For Those About To Chop

We started out this morning with two XS650's. One a 1980 Special II, the other a 1977 D model. By the end of the day we only had one working Xs left. That would be My ‘77. Curly and I took his bike out for one final ride before chopping it into a bobber. We are going separate directions with our builds. Curly is going the bobber route, I am going down Street Tracker Blvd. Curly has amassed his parts quicker, so we are starting off with his bike. Big Toe and Jimmy Jam stopped by to take part in the days festivities. The fabrication should be a breeze, as Curly and Big toe have around forty years of fab experience between the two of them. First things first, We proceeded to remove all the bikes clothes. When we had her stripped down to her petticoat, we removed the engine and started to carefully mark where all the wires go. With all the wiring marked and what goes where marked down in the build notebook, we set the wiring harness aside for future modification. Once we had a roller on our hands, all that was left to do was remove the rear tire and plug in the sawsall. Getting the bike to this point took most of the day, cutting the rear subframe took all of ten minutes.
All that was left to do for the day was to grind down the nubs where the sub frame was connected to the main frame. You want to leave a little bit of extra metal after your done with the saw to give yourself a little bit of fudge room. Curly tackled the nubs with his angle grinder, leaving the frame nice and smooth to mate with the new TC Bros. Hardtail. With the light getting low we dry fitted the hardtail and called it a day. We have to stick the motor back in and Curly is going to whip up a template so we make sure we have every thing square before he tacks the frame to the hardtail and we can do the final adjustments before he welds the whole enchilada together.

Till Next Time..............