Hard Work Fast Bikes Good Times Ep 3

This series, as promised is a look behind the scenes at everything we do here at Purpose Built Moto.

In this episode we’re taking you guys on location for a photoshoot with Brandan, our photographer and film maker from Nine Five Creative. Any content you’ve enjoyed for the last 2 years from PBM has come from his lense. We will also be taking you through a catch up on our chopper build from last episode and our next full work day on the XS650 Chopper. As a little bonus we’ve thrown in some footage taken from one of our famous Friday beers.

The brews came in from our favourite neighbour Burleigh Brewing, a couple of our mates dropped around and we had some of our finished customs on display for the guys to check out and ride.

Firstly we head out to my mate Justin’s Place. The new home of Popbang Classics is tucked away in the hinterland and has some pretty epic rock wall scenery that we’re going to use for our Adventure Sportster photo shoot. These pics came out killer and were featured on Bike Exif when we released the build. Creating great photography to showcase the machines we build has always been a worthwhile investment. It takes time, and costs money but it spreads our work around to a huge amount of people and helps us get that next project build in the door.

Brandan and I will usually brainstorm different locations and keep a short list of places we notice around the place for whenever we need them. The rugged and tough nature of this sportster was perfect set against the sandstone colour rock walls.

Shooting the bike from all angles and getting a few candid shots of the bike in action gives us plenty to work with when it comes time to put the gallery and blog together, making sure we capture all of those tiny little details that take hours to make, but are rarely seen. This is all the sort of stuff our moto head customers and community love to see.

Moving onto our XS650 chopper build, I’ve been trying to claw out time to work on this bike but we have been so crazy busy its hard to do. Late nights and weekends have been the only time I can manage right now. In that small amount of time some huge moves have been made though.

The motor has now been modified to mount the footpegs off some spigots welded to the engine cases (that’s gonna ruffle a few feathers) and the hydraulic foot clutch and brake has been built with the master cylinders mounted up. We’ve trimmed the sprocket cover, and fabricated a pretty trick little suicide shifter too.

By far the most amount of time has gone into the suspended seat linkage. Making sure I’m not any shorter when I get off the bike than when I started. I’ve built a 3 piece linkage that works off a small shock spring. It consists of a hinged seat pan, a linkage arm, a rocker arm and an inverse arm set up that squeezes the spring as weight is applied.

The linkage was a fun piece to create and link to the frame, the hardest part was finding a spring that was soft enough to move under my weight, that came by way of an old valve spring out of the head of a car.

The front end of the bike is also mocked up with the super narrow triple clamp and downhill mountain bike bars we’ve used. This allows a central bar clamp and a super clean finish up top.

The bar clamp has been welded on and finished back for a seamless modification. The clamps came from mullins chain drive, and are just wide enough to fit a 90/90-21 front tyre with super narrow hub.

The place holder wheels will be there for a while as we’re still waiting on the Jonich wheels to arrive, hopefully in May 2022 we’ll get them. In the mean time I’ve fabricated some trick headlight mounts and a small cowling to carry the line of the banana tank forward through the front of the bike.

Our next work day will see a few more pieces take shape, including the solid moulding on the tank, front indicator mounts and finalising the foot pedal master cylinders and brackets. Small jobs that just seem to soak up hours.The last time we’ve used a solid moulding on the tank was on our Triumph Sidecar build that was in essence “pinstriped” with solid brass moulding. It’s a big effort for something that most people mistake as paint work, but the fine finish is something that I really love to see.

The detailing is done by hand shaping solid round bar to conform to the shape of the tank, and tack welding it in place before body filler smooths it all out.

As per usual, we didn’t get as much done as I wanted to on our work day…. But time is a construct, man.

We thought that would be it for episode 3 of hard work, fast bikes, good times. But then Brandan showed up with his camera for Friday beers! We had a bunch of finished customs in the shop and we wanted to show our mates.
Friday arvo, a few mates and some crispy cold beers in a motorcycle shop. Can’t ask for much more, see ya next time!