I spent the day getting my bike together after sending out my wheels and triple trees for powdercoating.

I think in my last thread I mentioned that I unsuccessfully tried to swap my wire laced rims with a guy's 13 spoke mags from his 2003 FXDL. After realizing a 1" sleeve won't fit in a 3/4" hole (surprise, surprise) I put his bike together and figured I'd powdercoat my rims as they were already off the bike.

While things were apart I added chrome fork sliders and stuffed those with a Race Tech Gold Emulator kit and Race Tech springs. I lowered the front 1" to level out the factory stance of the Low Rider. We'll see how it handles after I bleed the brakes and set the steering head bearings.

Here's a few comical things I learned along the way:

* If a sprocket bolt is going in crooked and takes a 2 foot 1/2" drive breaker bar to tighten, don't keep tightening it. No matter how much you hope, it won't straighten itself out. I got to practice my Heli-Coil skills today.

* Before drifting a new Timken bearing onto your steering stem, packing top and bottom bearing with grease and installing your trees and handlebars - put the $1.99 dust ring on the steering stem.

* If you value your sanity and are able to swallow some pride, pay someone to lace and true your wheels.














Thinking if I were to do it over, I might have gone with a gloss clear coat on the rims versus the flat, but I do like the flat contrasting with the chrome.

Thanks for looking.

Rock on

 

Ya man looks sharp.

 

Nice looking, to say the least.

 

Double post

 

Bike looks great. Love the contrast with the gold.

 

That looks great nice one dude

 

Not half bad looking at all.

 

looks great i like the color and the contrast good job!!!

 

Those gold wheels look fantastic with the gold on the tank. It may get tempting to add more gold but I would stop the gold treatment right where you are now. It reminds me of something from the seventies or early eighties, Yamaha maybe.

It doesn't take very long to get good at lacing wheels. By my 3rd wheel, I believe I was down to 9 minutes. If you have your own Truing stand (Harbor Freight $39, Dial Indicator $49), you can true your wheels with the tires mounted for the ultimate precision. The factory spec. is within .030" and mine (with tires mounted) are well under .010". You can also use the stand to balance your wheels yourself. Nobody cares as much as the rider about straight and balanced wheels. Mine feels just as good as the cast wheels on my Electra-Glide.

 

Thanks everyone; much appreciated!

Thanks man, good eye on the script on the tank. Honestly when I was planning this I forgot about the script but it turned out to go perfect! I had the image in my head of old sportbikes like you mentioned, a beautiful XR1200R by Storz Performance, and my uncle's old Mazda 626 with gold mesh Riken mags.

As for the truing, I used to be pretty good with dirt bike rims, but it'd been about 3 years since I'd touched one; gotta stay in practice! I felt like I was all thumbs.