Custom Superbikes: Building Your Dream Machine – We’ve all been there. You’ve seen this great bike at a show or online, and you want to build something just like it. You can see the hammer on the street. You’ve browsed the interwebs and found a bunch of photos of the type of bike you love. Maybe you’ve made a bike and scaled down a model for a project donor.
But how do you turn a factory stock bike into that special head-turning two-wheeled icon? There are many soft and hard skills involved in building a custom bike. The good news is that you can learn these skills, and have a lot of fun in the process. So if you’re still with me, keep reading. This article is too long.
Custom Superbikes: Building Your Dream Machine
But if you’re impatient and have a lot of money, get in now. Pay someone to build a bike in 12 weeks. If you don’t want to learn a good skill or don’t have the time to practice, get in now. Or if you’re lucky enough to be on the same bike as a guy on the street.
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Very grateful for the hundreds of hours the bikes listed on Bike EXIF. You can do it, see it as a long term journey with lots of learning along the way. Let’s get started.
Range of Mods The first step is to determine what you are technically capable of now, and how long you can wait before riding a custom bike. You have a choice of:
1. Make gradual and small changes to the project bike and keep it on the road all the time.
Option (1) is my strongest recommendation for your first build. I’ve seen project bikes pulled for pieces and then sold for less than the original price when the owner/builder pair, or the craftsmanship, was finished. Not their fault, maybe they bit off more than they chewed.
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This option allows you to ride most of the time, but the visual changes to the bike may be limited. Minor modifications could be changing the seat, replacing the fuel tank, adding bolt-on parts or giving it a paint job.
Option (2) is certainly possible, but keep reading and I hope you don’t end up selling your project for scrap. If you love to ride like I do, you have another bike to build your project with. Your bike will probably be on the road for a while (like two years), so if you need to scratch that scratch, your daily rider is handy.
So, you want to talk about the skills you need or want to grow as part of the construction.
Project Bike Decide which bike will be the basis of your setup. Maybe you thought it would be an air-cooled BMW, or a 70’s Honda CB, or a Harley-Davidson. However, here are a few things to consider:
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1. Older bikes are generally more complex and therefore relatively easier to work with mechanically and electrically. If you’ve bought a current model bike, you’ll need to think about all the “electricity” needed to run the engine management system, ABS, traction control, wheel control, electronic suspension, etc.
2. Common older bikes seem to have more information and parts. If you want to build a Triumph Cafe Racer, or a Harley-Davidson cruiser, you’ll find that these platforms have reproduction “fit” and custom parts.
3. Rare vintage bikes are reserved for masochists in my opinion. Details and information are limited. However, if you find your dream project bike for cheap, don’t let that stop you. Maybe start with a simpler project and come back to a rare project bike in a few years.
4. Any bike with a carburetor (ie fuel injection) has potential. Fuel injection adds a level of complexity to passing emissions laws that you don’t really need. In most cases, bikes with carburetors were built before 2000, so the donor should not be an older bike than the owner.
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My personal favorite is the 1970s Harley-Davidson. You can buy almost every part used, ‘new-old-stock’ (NOS) or reproduction. There are tanks, locations and special parts all over the world. There are many online resources and books on these bikes. I can build a tracker, bobber or chopper or some other variation. They are mechanically and electrically very simple. All of these factors give me the confidence to buy as a base for a custom build.
Now is the time to narrow down the style you like, and decide which donor bike fits your mind picture.
Design Excellence Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but some bikes look much better than others. Some people (not me) can draw their bikes and get the proportions right. The rest of us have to rely on photos to judge what’s “correct”.
My trick is to find a picture of the frame and build my sketch around the frame. While the frame may need modification, the engine mounts and other important features may differ.
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Browse the web for a frame design for your project bike. On another sheet, draw and cut out the wheel sizes you want to use. Place them next to the location frame. Sketch on tank and seat.
We’ll cover this in more detail in another post, but either way you should draw your own bike. Otherwise, you’re leaving the outcome to luck and chance, and you won’t get the bike you want.
Project Management Skills Wikipedia defines project management as “…the discipline of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing teamwork to achieve defined goals and meet success criteria.” This is a whole field of study, so I like this simple graphic from Kepner-Trego:
The steps are self-explanatory. I’m not suggesting all of them are necessary for your build, but there are a few worth mentioning.
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It can be a sketch or an inspiration photo for a bike. You can spend six months sketching your dream bike. If that rocks your boat, do it! The frame of your bike will determine the final look. That said, if you’re going for something radical, a custom frame (or heavily modified frame) may be required, but that means a lot of extra work.
A list of actual steps is to divide your build tasks. You may have a high-level idea of tasks like “installing a custom seat” or “painting a fuel tank,” but you can easily break them down into dozens of sub-tasks.
If you don’t know what these sub-tasks are, don’t worry—you’ll learn them along the way. But at the very least, make a list of basic, clear tasks.
Arranges tasks in a logical order. For example, before welding and painting the frame.
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Research Skills You are definitely very comfortable with the Google machine and can find answers to most questions. But some sources are more useful than others. If you’re sold on a specific model of project bike, a model-specific forum is a great source of specific information. They are not difficult to find.
If you have to research very specific things like how to disassemble a particular engine, an hour invested in a forum before you start could save you maybe five hours.
Technical Drawing Skills You’ll be modifying, or even inventing, the parts for the bike, so designing and sketching them out is very useful—irreversible in expensive materials.
Drawings can be done on paper, or through CAD (Computer Aided Design). My favorite 3D modeling packages are Sketchup, OnShape and Fusion360.
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Sketch is quick and intuitive to learn and use, but in my experience OnShape is more powerful, and it’s more useful to me as a mechanic. OnShape recently changed their plans, which led me to Fusion360. All of these packages have their own features and limitations, so try the free versions before you buy. And all of them have great tutorials and communities behind them that are free.
Regardless of the medium and tools you use, it’s useful to understand how to read and construct technical drawings. There are many good guides on the web, and there are free books.
Workshop Equipment You need somewhere to store your bike while you build it, and equipment to work on it.
A construction platform is very useful, and work on cold concrete in the middle of a cold winter. These are made from hardware store wood (structural pine and