Tevan’s Vintage Resto-Mod Cafe’ Project

So we are finally getting a few things in line here at the shop.  More updates on that later.  But, for the time being, I want to introduce you to a very bright young man that has become a very integral part of Hugh’s HandBuilt in the last few months.

Tevan started working with me several months ago when I was still in my home basement.  He quickly began showing lots of promise and interest in what he does, so he has been promoted from Shop Rat to Production Engineer.  He runs the lathe, milling machine, cleans parts, keeps track of inventory, and is a great help to have around.  So meet the new help – and make him feel welcome!

A few months back, we found Tevan his very own XS project to work on, a well worn and beat down 71′ XS2.  He immediately started tearing into it of course, and tossing out the parts we didn’t plan to use.

We started building the engine, keeping the stock cases, and rephasing it.  Since this is a fairly rare bike, we wanted the numbers to match.  We are keeping the 256 Crank and Cam, rephased to 277 degrees and giving it a light hone and some new rings.  It will also be getting a decent porting job, some 34mm Lectron Carbs to top it off.  Should be a pretty sweet engine for Tevan’s first bike.

Then we started in on the chassis.  I knew we wanted to ditch that stock 34mm front end, with its hokey brake setup and all.  So I dug through the pile, found some 35mm complete forks, and started mocking them up.  We knew we wanted to keep some of the original soul to this machine, so keeping the stock steering damper was a must.  We machined the stem out of the stock 34mm trees, and with some fancy machinework managed to get the damper working and installed.

So we got it all mocked up, and then Tevan did some sweet talking with Briton Bees and scored some killer Motocicli Veloci WM2 Aluminum Drop Center Rims.  18’s front and rear, with some super sticky tires…  Should be a blast…