Well I picked up an 89 for a good price and ended up fixing up a few things. Had actually started a thread in the steely rebuild forum. I had been kicking around the idea of an AF in the back of my head but honestly I didn't think I'd come across a roller at the right price any time soon.
Well I guess when you look you'll typically find. Nabbed this titled 07 450 roller for 500 bones. Really couldn't pass it up. It's missing the rads, shrouds, bars, and front brakes. Tank isn't in the pic but the previous owner is looking for a tank so i'm pretty sure I'll have a tank for it soon. Honestly this baby is really really clean, doesn't look like it got a lot of abuse. I had some more pictures but they all came out terrible so I'm going to have to get new ones.
So the 89 is getting parted, already made a thread in the shoppers forum. Luckily she was honestly kinda rough so I don't feel bad parting her. It's not like it was a super duper cherry bike.
Started tearing down the 89 today. I plan on not doing anything to the 07 frame until after I have most of the 89 sold and have done a fair amount of research.
I've been searching the beercan forum pretty hard now but haven't found many 07 450 conversions to speak of. Definitely not many build threads that I've come across.
I'm going to continue searching but anyone have any major gotachas on this particular conversion?
What 'gen' is an 07 450 considered?
Sorry for the newb type questions, i promise i'm pouring over the forum search right now, got two windows open. haha.
Last edited by louis mielke on March 10th, 2014, 1:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Trust me man, I kinda agonized about it but there are just too many little things on this machine that just don't make it too nice to part out. The frame has some rail damage, I had to heli coil quite a few threads. And there's plenty of stuff that should still be replaced if I was to keep it a steely. Honestly this is a perfect candidate for a part out. It's just NOT too nice to part out.
the 07 is a gen 4 frame, the cr500 motor will fit in there with ease. depending on where you clock the motor you may need to heat and push the fuel tank in a little, mainly to keep the tank spigot from hitting the spark plug.
Are you replacing the frame rails or using a cp500 kit ?
Sorry for no update! I got quite a bit of work done. Nabbed the items I needed, a combination of ebay and conversions.com parts.
I choose to disect the stock Y and use the ebay rails and mounts. Not much to say, pretty standard cutting and shaping. I'm not the absolute best fabricator so I'm sure many could critique. I'm letting a good friend take care of the welding.
Here's how is sat before I took it to my buddies to be welded.
When I got there we spent a couple hours disassembling what I had and make some changes to make things fit better. As it was left I believe we had it configured so no changes to the tank would need to be made. Unfortunately its now a hurry up and wait deal. My buddies kinda of working it into his schedule. We all know how that goes. I hope to have it back for late spring.
Here it is in my buddies kitchen the night I made it up to his place. It was so cold that night we just rolled it right into the house. lol
Last edited by louis mielke on March 10th, 2014, 1:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Just an example of my buddies welding ability, (which I'm sure someone here will turn their nose up at)
Some may remember when I picked up the 89 I totally missed that the back side engine boss was broken. Not thrilled about that at all. Well my buddy had an hour before I had to leave and that was the one thing we got repaired before I left.
He welded this up without us splitting the cases. Some may scoff but I have no problem taking my chances with this repair. If it fails then I guess I'll be buying some cases. My friend really seems to have excelent temp control in his welding and says he's made repairs like this many times with good success. Time will tell. Before and After pics.
A little finish sanding and some paint and you'd never know it was broken.
Before you knock the lack of clean up on the engine, he basically stated that leave the dirt and grim in certain places helped control where the welded bonded too and where it didn't. Basically his method for keeping the case halves from bonding. The surfaces that actually had material added were cleaned well and he used a lot of bees wax on his cutting tools. Like I said, I have no qualms about giving this repair a chance, worst case I'm buying cases.
Natural selection favors Smart people, so nature selects morons to be slow and dumb for tigers and stuff too eat. But in our modern world there just aren't enough tigers.
This is a frustrated venting post so beware. I'll post pics later but I'm just going to get this out in txt right now.
My buddy can weld for sure, but I think I'm a victim of "laid off guy lazy + oh I have a job again I better get that bike done".
He fixed my 89 engine case very nicely, which I'm very happy with.
He also pieced together my bike... which I'm not so happy with. In fact I've already cut and undid some of his work.
I don't even know where to begin so I'll start with the least frustrating.
