Riley OCC Build: Final Post

This week, I've been posting from a friend's story of the building of his custom OCC motorized bicycle. Today we'll see the final steps, as well as the finished bike. Yesterday's post ended while Rob was explaining how he built the custom pipes and muffler...we will pick it up there today:

I used the extra piece of the muffler that I cut off to make a stack for the carb. There is a foam filter inside the stack.  it breathes so much better than the stock air filter and it definitely looks 10 times cooler.


Here's what the stock filter housing looks like. (there are 2 of them in this pic.)

Here's what my carb stack looks like.

Mounting the gas tank was pretty easy, but I wanted a hidden mount. There was nothing on the frame to secure the gas tank to it in any way, so when I soldered up all the holes in the bottom of the tank way back at the beginning, I soldered a steel strap to the underside of the tank. I used this strap to run a heavy duty steel band through it, and around the top frame tube, the tank is sitting on a thin layer of silicone rubber that I put on the top frame tube of the bike. The tank fits the frame tight, the mount is hidden and the steel band holds it in place just fine.

When I did the wiring and cables on the bike, I hid as much of the wiring as possible (about 80 % of it). I had to shorten the throttle and clutch cables by quite a bit because these engine kits and cables were meant to go on much larger framed mountain bikes.

I added a headlight and a tail light, both of which I bought used off e-bay for cheap. I replaced the 3 volt incandsent light bulb in the headlight with 3 L.E.D.s powered by 6 volts (4 AA batteries hidden inside the headlight housing.) I did the same with the tail light, but it only has 2 L.E.D's in it, also powered by 6 volts (four 1.5 volt watch size batteries) The batteries and on/off switch for the tail light are hidden under the seat, and the wiring runs under the rear fender.

I am still in the break in period for the engine and I have it running a bit rich on the air-fuel ratio, and the fuel-oil ratio (16:1) This bike should go 25-30 mph once the engine is broken in and I re-jet the carb for a leaner air-fuel ratio and go to a fuel-oil ratio of 32:1

Here is the finished bike.

And here it is with the headlight and tail light installed, and a wheelie bar that I made up for it just for fun. I made the wheelie bar out of an old 2 wheeled luggage cart that I bought at a garage sale about 15 years ago for 25 cents. I put the wheelie bar on just for laughs and I made it so that it can go on and off in about 10 seconds. It's not functional, and is just for looks. I'm hoping that it will make people look and scratch their heads with curiosity.

Just for the heck of it, here's a couple pictures of my other motorized bike that I built last year (2009). It's an old style schwinn stingray with a lowrider springer front end, and a sissy bar with shocks. I did alot of work and customizing parts on this one when I was building it, but not to the extent of what I had to do to the chopper.  The engine on this bike is an 80 c.c. 2 stroke like the chopper, but it has a slightly different style head, cylinder, carb, and there is no intake manifold tube on it, the carb is bolted right to the cylinder. I added an expansion chamber pipe with a custom made muffler (similar to the way I did the one on the chopper), and a high flow air cleaner. This bike will top out at 25-30 mph. I painted the frame and the gas tank and went with a metallic white bannana seat to match the gas tank. The gas tank on this bike is the style that you get with the engine kits, so if you look at it you can now see why I did not want to use this tank style tank on the chopper.

The paint on the frame is metallic purple with a couple coats of clear over it. The paint on the gas tank is metallic white with one coat of clear pearl, and 3 coats of plain clear.

And here are my 2 bikes together.

WOW! These things are VERY KOOL! If any Suede and Chrome reader was at the 1st Annual Wheels for Williams event last May, they got to see Rob's Lowrider Stingray up close and personal. I can only hope that the custom OCC bike makes it up next May for the 2nd annual W4W event. Hope you've enjoyed reading about Rob's custom build! Thanks again Rob for sharing it with Suede and Chrome!

Readers will want to come back tomorrow, as I will begin posting pictures from the 1st annual Hillcroft Services Car Show held August 14th in Muncie, Indiana.