Discussion
Hi all. First time caller, long time listener.
Having moved from rural Warwickshire to rural Cape Cod, MA USA about 2.5 years ago and gaining my US bike licence 18 months or so ago, in march last year I purchased my first bike, a very much loved 2001 Bandit 600s. She has only done 10k miles in that time, maybe 2k of that was for me. I put some cash into her when I bought her; tires, carbs, fork seals etc. As with cars over here, displacement is still king, the 125cc learner bikes of the UK market simply aren't really a thing, and the licencing is deeply simple with no tiers, so my 600cc first bike is, for the yanks, pretty standard. You can get things like the new Ptwin cbr500's or duke 390s, A2 friendly bikes, but there isn't a legal requirement for them. Plus everyone here utterly bums Harleys.. even cape cod has its own biker gang, I sh*t you not.
Well being as I live in a seasonal town, on a seasonal island off the coast of a seasonal cape and have bugger all else to do, I was in the in the mood for a bit of a winter project. Thus I have just paid a whopping total of $250 (about £155 today) for a 1981 Yamaha Virago. She is the mono-shock version made from 81 to 83 which is exactly what I wanted, and just to clarify is, in stock guise, a bit of an ugly duckling. At that price she is unfortunately, a non-runner. The old chap (Ted, what a great old-guy name!) who owns it currently is also the owner of a newer virago and a vulcan too, and I got the impression he was just pretty done with having a project with two runners on the driveway. The chap also has 2(count 'em!) spare engine blocks, and two massive milk cartons of spare parts, electrics, fairings, gaskets, clocks etc, all included in that princely sum. So having macguyvered a nice solid wheel chock from some layabout 2x4 and bought some new tiedowns, I'll gas up my old ford pickup (americanising happens, ok! and 5.8 litres of lazy pushrod V8 is pretty american) in the morning and go get her.
There's a massive custom scene for these bikes both over here and abroad, and I plan on going full Cafe Racer with her. Some of the real top builders in the states are making rolling works of art from these bikes, and I hope I can turn out something half as good. First job is to jig up a custom seat subframe for the rear, which will also hold the battery and the electrical workings. I took some photos of a really nice one someone made and plan to shamelessly copy it. In January I'll be back in the UK with access to my dad's CNC mill and lathe so will try to come up with some trick billet parts then, maybe even for a fork swap to modern USD forks. in the mean time I'll be dropping the original forks both in the trees and internally, with nice new progressive springs and raising the back of the tank to get the line from stem to stern. for the paint I was thinking mostly all black and silver with small tasteful accents in electric blue?
I'll update with photos tomorrow afternoon of her in stock loveliness, and back in situ in the garage here. Plan is a fairly immediate teardown of the original parts, the seat and clocks etc will all go straight on ebay as they are weirdly almost immaculate for 33 years old and should fetch me more than the initial price back pretty quickly.
From this:
to something like:
Thanks for reading, feedback/comments very welcome
Matt
Having moved from rural Warwickshire to rural Cape Cod, MA USA about 2.5 years ago and gaining my US bike licence 18 months or so ago, in march last year I purchased my first bike, a very much loved 2001 Bandit 600s. She has only done 10k miles in that time, maybe 2k of that was for me. I put some cash into her when I bought her; tires, carbs, fork seals etc. As with cars over here, displacement is still king, the 125cc learner bikes of the UK market simply aren't really a thing, and the licencing is deeply simple with no tiers, so my 600cc first bike is, for the yanks, pretty standard. You can get things like the new Ptwin cbr500's or duke 390s, A2 friendly bikes, but there isn't a legal requirement for them. Plus everyone here utterly bums Harleys.. even cape cod has its own biker gang, I sh*t you not.
Well being as I live in a seasonal town, on a seasonal island off the coast of a seasonal cape and have bugger all else to do, I was in the in the mood for a bit of a winter project. Thus I have just paid a whopping total of $250 (about £155 today) for a 1981 Yamaha Virago. She is the mono-shock version made from 81 to 83 which is exactly what I wanted, and just to clarify is, in stock guise, a bit of an ugly duckling. At that price she is unfortunately, a non-runner. The old chap (Ted, what a great old-guy name!) who owns it currently is also the owner of a newer virago and a vulcan too, and I got the impression he was just pretty done with having a project with two runners on the driveway. The chap also has 2(count 'em!) spare engine blocks, and two massive milk cartons of spare parts, electrics, fairings, gaskets, clocks etc, all included in that princely sum. So having macguyvered a nice solid wheel chock from some layabout 2x4 and bought some new tiedowns, I'll gas up my old ford pickup (americanising happens, ok! and 5.8 litres of lazy pushrod V8 is pretty american) in the morning and go get her.
