San Jose Triple Clamp Preparation

I received a San Jose billet machined upper Triple Clamp the other day. I also went on e-bay and got some headlight ears without the giant holes in the side for the reflectors commonly seen on the /5 BMWs. I believe these headlight ears are from a mid 70’s /6 bmw.
The solid-sided headlight ears will definitely be a cleaner look.
In order to adapt the much more rigid, and better looking fork brace, about .65 inches need to be trimmed from the top of the headlight ears.

San Jose Upper Triple Clamp - My other one is equally scratched. But looks better/or worse at certain angles. It must be the machining process. I don't think i want to powder coat this. The bare alloy looks nice despite the scratches.




Headlight ears and tripple clamp. The ear on the right shows the trimmed piece. The ear on the left illustrates the line for cutting.




I did a quick silver rattle can spray of the headlight ears and roughly threw together the front end to test fit everything.
Also, most aftermarket handlebars are 7/8 sized bars. BMW bars are 22mm which required shaving out the inside of the handlebar clamps for a better fit. Everything seems to fit nicely. She’s gonna be one fine silver beast.

Test assembly of the forks, triple clamp, headlight ears, and handle bar clamps.

update on the /5 tear down

She’s mighty naked.  i gave her  a quick rattle can paint on the frame to get an idea of what a silver frame will look like. The wheels are out getting the bearings removed and then i will de-lace them… so i can get the hubs powder coated.  I’ll slap another set of wheels on there in the meantime.

Next on my list are:

–Trim down a rear fender so you can barely notice it yet it will protect the bike’s frame innards from getting crap kicked up into it.

–Trim the headlight ears for a Billet upper fork brace modification.

Order some rear sets and weld a reinforcement plate to connect the rear sets to (near the passenger peg location).

It feels like Christmas. New rims and mufflers.

Not to much build progress has happened on the Cafe bike lately.    However, i have gone on a bit of a shopping spree.

In the mail, i got some pleasant packages from across the pond in Europe.

The gentleman i am building the bike for wanted to steer clear of all the traditional exhaust.  I couldn’t agree more and wish i could take credit for his idea.  Though it will complicate the build process, i am more then willing to take on the task.  After some hunting, we discovered some pipes from a R12 BMW motorcycle.  The R12’s were made in the 30s and 40s by BMW… and have completely different dimensions of a 70’s BMW pipe size and mounting region… but adapting it is all part of the fun!

Vintage Exhaust from a VERY old R12 BMW

But then the mother load came!

box from england... oh boy...

nice wrapping job! definitely like chirstmas!

Wheels!  Wheedo!  I ordered a set for my bike too (one rim is back ordered)… and hot damn, they sure look SWEET!

TASTY!

Yep! That's what we ordered. Spain's Akronts... via England.

I can’t wait to lace these on some clean, powdercoated hubs.  this bike is going to look so tasty. the wide shouldered Morad / Akront wheels are definitely the vintage, bad ass touch…