This is a picture of the struts mounted on the bike. Once the struts were on I could mount the mudguard. The mudguard was made from a cheap steel trailer mudguard, which I cut the sides off, and bent in a bit to give it a more rounded profile. The strip down the middle is a piece of 8mm round bar that I cut in half lengthways and carefully welded on to give the appearance of a ribbed pressed steel mudguard from the 60's. It'll look better when it's been fillered and painted. The mudguard mounts are brass plumbers pipe brackets, they're about £2 each, and add a nice brassy touch. I'll try to get some brass dome nuts for the suspension/strut mounts to continue the look a bit. You can see the bike was previously painted bright yellow and then black where the paint is flaking off the wheel. I'm going to sandblast that all off to bare aluminium to match the front wheel.

I'm replacing the rear suspension units with solid struts so I can slam the bike down at the back end. The ride on a hardtail bike can be pretty rough going so I decided to try softening the ride by putting rubber suspension bushes in the struts and rubber mounting the seat. It's not going to make it ride like a Goldwing but it should take some of the harshness out of the ride. It's a bit of an experiment and might be a terrible idea and destroy the bushes in no time. It's common practice to reduce the rear tyre pressure a bit to soften the ride but that reduces grip and tyre life, and tyres are expensive, so if I can get the same effect while keeping tyre pressures standard I'll be happy. If a set of bushes last as long as a tyre I don't mind changing them at the same time. I got the bushes from Pete at Bike Shocks Bristol. He's a really nice guy and can supply shocks at really good prices, including lovely shrouded shocks with different lengths and spring rates. The bushes for both struts were only £7. Bargain. You can find him at http://www.400s3.com.

Here's a picture of one of the finished struts. The tube is 1" which matches the tube used on the seat rails.

This is the bike with the extended swingarm, and some handlebars from a Yamaha FS1. Along with the new tank and bigger front wheel/tyre combo, I think the bike has a nice stance now.

I bought some cheap pre-bent 1" tube, cut it up and welded it together to make a nice curved end to the cut off seat rails. Once this is welded onto the frame, I can work out what to do with the rear mudguard and the struts which are going to replace the shock absorbers.

The swingarm needs exstending to give the bike more of 60's bobber chop stance. I cut the swingarm half way up each side. Having the swingarm out also showed what was going on with one of the MOT failures - a massive rust hole in the bracing by the swingarm pivot end, which I cleaned up and plated over with a piece of sheet metel.

I made up some spacers on the lathe from some round bar I had. I cut smaller diameter section at each end of the spacer to fit snugly in the swingarm tube. This aids fit and allows for a nice big weld without danger of blowing through the tube. I exstended the swingarm a bit over 1.5". I would've gone for a bit more but the swingarm would've been so wide at the axle plates that I would've needed a longer wheel spindle.

I could've made a jig to hold everything in place while I welded it up but I opted for just being careful, welding slowly and measuring many times instead. It was slow going but after much swearing and hammer action I got it weled up nice and straight.

The good thing about cutting an old tank in half is you can see what's going on inside. This tank is pretty clean, with only light rust, and cleans up well.
Once the tank was cut down the middle I cut two strips of thin sheet and shaped them to fit the contours of the top and tunnel of the tank.
These were tacked on, then the other half tacked in place.
I offered it up to the bike and it fits in place a bit tight, but some gentle reshaping of the tunnel with a hammer should sort it out.

It's wider than I would've liked now, but it was quick and easy and that's the point.

This tank is from a mid 70's Honda CB125 and I think it's pretty cool. I'd hoped it would fit without too much hassle but the tank is made for a skinny single top tube frame, and the GSX has a triple top tube frame which is way too wide. I considered having a go at the frame so I could keep the tank as it is - nice and skinny, but serious frame mods like that mean stripping everything off and I want to get this done quickly, so I'm going to widen the tank to fit the frame.

I've removed the seat and cut the rear sub-frame off past the shock mounts. I've also put the 19" front wheel from a GSX550 on in place of the standerd 18" job. I think tyre/wheel size make a big part of how a bike looks. The 3.50 x 19 Mitas tyre at the front has a lot more rubber than the original 100/90-18 job. And that ugly tank is gone.