Harley Sportster Cafe Racer Build Recap

Everybody, welcome back to Fix My Hog. My name's Dennis Santopierto. With me is Tommy "Clutch" Creal. Yes sir. We have this Sportster which was a Sportster, still is a Sportster I guess. We're keeping the VIN number and that's what we're gonna register it as. Last time we ended the video was we were sending stuff out to powder coat. For sure. Now we're back, we've, like I've been doing anything, you've been doing a lot of stuff since. A lot of it's been little things since it's open that you wanna take care of now. You probably won't be this deep again ever. Even little things, you guys painted when we cut off the struts in the back. You painted any exposed areas. Cleaned up everything. I know you're gonna go over it later too, but the wiring. That was huge on this project. Big. The big part of that was what? Getting the looms straightened out, getting the new gage wired in. Control that PM sent, we got all that stuff. Somebody did a really good job on the horn wiring. That's controversial. That's very nice, I like that. We are moving the horn down, which is cool. Just making sure everything was clean and ready to go. Like we said, you most likely won't have this bike down or the person that owns it, if I owned it wouldn't have it down this far ever again. The thing, just going back to the project is, having a budget, having your paperwork, having your labels when you take everything apart. Have everything available to you, especially if you're not a professional, you're working from home. Soccer, baseball, events, holidays, your boss won't let you off of work, you finally get back to the garage, it could be weeks, months later. If things aren't labeled properly, you're just gonna go mad. You're just gonna lose your crap and you're gonna be like oh my God, where's all my stuff? Or where does this go? You shouldn't have anything extra laying around. No extra bolts for sure. This? A lot of these components that we're putting on are not OEM so they'll have their own torque specks when S&S or Barnett or Dakota or Progressive sends you instillation. Correct. They'll send you torque specks, but you gotta know your torque specks. That's huge. If you want the component or the part actually living it's full life you gr make sure it's patted down nice and tight and correct. There is a difference between 84 inch pounds and 25 inch pounds, right? Huge, huge difference. You can feel it too. We're joking about it, but it's not a joke. Especially when you snap a bolt off. We say it all the time, your year and model specific torque specks because even with in the same model, call it a Sportster or a Softail, there could be that one exception. It's an 84, 25 inch pound issue that we've talked about before is you could think they said 84, but you're that special model that's 25. That's gonna cause you time, effort. Money. Aggravation and money. Have all your components, you broke everything down correctly, you labeled everything. I'll say with labeling the biggest thing with this is life gets in the way but making sure the process is smooth for reassembly, it helps out so much by having this stuff laid out and you're able to zip right back through it. Absolutely, well you are. Without having a bin full of bolts trying to figure out- Where does this go? Yeah. I didn't see this one before, where did that come from? Not basket case. Everything labeled, everything clean. I guess, what do we got going on? We can start from here. Some of the things that we're putting back on this baby. Obviously we got quite a bit to put together. S&S hooked us up with that sweet muscle air cleaner. That's gonna pull this outside out and give us some nice little color difference in the whole bike. Barnett's new clutch is going in. With the S&S we're putting a super E. Super E. With the super E we needed a different manifold. Actually we had to look at a couple different ones for this 2000. When you're ordering parts, speak with the people that you're ordering with. Either directly from the manufacturer or through a distributor. Make sure you're getting the right part. When you get it, if it doesn't quite fit, you don't put a hammer. You don't force fit it. You don't do that. The manifold, we went through a couple just for this model, we needed a different manifold with the super E and then a backing plate for the... For the air cleaner because we swapped out that one. I'll say reference a couple different vendors. Go to the actual manufacturer and then to the vendor and just make sure. You see universal fit, don't jump right into it. Make sure it's gonna fit the bore and length and everything. Then Barnett? Yeah, they hooked us up with that sweet Scorpion clutch. That's gonna go in, give us a little bit more friction and performance out of our clutch. Awesome. Dakota. I actually have a Scorpion clutch in my Sportster and I think I got one in my FXR too maybe, an older one. Actually just a Barnett set up. Then very cool Dakota gage. Electric gage. We're gonna have tack. We'll have spedo on there and then indicator. We got that one. Then the gentlemen at TC Bros sent us? This is . That's gonna look cool on there. We took the forward controls and we put them down to mid. Those are gonna be slapped on there. This is just one of them. It's a whole bracket. We didn't put everything on the table here, it'd be kinda crazy. Then also we got from them? Little tail lamp. This is gonna be going right off the rear axle backing plate for that as well. That's a cool set up from TC Bros. Still on the back of the motorcycle we're gonna go up to a 13 and a half inch? Correct. All blacked out. We're trying to create a little more difference. The ones that came off there were 12 inch? Correct. So we're gonna try and make it come up a little bit higher, speaking of that, we're gonna drop the front with Burly lowering kit. Correct. We got the Burly lowering kit from RevZilla. Seat as well. We got the seat and the tank, which came out really cool. We'll show you that later as we put it on. Then the bigger stuff behind me. You might be able to see it or not, but we'll show it when it goes up. Bass Annie sent us a really cool exhaust to really bring this whole thing together. Nice two in one. Dunlop sent us some tires and we picked up a front spoke wheel because the other one was just too far gone. It was 20 years old and it spent a lot of time outside. You could see it. Actually the rear was a mag, right? Correct. It was a solid. You hooked us up with a spoke for that. I think that's cool. We went back and forth cost. We had different ideas on there too. We had different ideas and then cost. We're trying to stay within a budget and we decided where do we wanna blow our