There's a massive custom scene for these bikes both over here and abroad, and I plan on going full Cafe Racer with her. Some of the real top builders in the states are making rolling works of art from these bikes, and I hope I can turn out something half as good. First job is to jig up a custom seat subframe for the rear, which will also hold the battery and the electrical workings. I took some photos of a really nice one someone made and plan to shamelessly copy it. In January I'll be back in the UK with access to my dad's CNC mill and lathe so will try to come up with some trick billet parts then, maybe even for a fork swap to modern USD forks. in the mean time I'll be dropping the original forks both in the trees and internally, with nice new progressive springs and raising the back of the tank to get the line from stem to stern. for the paint I was thinking mostly all black and silver with small tasteful accents in electric blue?
I'll update with photos tomorrow afternoon of her in stock loveliness, and back in situ in the garage here. Plan is a fairly immediate teardown of the original parts, the seat and clocks etc will all go straight on ebay as they are weirdly almost immaculate for 33 years old and should fetch me more than the initial price back pretty quickly.
From this:
to something like:
Thanks for reading, feedback/comments very welcome
Matt
Look forward to seeing the project develop. They're fun bikes. 
Not sure what kind of access to fabrication/tools you have, but if not a lot then keep an eye on Greg Hageman's Facebook/Ebay pages as he does runs of the subframes every so often.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Yamaha-virago-subframe-81-...
https://www.facebook.com/DocschopsClassicMotorcycl...
Not sure what kind of access to fabrication/tools you have, but if not a lot then keep an eye on Greg Hageman's Facebook/Ebay pages as he does runs of the subframes every so often.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Yamaha-virago-subframe-81-...
https://www.facebook.com/DocschopsClassicMotorcycl...
Hi all
Sorry for not updating sooner. I did successfully go and pick up the Virago on wednesday. It meant unfortunately sitting in the tire shop for about 4 hours, having discovered that the slow leak in my front drivers side was not a tired valve with sand in it, but was in fact a split rim. The chaps there were superstars though, they got the shuttle driver to go pick a matching used one up from a scrapyard off cape about half an hour away, and got me on the road in time to get the bike and make my boat back to the island. I also sat on my kindle and broke it, sadface.
Making it up to the old fella's place near plymouth, of course it's getting dark and absolutely throwing it down with rain, but we manage to hustle the bike up the ramps into the truck, and loada up the spare rear wheel and hub, two (count 'em!) spare v-twin engines, two spare sets of original carbs, sissy bar, and three boxes of assorted spares.
So far I've managed to rip the whole original rear sub-frame off, take the handlebars out, free off the front caliper which was sticking quite badly, and take the tank off. The tank had some pretty bad damage in the original paint with rust spots and areas coming through in several places. Reluctantly, I've taken it all back to bare metal just to make sure i'm not leaving rust anywhere. I'll proabaly manage to finish the sanding this evening and put a coat of primer over it.
As regards the sub frame, rumplefugly, that is exactly the one that I was thinking about shamelessly copying. As is generally the case however, a wrinkle in that plan has arisen. The day after I bought the bike I got a phone call from head office at work, and they've requested that I move locations. While Greenwich, CT does sound fun being adjacent to New York City, the issue is that I will be living in a corporate apartment with no garage space. Man plans, and God laughs. As such I will proably buy the doc's chops one.
I'll put up photos of progress thus far this evening when I'm home. As regards a plan for what's involved, I had a fairly good idea. I do plan on pulling parts off the engine to polish or paint them, so a pretty full tear-down is called for. For now, I will probably leave the stock forks on, but pull and service them (one side leaks pretty badly plus theyre old as dirt) and lower them internally on new progressive springs. The favoured setup on stock virago forks seems to be lower 2" internally by cutting the stock spacers and also 1" through the trees if you're keeping the stock front wheel. I do have a spare rear that I could mount to the front which I like aesthetically, but allegedly that spoils the handling rather. This also means that I can put clipons above the trees, which would be fairly ideal for riding position with the higher seating position. Rearsets bolt on just nicely to the original pillion footpeg sites, with linkages to match. I'm probably going to fab a side-mounted licence plate bracket because I like that look, but may go for an underseat one.
Thanks, Matt
Sorry for not updating sooner. I did successfully go and pick up the Virago on wednesday. It meant unfortunately sitting in the tire shop for about 4 hours, having discovered that the slow leak in my front drivers side was not a tired valve with sand in it, but was in fact a split rim. The chaps there were superstars though, they got the shuttle driver to go pick a matching used one up from a scrapyard off cape about half an hour away, and got me on the road in time to get the bike and make my boat back to the island. I also sat on my kindle and broke it, sadface.
