Race Bodywork. Why bother? Aside from the weight savings in removing heavy things like headlights,
mirrors and all that. There are two main reasons why replacing
the bodywork on a track bike may be one of the most important changes we make.
Number one, financial. Street bodywork is extremely expensive.
While track riding is a way to significantly reduce the risk of injury. The exposure
is higher, which means there is a higher probability that we may auger in... fall.
Race bodywork offers some financial protection. We have the option of selling our street bodywork to
offset the cost of building our track bike, or we can save it and put the bike back into stock trim,
with brand new looking, OEM bodywork. Which makes the bike way easier to sell
when we want to move to a different bike.
Number two; Being a good human. Track bodywork has one key feature that street bodywork
does not. The belly pan is a catch basin. If something goes wrong,
like we forget to check the O-ring on our oil filter, a gasket fails,
or a coolant hose lets go... Most of those fluids will drain into the bell-pan of our bike
instead of spilling all over the race track. I would feel terrible if an oversight on my part
resulted in someone else crashing. All of my track bikes have had a catch basin for this reason.
And, I guess, there is a third benefit, if you are a dork like me. We can paint our track bike
any crazy way we want. Some of you may remember my Army Green SV 650. For a can of single stage
“lusterless Olive Drab” paint and some vinyl decals, I had a bike that drew a lot of attention,
even from old Uncle Sam himself who invited me to do a photoshoot with some Apache attack
helicopters. I have a similar plan for our RC. But more on that later.
For our RC, one of the first big decisions we needed to make
was which bodywork kit to choose from. Armor Bodies from Woodcraft is my favorite. It
installs easy and holds up extremely well. It’s what's on the 848 it still looks amazing all
these years later, and it took me all of fifteen minutes to get it mounted.
Unfortunately, Armor Bodies doesn’t make bodywork for the RC. For our little RC, there are only
two safe choices. Hot Bodies or Tyga. Hot Bodies is the more affordable option, but
also tends to be the fiddliest for installation.
Now, Tyga, on the other hand is less well known but they make the bodywork for the RC Cup Bikes.
It’s a bit more money than the Hot Bodies,
but because I’m making these videos for you guys, I thought I would take a chance.
I’ve always wondered about some of that eBay bodywork. Largely because,
aesthetically, I really liked how it looked compared to Tyga and Hot Bodies that both
match the look of the bike in stock trim.
I found Pete-X-Shop, who makes this stuff in his garage, in Thailand. And it
looks fantastic in the pictures... And we all know pictures don’t lie. If it wasn’t true,
they wouldn’t let you put it on the internet, right?
In any case, I reached out to him, and he sent me a massive amount
of information about how he makes it and his inspiration for the design, so I figured,
why not? And before you ask, No, he didn’t send it to me for free. I paid full price.
However, I did order the Tyga belly pan, which “should” be compatible because I didn’t want
to take a chance on the most important part, the catch basin, and I want to make room for
possibly adding an exhaust system. Plus, if this hand-made bodywork is a catastrophic failure,
I’ll go back and order the rest of the Tyga kit.
A few things we need to be armed with as we get started is
patience, a stepped drill bit, a sharpie, lots of rubber gloves, and some more patience.
Oh, real quick. I’d like to welcome our newest channel members.
Alan, Tharanitharan, Marius and The Phoenix. Alright. Lets do this!
And with, uh, minimal trimming,
looks like the tank cover's on. Let's bolt it up and see how that goes.
I suspect this bolt is going to also have to hold the
seat on so we're just going to kind of make sure they go in.
I’m
only going to put in three screws because everything's gonna have to come apart
we're not actually fully assembling it.
Now I did run to the hardware store, and I bought just a whole bunch of hardware. A
whole bunch of stainless-steel hardware and I got two different types of nylon washers.
These are called finishing washers and, if you can see,
they kind of have a bevel into them so that allows for these bevel head screws to kind of go in
and sit flush. This helps distribute the stress on the bodywork to a wider area.
Now the other kind, I actually prefer. These are called shoulder washers. They kind of have
a little bit of a chamfer on them so they you can make the hole a little bit bigger than the screw
and it allowed the body work to kind of float. And again you can still kind of distribute.
So we'll be monkeying a lot with these different types of hardware.
Sixty dollars in random bits of stainless steel and nylon.
Contact points there and there.
You can see little bits of reinforcement around the bolt holes. Not too bad all things considered
The dimple on the drill mark for this hole was too far forward. So I have to actually move the
hole backwards. Which kind of totally sucks. I have to move it back that much. So i'm...
I can't drill a hole right behind it. I'm probably just going to try to
ovalize the hole a little bit so let’s see what we can get.
I’m starting to think this entire video will be, Watch Dave Fight with the Tail Section.
It looks like it worked. Fortunately that's in a place where everybody will see it!
All right! We have a tail section! So, tank and tail section. We are
a third... a third of the way. Right on!
Now a really fun feature of these body panels is, on the RC,
the battery lives under here. And in stock trim was you had to take half the bike apart to get
in here. But he made this cute little panel. And he put three little nuts in here. So that now you
can access the battery with just a couple little quick screws right there. Like, how slick is that?
This is the Tyga belly pan. This is a really nice, nice piece of bodywork.
I mean, you really do kind of get what you pay for when you buy more expensive bodywork. This is,
this is really good looking.
That's it. The belly pans mounted. That couldn't have been simpler.
They came with one replacement bracket for the front, and a little spacer. The
belly pans on. Geez, you do get what you pay for sometimes.
Everything kind of needs to be opened-up a little bit.
That isn't even in the same neighborhood
It's comical how far off that one is. Like, it's here.
So this is probably mixing and matching bodywork. That's a big gap right there. I may put in a,
maybe a well nut or something, to kind of hold that tight. Otherwise,
I think that's kind of a lot of stress to put on that. The well-nut will kind of stabilize that.
Honestly, this has been going so smoothly, I'm afraid that this guy
is probably where the pain is going to be. Let's see how this goes.
Let me show you this.
All right, that seems like a lot of pressure to put on that little bit of bodywork. It's
really kind of tight there. Not sure if that is going to survive at all.
All right, and here's another problem. This bodywork obviously wants me to run clip-ons.
There's no way that's gonna’ work with this stock
handlebar height. We're gonna need clip-ons to clear that. So more money!
And there it is! All the bodywork is now on the bike and honestly, it went a lot better than I
thought it would go. As far as the bespoke, artesian, hand-made thailand,
ebay bodywork… It’s not bad. Look, I do have some concerns. Mostly with how the nose mounts to the
side panels with riv-nuts. I think rubber well nuts would have been a much safer choice, but
we’re going with it. I also fear that the paint is going to get scratched to hell and back every time
I need to remove the bodywork. So I will probably have my buddy Shane
clear-bra the side fairings, at least around where the two panels meet up.
I will tell you this. By comparison, the Tyga stuff is just outstanding! The quality
and the ease with which it mounted. Seriously, no affiliation,
but it’s no wonder Tyga has such a great reputation. If I had to do it all over again,
would I still get the stuff from Pete-X-Shop. At this point, I don’t know yet. I really do like
the look of it better, but I will say that if the Thailand body panels don’t hold up,
I will absolutely be replacing them with Tyga. Exceptional
attention to detail. OEM level quality! Nice job guys! You deserve the free advertising.
Next, I can begin sanding and smoothing and priming and prepping for paint. There
are a lot of seams that are going to need some attention,
so it’s going to take some time and it’s still cold as balls. But what color do
you think it should be? I mean, I have my idea in my head, but maybe you can sway me.
Guys, thanks for watching, ride on and ride well.