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153 Posts
Well guys, I have been at other bikes on this site and I love the 300 look but not the 300 price for the kit. So I was thinking to myself there has to be a easier way to do the 300 mod with little to no money other than the price of the new tire. So I came up with this idea. Find a donor rim and use it to graft onto the original. I had limited tooling to do the job but had a couple strokes of genius to get me past some of the bumps. I found a old Kawasaki 18" rim and cut the center spokes out so only the rim remained. I couldn't hold the rim through the center of the hub anymore so I then fashioned a plate from some flat stock to hold the bead lip in the mill. I had issues with clearance with the original cutting bit because the rim would contact the shaft of the mill before the bit got anywhere close to the middle of the rim. So I started thinking what could I use to go through aluminum but had a large diameter. Ching! there sat my skill saw in the corner with a carbide blade on it. I fired it onto the mill and proceeded to cut the donor rim exactly in half. I then put a dial on the rim to see how straight the cut ended up and it only had a run out of 2 thou. Very livable, I then grabbed a tapered bit and put a 5 degree taper into the inside lip so when I would mate the new donor lip to the stock rim it would compression fit. I then cut the lips off my stock rim and put the same 5 degree taper in but on the outside. I then took the whole assembly to the press and compression fit the 3 halves together and proceeded to tack the the rims together. After welding i took the rim to the local bike shop and had the run out and the rim balanced bu it's self. A run out of zero and it was perfectly balanced. We even did it a second time removing the rim and placing it in a different orientation to see if it was a fluke. I then had the tire mounted and in my forgetfulness forgot to repaint the stock color onto the new grafted pieces, so I did that and i little bondoing with the tire on. I then moved on to the swing arm and saw that a few of you cut away portions of the drive shaft to make the tire fit so I eyeballed approximately how much I would need to remove and saw that when the drive shaft was installed it would come ridiculously close to touching the patch. I then thought, how am I going to reinforce this swing arm and not have a ugly patch for everyone to see. I too some round stock and turned it to the inside diameter of the shaft housing. I then cut it in half length ways so I could mill a groove down the center so the drive shaft would pass through. I then tacked it in place and proceeded to fine tune it until there was enough room for the tire and a 1/16th" patch to cover the hole in the shaft housing. So now I ended up with a reinforced area inside the shaft that no one can see and a little patch next to the wheel. Pretty sweet if i do say so myself. I then reassembled the bike and found I needed to shim the wheel 3/32 over to the right to make everything fit properly. So with that being finished the bike is ready to ride and all it cost me was 375 for the tire and 4 days of my time and some beer to friends and family. Pretty sweet huh!
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