Street fighters

I've recently developed an obsession with street fighter styled bikes. I don't know what it is. The power of a sports bike with more of a raw, powerful, bad-ass styling? Maybe it's just the name, street fighter. Either way, I love it.

Bass working, frame painted

I finally had the chance to tear the bass open. It was pretty easy to access the electronics, just had to loosen the strings and remove a few screws. I replaced the input jack completely, since I had spare. The only problem I found was that the input jack wasn't grounded to the pots. Once I added the extra wire, it worked like a charm. Sounds half decent for a $40 bass, plays very nice. I just have to spend a little time to intonate, adjust the truss rod and action and I'll be in business. I hope to test it on the half stack in the basement soon.

As for the motorcycle, I've got the final coat of clear on the frame. That puts the frame at two coats of primer, four coats of paint and two coats of clear. I also have the cylinder and head all painted up. I went with the high heat black paint and sanded edges scheme. I also picked up some cork gasket material from Parts Source for $9.99. It's worth it since I already need a new carb gasket and cylinder gasket which would run me well over $10. I'll try and get some pictures up sometime this week.

New bass

I did plan on using this blog for things other than the AT1 build. I am busy with a lot of different things right now.. I recently stumbled across a few great deals involving guitars. I currently have a bass half stack, two heads actually, but no bass. I came across an old Léro bass on Kijiji. I couldn't pass it up at $40 with a case. It's an older bass, not sure exactly how old, and it's made in Korea. It's in near mint condition still with the original "Inspected by" sticker. All it needs is possibly a new input jack, or just some soldering, and a few adjustments made. It's a short scale and has quite a beefy neck. I haven't had time to get this done because I also bought a cheap electric guitar and amp that I'm setting up for a flip.

So my entire bass set up is as follows.
-15" cab with Peavey TNT speaker ($20 for cab, $50 for speaker)
-Behringer BX3000T Ultrabass ($40)
-Léro ($40)

The whole set up only cost me $150. Pretty decent I think! Even if it's not the best gear, doesn't matter to me since I'm not really a bass player. Here is a picture of the bass.

Gas tank

I discovered what the best part from the parts bike is... the gas tank! This tank is in near mint condition. A couple tiny spots of rust on the outside, no rust on the inside and no dents. Since it's in such beautiful shape I'm tempted to sand it with a high grit paper and just clear coat it. I started stripping it, you can see the original paint scheme with decals.

Frame, almost ready for paint

First I pressured washed it, then sanded it, then hung it up and coated it with naval jelly. I'm going to re-coat it tomorrow, pressure wash it then paint it. I've painted a few other things as well (exhaust, kickstand, gauge brackets) while I was waiting for the parts bike. Once the frame is ready I can really get going. There will be many updates coming since I should be able to make a lot of progress in the next few weeks.

Busy

It's been a very busy month so far. Between renovations around the house, getting the apartments rented, school, work, the bike and everything else, I haven't had much time to update this blog. I am making progress though. I'll have some really good stuff later this week as I have begun painting parts of the bike. Hoping to get the frame painted this week. Now that all my parts have come in, I can really get this project going.

Parts bike

I've been circulating an ad on a local classifieds site in hopes of finding some parts locally. Much to my surprise, someone responded. He had a bike, fairly complete for a very reasonable price. I'm pretty sure it's an AT2, with many parts interchangeable. I bought it today and I'll be picking it up sometime this week.