I have been mulling over doing another special, rather than a Restoration, which I did last time with an early Monster 900 . I have been riding around the last project I built, the Multistrada with the FCR 41mm carbs on it, which goes really well! In fact its My favourite bike to ride! One of the problems with it though is the single seat, my wife likes to come out on pillion sometimes…
So I decided to build a scrambler type bike, with a dual seat on.
I looked around for another 1000 DS Multistrada and this red one turned up at the right price. These are cheap to buy as many are suffering leaking and bubbling tanks, and faded LCD screens. It’s done 16k miles! I am still formulating ideas at the moment, but I have made a bit of a start so I have stripped it of all the parts I won’t use so I can sell these on.
here is my first attempt at a mock up, using a borrowed seat and a bit of photoshop...
Sometimes I just sit for a while and look at the silhouette of a build in the garage with the lights out… I did this the other night (my wife thinks I am mad!) and I kept coming to the conclusion that the tank is not what I want… So off to the bike breaker who lets me wonder around his BIG unit. I took a cardboard cut out of the shape I wanted with me, and some measurements… of the hundreds of tanks I looked at (surprising how many are now plastic!) , none were suitable, mainly due to the angle of the frame.
On the last build I used a 999 tank which worked well, so I decided to try a shortened version on this build. I didn’t feel bad cutting this up as its so badly corroded, and it just goes to show what leaving a bike for a long period with ethanol based fuel in it does inside the tank. you can see from the light I am holding behind it that its actually perforated on the top! So its off to the blasters with it to see what state its in when it comes back…. I have a fall back, but its a perfect 999 tank, be a shame to cut it up... If the one comes back from the blasters and its too bad, I will probably use it to mock up, and see if I can find a dented one.
My FCR 41's came this morning