Making it up to the old fella's place near plymouth, of course it's getting dark and absolutely throwing it down with rain, but we manage to hustle the bike up the ramps into the truck, and loada up the spare rear wheel and hub, two (count 'em!) spare v-twin engines, two spare sets of original carbs, sissy bar, and three boxes of assorted spares.
So far I've managed to rip the whole original rear sub-frame off, take the handlebars out, free off the front caliper which was sticking quite badly, and take the tank off. The tank had some pretty bad damage in the original paint with rust spots and areas coming through in several places. Reluctantly, I've taken it all back to bare metal just to make sure i'm not leaving rust anywhere. I'll proabaly manage to finish the sanding this evening and put a coat of primer over it.
As regards the sub frame, rumplefugly, that is exactly the one that I was thinking about shamelessly copying. As is generally the case however, a wrinkle in that plan has arisen. The day after I bought the bike I got a phone call from head office at work, and they've requested that I move locations. While Greenwich, CT does sound fun being adjacent to New York City, the issue is that I will be living in a corporate apartment with no garage space. Man plans, and God laughs. As such I will proably buy the doc's chops one.
I'll put up photos of progress thus far this evening when I'm home. As regards a plan for what's involved, I had a fairly good idea. I do plan on pulling parts off the engine to polish or paint them, so a pretty full tear-down is called for. For now, I will probably leave the stock forks on, but pull and service them (one side leaks pretty badly plus theyre old as dirt) and lower them internally on new progressive springs. The favoured setup on stock virago forks seems to be lower 2" internally by cutting the stock spacers and also 1" through the trees if you're keeping the stock front wheel. I do have a spare rear that I could mount to the front which I like aesthetically, but allegedly that spoils the handling rather. This also means that I can put clipons above the trees, which would be fairly ideal for riding position with the higher seating position. Rearsets bolt on just nicely to the original pillion footpeg sites, with linkages to match. I'm probably going to fab a side-mounted licence plate bracket because I like that look, but may go for an underseat one.
Thanks, Matt
Allegedly pictures are worth a thousand words
Here is the Virago in its natural state. Yeughhh, I'm sure you'll agree. In the background here you can see all the spares the chap gave me.
This is her with the seat and rear sub frame ripped off. I'd also started on the front end here.
And this is where I'd got to by the end of play yesterday
I have a nice pile of parts waiting for my flapwheels and respirator to arrive
the tank is also awaiting more sanding and paint
also for GWYM who asked what the roads were like here, there are some twisty ones if you go out of town and "up-island" which means west out to the old indian lands and the clay cliffs. also, the views do not suck.. traffic is only really bad in the summer, and it can get pretty snarled up when there are 10k people on roads for 3k.
this is my bandit, the current steed. I got her as the fully faired version so this is a bit of a departure.
also this is the pickup, on the day I got her back in december. she's had some bits done too, all new electrics, new shocks and springs all round, lights, bed frame etc.
I also spent the largest single outlay of the build, and ordered the Hagemans sub frame. I had hoped to do this myself but as i'm losing my workshop space inside of a week, I just ponied up.
This is the frame and the lift for the tank, under which i'm going to try and hide some of the very large amount of wiring for a carbed and air cooled bike.
which should end up looking like
images are from the auction, thanks Doc's Chops!
Here is the Virago in its natural state. Yeughhh, I'm sure you'll agree. In the background here you can see all the spares the chap gave me.
This is her with the seat and rear sub frame ripped off. I'd also started on the front end here.
And this is where I'd got to by the end of play yesterday
I have a nice pile of parts waiting for my flapwheels and respirator to arrive
the tank is also awaiting more sanding and paint
also for GWYM who asked what the roads were like here, there are some twisty ones if you go out of town and "up-island" which means west out to the old indian lands and the clay cliffs. also, the views do not suck.. traffic is only really bad in the summer, and it can get pretty snarled up when there are 10k people on roads for 3k.
this is my bandit, the current steed. I got her as the fully faired version so this is a bit of a departure.
also this is the pickup, on the day I got her back in december. she's had some bits done too, all new electrics, new shocks and springs all round, lights, bed frame etc.
I also spent the largest single outlay of the build, and ordered the Hagemans sub frame. I had hoped to do this myself but as i'm losing my workshop space inside of a week, I just ponied up.
This is the frame and the lift for the tank, under which i'm going to try and hide some of the very large amount of wiring for a carbed and air cooled bike.
which should end up looking like
images are from the auction, thanks Doc's Chops!
Edited by matt i on Tuesday 28th October 13:01
Edited by matt i on Tuesday 28th October 13:03
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