I asked him specifically to rotate the lower spigots on my radiators, I showed him what I wanted very clearly I might add. I told him I'd handle the plumbing up top, but I needed the spigots on the bottom handled.
He didn't do that...nope, he put a bunch of effort into making a Y fitting for the upper plumbing, which I didn't need because of the the Y I'm reusing from the CRF. I literally had the upper plumbing all assembled and ready to bolt on, he didn't need to touch that.
On top of that instead of rotating my spigots he spent a bunch of time making a cross over tube out of pieces of copper... that of coarse didn't fit right anyway, The bends on both ends were horrible, the pieces of hose holding the cross over tube in were so kinked it would never work. *big sigh*
He welded in the cradle and Y beautifully. The lower frame rails look great as does the dissected Y from the oem frame. Very happy with that.
That's where it starts to loose its luster. So the engine mounts, the welds on them are very pretty, and look very strong but they're not in the right locations. The 89 engine never slipped in right, always was bound up when putting the bolts through. I recently picked up a 98 engine that I've decided to use and will be selling the 89. Yeah, it doesn't fit right either, even worse I might add. The 89 I could at least shoe horn into place, yeah, no matter how I tilt or jiggle the 98 it's not lining up at all.
The worst injury, I mean I feel like this should have been the easiest thing to get right was the upper head stay mount. I bought a bunch of parts from 500conversions website. The upper head stay block and he pre-bent brackets, literally most of the hard work was done and some how he managed to weld the upper mount on almost half and inch over too far. It was also tilted up too far, raising the rear of the tank so it didn't sit correctly. Mind you I took him the whole bike. He had all the pieces to work with including the tank and I had most of the cutting and fitting done. That was very frustrating.
So here I am, with only half the work done, and now a bunch of work that needs undone, and I'll probably need to buy some new parts that I've already purchased once.
Honestly, this comes as no surprise to me. I have this bad habbit of putting faith in other people and getting boned. This guy is a fairly good friend. I paid him up front and a bit more than his work was worth and he even told me I was way over paying him. I did that because I've seen the care and attention he's put into other things and I figured I was helping out a buddy who was out of work. In my mind that's money well spent. Paying too much and up front might have ended up keeping the wolves from the door.
I really don't mean this as a pitty party poor me, I'm just kind of venting and getting my thoughts out. I much more deserve a kick in the pants and a 'serves yah right dumbass'.
Anyway. As far as the bike goes. I've removed the upper engine mount. I think it can be salvaged. At this point I have to decide if either of the lower engine mounts can be saved. I think the front ones can be left in place but I'm fairly certain the lower ones will need to be removed and replaced.
That comes to the welding again... since I took on this project several months ago I have purchased a pretty decent tig setup. I pulled the trigger on a Miller Dynasty 200DX, pretty sure the equipment is more than up to snuff to do this welding. I've pretty much been working with steel mostly and feel pretty confident with it but honestly I've yet to attempt any aluminum. I haven't got my power setup in my garage for it yet and have been traveling it over to a buddy's garage to weld. Not getting much practice that way so I haven't had a chance to attempt aluminum yet.
I need to order new radiator spigots and I think I'm going to go ahead and buy the lower engine mounts again.
The question remains, do I try to get practiced up on some scrap aluminum and attempt to weld this myself or do I hork up some more cash and have someone experienced do it? Like I said, the lower frame rails and Y are done and done well. I'll be welding in the head stay mount and the very lower engine mounts as far as I can tell at this point. Oh, almost forgot the rad spigots.
Seems like you have already gone round with this build and it will take some time to learn to weld aluminum for the results your looking for. The rads are even harder to weld do to the thiness of the material.
I would recommend having someone who has built these bikes help you finish it, the best welder in the world is not going to get it right if he's not sure how to go about making it fit together. This is a learned from experince type of work like most anything else.
Give me a call, I can fix the problems your having and think the cost will be reasonable enough that you will have me do the work.
my # 779-770-6639, leave a message if don't answer. I always return calls the same day, Mike
Definitely feeling better after speaking with mxdogger. We spoke, he realy seems to know his stuff and is willing to help me straighten out my disappointment. Make a note, if you didn't already know, good hoon here.
So I did make it in the garage and a hour or so I have the lower mounts removed and the engine slides into place at least. I went ahead and removed the exhaust mount that was made as this will probably be replaced as well.
Here's some pics for Mike, and anyone who's following along.
