"Junkyard Dog" 200 Softail

[Todd Achten]

Well.........I am finally getting off of my ass to get this project going. This idea started out inspired by the "Sneaky Pete" frame plans. There were a few things about the plans that I wanted to change to suit my needs. I decided that I wanted to kick out the right side frame rail a bit and have a curved down tube. The basic specs are: 4" out, 6" up and 4" rear stretch from the stock Sportster specs.

I wanted to modify the plans and do a curved single down tube. After lots of serious thoughts........I decided that idea had to go out the window. I want this bike to be ridden, and ridden hard. With the tendency for the soft tails to have "twisting" action, I thought it best to keep the rails and DT's as one unit for a little more strength. I did however curve them to keep the general look that I was after.

Here is the link to the stanchions that I built last year for this project.

[Todd Achten]

I have been busy building plenty of tools for this project. One of the tools was my bender. I needed to have a bender that did not take up much space in the shop and that I could use the base as a "multi-tool" station that will let me bolt on a planishing hammer, e-wheel, home made vertical belt sander and whatever else I can dream up.

I designed it after the pro-tools HMP 200 bender. I modified the design so that I did not need the follow bar. Instead, my bender utilizes a 3" diameter roller die. The one that I used to bend this frame up was made out of Delrin. I only used it because I had made up a few of the roller dies for a tube roller that I am building. If I had the steel laying around I would have turned one down (which I will before I do another frame). The Delrin die worked fine but........It compresses too easily and would work much smoother in steel.

Here is a pic of the HMP 200 design.

[Todd Achten]

Here is a pic of my version in use.

[Todd Achten]

I bought an 18' stick of DOM for the main frame. I literally had two 3" pieces of scrap to cut off of the down tubes, and will have about the same amount to cut off of the rear rails when I notch them out for the stanchions.

I was wondering how much tube that I was going to waste trying out this home made bender. But I am happy to report that there were no mistakes. Every bend came out perfect. I used my eye to visualize how much spring back that I was getting with the first bend.

[Todd Achten]

Since I have my stanchions mocked up in the frame jig, I wanted to be able to have some way of checking all of the bends, angle of the down tubes and a way of lining up the right side rear offset.

So I kind of killed two birds with one stone. I had a piece of MDF out in the garage that I marked out all of the layout lines on and installed some stop blocks. I was also able to use this to mock up the wishbones and backbone which allowed me to get nice tight fitting notches in the wishbones.

[Todd Achten]

Shock mount.

[Jedi]

Looking great, looks like you've got attention to detail.
I'll bet that frame turns out straight as an arrow compared to some of the mass produced junk out there.
Keep the pics coming...






Edit, typo

[lamf]

congrats on getting it started todd ... looking good

[indian Mark]

Man Todd, That's looking good already! And one heck of a fancy shop you've got there. Keep us posted all the way thru.

[railroad bob]

Looking good brother, very nice job with the tube...

I'm heading back to LV tonight, will be there indefinitley. See ya next visit!

[Todd Achten]

I'm heading back to LV tonight, will be there indefinitley. See ya next visit!

I hope to be out there in February When Mark is out there. I may even be there once before that. Will let you know.

[Happy Bob]

You're making me jealous. I've had this '72 Sportster for 3 months now and haven't done a thing. ( I did buy a service manual) My garage/workshop is going to start to go up tomorrow. Still have elec. to run after that. Hopefully I can start on the sporty in a month or two.
Your's is looking good.

[budoka]

awesome, Todd! great to see you're able to get going, and get going you have indeed. the progress looks great, hope you can keep up that momentum all the way until you're riding it!

best of luck,

-dan

[jacked800]

Good to see you're getting your butt in gear. I'll be watching.... John

[Todd Achten]

Took the wishbones/backbone over to a buddies house tonight. I have run a bunch of spools of wire through a MIG gun before. I thought that I would try and practice some TIG for this build. The pic sucks! Well so does my TIG skills. LOL. Not as bad as it looks though. I have got to get me one of those Miller Econotig's. I love it.