The things you see

[Urban_Legend]

Hi all. Been a while.

I took Sparkles out to a local bike club meet today to enquire about putting her onto Club registration (much cheaper than standard registration). I was unable to do it today unfortunately as the club president wasn't there to take my money and receipt me as a financial member, but got to meet some nice people and check out some nice bikes, including a ratted out 88 FJ12 that had been converted to a cruiser.

Catch you all later

[Pat Conlon]

 

That FJ guy cut the front of the perimeter frame off.....that's what ties both sides together.....holy crap.
Do you folks have any kind of MOT inspection required for license registration?

[Millietant]

Never mind the MOT test, that's an instant "no cover" in the event of an insurance claim...and a negligence suit if anyone else was hurt - instant personal bankruptcy.

I don't mind modifying frames, I've done it myself a few times, but my insurer has always asked for details and has had to approve them before cover (my degree is in civil and structural engineering so I can give them a few simple calculation skills to show I haven't weakened anything).

Cutting that front off and integrated brake/turn signals are the 2 most stupid things you can do to a FJ.......just my opinion though 

[krusty]

I hope that FJ is not on Historic plates either. A club inspector would need boot up the arse for passing that POS.

[Urban_Legend]

Some more shots if the beastie

[Urban_Legend]

And some of the more spectacular talent

[red]

Urban Legend,

Why are most of the pix stretched and smeared?
.

[Millietant]

He really needs to remove one of the front discs and it caliper on that FJ, just so he doesn't overstress the frame/steering head under hard braking 

[fj1289]

If you want an FJ powered chopper - build one!  Even a hard tail.  But the degree of half -assed throw it together shown on that bike is well short of even a true rat-bike (much less the over-done "rat" bikes that are done now)


Too bad that FJ didn't get dismantled to donate the engine to a car and the rest sold off as spares for other bikes!

[RevDeal]

That Honda CBX 1000!!!! If people haven't heard that scream down the road, ya'll need to watch a video of that. One of the best sounding machines. Like an f1 car. That's probably a $15k motorcycle in as good of shape as that one looked.
Jacob

[Pat Conlon]

.....I don't mind modifying frames, I've done it myself a few times, but my insurer has always asked for details and has had to approve them before cover (my degree is in civil and structural engineering so I can give them a few simple calculation skills to show I haven't weakened anything).

Hey Dean, setting aside insurance regs, with your engineering background, do you see a problem with cutting off the front end of the FJ's perimeter frame?
Just curious....

Cheers

[Millietant]

The simple answer is yes Pat, but the more complicated answer is that it "might" not impact a FJ in normal road use !!. The FJ steering head is not held in place with long gussets (or alloy box section frame rails) like in a normal frame, but it sits in a space frame made up of smaller diameter tubes which gains its strength by spreading the vertical and horizontal components of load through each of those space frame tubes to the larger structural frame members.

Taking away those front tubes, means the stresses that the steering head takes are transmitted though much less metal (and there is nothing forward of the steering head to resist the loadings), so each tube and each weld is being taken closer to its failure limit each time it is loaded (as there are 4 rather than 6 tubes, you could essentially say that each tube is on average carrying proportionally greater loads - simplistically take each component value and multiply it by 1.5). I don't know the grade/dimensions of steel tube used for the manufacture, so don't know what the tensile and compressive strengths of the individual pieces are, or what safety factors Yamaha allowed in their calculations, but from an engineering perspective there's no doubt that the steering head support has been substantially weakened - maybe not enough to cause a rapid failure under road use conditions, but certainly enough to impact any insurers rating of the bike. I'd guess Yamaha (at the insistence of their legal department) calculated the maximum load on the steering head based on its maximum GWV (bike, rider, passenger, allowable carrying capacity), max speed and the force needed to resist maximum braking force, or the shock loading from hitting a brick in the road at the bikes' maximum speed - not to mention the expected abuse from landing wheelies. Once they'd determined what they felt would be the maximum load, they'd probably add a minimum 25%-50% safety factor (back in the 1970's and 1980's we used a safety factor of 2 times in all of our bridge designs (both concrete and steel)), before deciding on what bearing area of the steel they needed to support those loads.

Willy-nilly cutting out of the steel supports might not take the structural capacity of the frame section below the level anticipated in normal use by Yamaha, but it would certainly reduce any safety allowance they built-in.

My practice with bike frame mods has always been to ensure that I always provide at least the same load bearing capability as stock - high spec tubing of at least the same structural properties and a combination of larger diameter/thinner wall thickness, or even larger diameter/thicker wall thickness and no reduction in load bearing area.

[Urban_Legend]

Urban Legend,

Why are most of the pix stretched and smeared?
.

I have no idea why. I wish it wouldn't. It happens when I put up photos taken in portrait.

Mark

[Pat Conlon]

Thanks Dean

[red]

Urban Legend,
Why are most of the pix stretched and smeared?

I have no idea why. I wish it wouldn't. It happens when I put up photos taken in portrait.
Mark

Mark,

Are you sending pix from your phone?  If so, try sending them to your computer first, and if they look normal there, just send them from the computer.
Phone pix are usually huge, typically using several Megs for pix that only need 50K to look fine here.  Not everybody has a fast Internet connection, okay?.
Your phone's Tech Support may have a better answer, too. 
My ISP gives me Metric tonnes of free storage space on their server, simply as part of my account, and I send everything as just a link from there.
Those ISP guys can tell you how.  It's easy enough.
Hate to say, but those smeared pix are really obnoxious, man.