gs450 cafe build

[Guest]

Hi all,

New to the forum!

I bought a 81 gs450L a few months ago and have decided to rip it apart and turn it into a cafe racer. I'm already a good month into the build and will have pictures from it uploaded soon! Hope you all enjoy.

[swan]

Seat build

Starting to shape out and cut a seat with styrofoam.



Seat is shaped.



Covering the mold in aluminum foil before I touch it with fiber glass. (this is the second take, first seat died because the fiber glass melted right through the mold!)



Hitting the seat with a layer of fiber glass



To be continued....

[swan]

Process of making the bars.

I used some emt that I found which measured out to 35mm inner diameter almost perfectly



I used roll pins for the bolt lobes



I slotted the emt before I welded the roll pins onto it



I used 1/2 rigid emt for the bar itself. I left them at 12" long. Hit it with the bench grinder to get the grooves and 9 degree drop.



Welded everything together





Cleaned up the welds with some brass braze

[swan]

Went and picked up a tank on craigslist from a honda cb650 for $40. Came with a brand new petcock and zero rust inside!!!

[swan]

Sand blasted the tank, and clean up the seat a good bit.

[swan]

Started working on the knee and hand indents on the tank.

[jbird7262]

Just a tip... 36 years of bodyshop repair, try to keep the bodyfiller 1/16th to 1/8th thickness if you can, the thicker it is the more expansion happens with temp changes, could cause some cracking, the area in between your knee and handle bar insets looks thick. The conduit for bars is fine for mocking up, but try to find some chrome moly tube for your bars. Saftey sake. Keep up the build

[AshesOfAnother]

I like where your going with it. I second the handle bars needing to be heavier. it would be horrible to hit a bump and have one split where it's welded. What kind of rearsets are you thinking about?

[swan]

Just a tip... 36 years of bodyshop repair, try to keep the bodyfiller 1/16th to 1/8th thickness if you can, the thicker it is the more expansion happens with temp changes, could cause some cracking, the area in between your knee and handle bar insets looks thick. The conduit for bars is fine for mocking up, but try to find some chrome moly tube for your bars. Saftey sake. Keep up the build

Chromoly tubing will definitely be in the near future! Kind of a see how easy I could do it thing. As for the body filler I'm planning on putting fiberglass over it, my main focus with it now is to get a nice shape. Thanks for the advice as it is greatly appreciated!

[swan]

I like where your going with it. I second the handle bars needing to be heavier. it would be horrible to hit a bump and have one split where it's welded. What kind of rearsets are you thinking about?

Where I cut the "slit" or what ever you would want to call it was actually where the weld on the EMT was! They're plenty strong right now but I am still planning on working with something stronger, either chromoly or stainless! A friend of mine has a machine shop so I'm going to attempt to make the rearsets myself. Trying to keep everything custom and/or handmade.

[AshesOfAnother]

Custom! I'm excited to see where this goes!

[swan]

Did a lot of work sanding down and shaping the knee cutouts today



Added some fiber glass filler to the seat to get rid of the low spots. Also added some aircraft polymer to the inside of the seat so it's nice and rigid!

[swan]

Almost done with the rough shape for the tank! Did a little work on the seat as well!

[jbird7262]

Keep at it, its starting to take shape.

[GSCafe]

This is great! If only I could fab like this.