money? Where's the spoilage that you wanna do or what's that item that you wanna really splurge on. For that we did, we'll show that to you later, it's not on the table now, but the levers from PM, right? Yeah. Those look really cool. Our buddy Nate Beck made the bars for us. Those came out good as well. What am I forgetting? That's the majority of it. Why don't you tell us a little bit about the powder coat and the prep and the things you have to deal with when you powder coat? Sure. Obviously considering our budget and what we were working with powder coat was our option with this just because we had the variety of actually picking out some different colors. We went off the frame here and we had that gloss black look and went down to the wrinkle on some components and then more of a 60 black on here. What's that, 60% gloss? Yes. It's got more of a dull to it. Then we just went down to some of these features like the rotor and did this. You necessarily don't prep these. You let the powder coater take care of that. Some of the items that we did have to prep and then even coming back are bolts. That's huge that you tape them off. They powder coated the top? Yeah. They tap it off right here. Super durable, you're not gonna lose it. It's not like paint when you get your Allen in there it's gonna chip off. So you taped them off before you sent to them or they tape if off for you? We've got that kind of relationship now where he just does it. If you can tape it off, have two or three treads there, get some washers as well. A good idea too when you take them off you labeled your bag, you cleaned them, pre taped them for them and give it to them, will they send it to you in the same bag back? Eventually they will. Here's your stuff and your empty bags? No, he sends it back like that. Then if you see like with the tank, we had to grind it down a little bit, make sure all the rust was taken off of it. Even with the new tank we got from RevZilla? Yeah. There was oil on there. It's preserving, make sure it's not rusting. Taking that down. Then cleaning the parts. Then for stuff that comes back, these holes aren't filled or anything? These are usually, everything's fine Correct. To put it back together. You will see some build up on some areas. If you have extremely tight fit, you're gonna wanna take it down. With a lot of these we're fine but I'm sure we're gonna run into something. Before we sent it to powder coating, you and I and Zack, we looked at the colors and the design and Zack brought up, what if we did the headlight? Then we said, we do the headlight, then we do a couple other components in the wrinkle? Mocking it up and looking at it it brings a couple different contrasts to it which is pretty cool. I think it's a different flavor. Absolutely. Then for the front end we got new bushings so everything will be tight and nice. We got new bearings. Correct. New Timken bearings. New Timken bearings. Swing arm, we also did the swing arm powder coat because it was a big ass chrome on it. I think that's the majority of it. What else can you think of? A lot of covers that we did. Pop those off, derby covers, timing cover. Front fender was the other one. That's right. Front fender we got done. We did get that back? Yeah. Forgot about the fender. Looks pretty wicked. We cut it pretty short. Yeah, it's cool. No rear fender because we're putting that crazy seat on, which is cool. Then you got me two keys. One for you, one for me. Like we said, we'll move the horn to the front to remove it from the side. On the other side you'll see there's some brackets that we took off and painted. If we had to cut pieces off, cut them, painted it. No bear metal that's gonna rust or anything. This bike, the previous owner was a big fan of the chrome cover. Saying it mildly. Yes. They weren't sealed and then it was left outside. A lot of water got in a lot of places. If you have time, these will take as much polishing and time as you can put into them. They can be taken off. Depending on your budget and your schedule, you can go deeper and deeper and deeper. You can take these off, you can have them powder coated, can't you? Yeah. You could have them polished. On my FXR these types of aluminum are on mine and they're never gonna be beautiful looking. Once they come off the showroom floor they never get back there. Once again, you have it down, clean it up, you have your budget, don't stray from it too much. You have all your parts labeled. All your stuff came back. The other thing too that we did on this project, anything that we took off, seals, gaskets, bearings, replace. If you have the opportunity just splurge. Because you're in here. Exactly. Get those changed out. This is actually just a regular sheet on the inter web, the one we share has color coding and who's doing what and Zack and Tommy are a certain color, then Nate Beck with the bars was a different color. It's all costs and I'm gonna post an example of this or I'm gonna post this for you guys to download as well. It's a simple Excel sheet. You set it up and it calculates along the way. The bottom line is the bottom line. If you start adding up to a point where you're like, whoa. That's over. Maybe we don't do the $1200 levers on a $2400 bike. There's certain things that make you feel that this is the build or this is the focal point on the bike and that you wanna splurge on. This is good for reference too on your reassembly. There's so much you're doing in this, you can get lost. What do you refer to it as, punch list? Yes. Just having that to do this. Especially if you're working with somebody else. If you're working with a builder or you're working with a buddy who's doing what. When do you want it by? Schedules are good too. Everybody's in the know. Can we get this done in a week or two weeks? Then you end up back in each other's shop or whoever you're doing the shop with, you're like, dude I thought you were gonna do that? Hold someone accountable. Exactly. I think we mentioned the majority of stuff. Obviously we're gonna be putting all together here. The last thing, turn signals. That was the other thing. The Terracan, that's right. Thank you. Those are those little dime size turn signals. The tiny little turn signals that we got in the box right before we were ending the shoot for the tear down. I was like wow, you're not gonna see those things. We did some pre wiring and they're bright. They're insanely bright. I didn't think they would be as noticeable as they are but they're safe, which was good for me. I think we're at a good point. We'll clean up, I think we're gonna spin around and start with the next step which would be on the other side of the motorcycle and we'll go from there. We'll see you in a couple minutes.