new LED's exactly the same luminosity of the originals. He didn't, instead making a mess of it. Not only did the 5 replacements glow brighter than the other 15, they were physically larger so the whole board fit very poorly inside the light body making the visible lit up lights show this from the outside. And the Buell light's always on. It was impossible to put right as he'd also made a mess of the PCB too. Duff PCB / LED.  Rocket | ||
| Rocketman |
 Rocket | ||
| Rocketman |
I tried hard to source the original manufacturer, somewhere in Florida if memory serves, to no avail. The only option left was to have a new PCB made and put new LED's on it. Expensive for what it is, and having a friend copy / redesign the lighting circuit to make the brake light glow brighter than the light was time consuming (it wasn't possible to copy the original circuit exactly apparently), but he got there in the end and did a nice job of it. I have a spare PCB as a bonus too. Two boards were a fraction more costly than one. Result.  Rocket | ||
| Rocketman |
 Rocket | ||
| Rocketman |
Excuse the poor quality pic's. The Buell is tucked up in bed for winter, and not best placed for taking pic's. That and the quick job camera phone! Still, I made up a better backing plate to carry the number plate and light unit, from a flat sheet of alloy. Much better and neater than the previous two lengths of flat stock. Rear light / number plate.  Rocket | ||
| Rocketman |
Excuse the fancy spike bolt I lost. I haven't sourced an exact match yet. As you can see, the number plate I made and put together myself. Most definitely highly against regulation, lol!!! You might also notice the engine breather puked again a few months ago, so badly the oil ran between the sections of number plate and contaminated it. I'm going to make yet another number plate. I enjoy changing the fonts from time to time, but always seem to end up back with the speedfont though. You can also see the Kellerman signals too. I finally replaced the billet Joker Machine ones. The Kellerman ones look neater and suit the rest of the bike for me. I'm not happy that they're a halogen bulb though. I'd much rather have LED's like the Oberon front signals are. I also cut down the Buell bracket that holds the light and signals etc from under the seat. I could never understand why the bracket was left with an unsightly hanging down section at the side of the seat where the signals mount. When viewed from a side now, it's a much cleaner seat / tail unit profile.  Rocket | ||
| Rocketman |
Also in this view is the recent addition of a krank vent in the breather line. I'm not entirely convinced (yet) it will stop the puking. When it pukes it pukes really bad. Sustained high speed running at somewhere around or more than 3500rpm is usually when it occurs. You don't know it's puked until it's done it either, by which time my breather location out the back flat tracker style has my back soaked in Mobil 1 from my waist to the top of my crash helmet. And of course, the rear of the bike is covered too. It generally only occurs a couple of times a year, but when it does it's a bloody mess. I've never been able to nail it down as to why it does it so infrequently and so intermittently. Yes I've had the heads off and looked in there again and again. All normal. One thing that I thought was it seems to happen when labouring the motor more, like in a sustained way as I described, but also like maybe running into a head wind. This has lead me to think that maybe pressure / vacuum is playing its part, and it sucks on the breather line depending on different factors related to when where and how the engine is performing. So that's why I put the krank vent in there. As of yet it's not puked since, but there's still chance it might.  Rocket (Message edited by rocketman on December 30, 2009) | ||
| Rocketman |
And all this messing about rebuilding the failed rear light, new signals etc, had me getting it together and deciding to finally fit the ISR controls I'd so wanted for ages. The idea been not only a cool upgrade, but also cleaning up the handlebars and ending up with a real pro set up for controls, including replacing the plain black switch gear common to all bikes. Oh boy that was a painfully trying experience overcoming the pitfalls of electric trickery, lol. Sample pic - ISR.  Rocket | ||
| Kmbuell |
Anybody notice the Softail in Rickie's shop pictures? It is an absolute plethoria of one off Rickie parts. Look at it close, you can see a bunch in the picture. Most of the bike stated off as leftovers from other projects. Maybe if someone asks he can post a few ideas here. I know it's not a Buell, but the macjine work is great, all on a HAND mill. Lots of great ideas! Kevin | ||
| Rocketman |
So what's next when your clutch and brake lever / master cylinder perch clamps have only two push buttons and a sliding switch each? A big headache is the answer. Having the lights on permanently is a bonus. One less switch needed. High / low beam. Horn. Flash. Engine Run / Off. Start. Signal. As I started the clutch side first, I immediately came across the first problem. ISR make the clutch cable type lever perch in inch only to suit Harley bars. They do however supply a reducing sleeve so it can be made to fit 7/8th bars. Once that problem is solved I'd already set about modifying the 7/8th perch clamp with the switch facility so's I could attach the Buell wiring from the Buell switch gear. There's not enough space at the rear of the perch clamps to get the wires on with solder and have the contacts not interfere with the bars and short. The solution to the problem is to file the clamp further than it was cast. But then of course having done so it became obvious that the 7/8th clamp mounting holes were spaced closer than those of the inch perch, and the sleeve makes the bar profile not fit the 7/8th clamp. So I got the inch clamp and filed that one too. Eventually the whole assembly fitted together but there were still two other problems to overcome. First was easy. The clutch cable barrel nipple is larger for Buell than HD, so I had to drill out the lever to accommodate the larger barrel. The second was a headache. Originally I was intent on putting the high / low beam flash on a two way sliding switch on the right side clamp and running a stand alone kill / start switch as used by Ducati and same on some Hondas. Turned out to be unnecessary as it was all but impossible to make the sliding switch on the left a three way for signals. The problem wasn't making it work, because I did, and these are micro switches we are talking. The problem was being able to use the switch. With a glove on it was impossible to know where middle was nearly every time. Left signal or right signal no problem. But cancelling signal going back to middle was just not something you could feel. Imagine that when riding, glove or no glove. The solution was quite simple in the end. Drill right through the micro push button switch and fit a small three way rocker switch with pole lever. Doming this meant I could return the sliding switch on the left clamp back to a high / low beam switch. So it ended up with the left switch controlling high / low beam, high beam flash and signals. Retaining the original Buell wiring from the plugs at the harness end through to the new switches meant threading new wire through the trunking to each switch. Also necessary because of the addition of two relays necessary for the current from high beam flash and horn. These push button switches are rated in milliamps! Having put the horn on the right side, and retaining original wiring, it was another effort threading additional wires into the Buell trunks. I placed the relays under the fuel tank frame rails out of sight. Once I'd completed the left side, over a period of weeks on and off, I was not in any particular hurry, it was time to sort the right side. This shouldn't have been a headache as the ISR masters are all in 7/8th bar fit, as are the matching switch clamps. So now I was using a two way slider for kill / run, and push buttons for starter and horn on the right side. Stupidly it never occurred to me that junking the original fit switch gear on the right side meant I had no throttle twist grip! I put my stupidity down to doing this modification, upgrade, conversion, over a period of time in no particular hurry, so lack of planning then.  Rocket |
