[RedEye669]

And R, of course, is for RedEye! Don't worry, the title will be explained in due time

I'm finally just about ready to start doing some work on my '89 CBR 600 F1. This is going to be a very long torturous build, requiring me to acquire skills I don't yet have (like fiberglassing), and relearn skills I haven't used in forever (like welding and painting). So with a long road ahead of us, I'll start with a bit of an intro so you'll know what this build is all about. And just to let you know, I'm going to be picture-whoring my ass off. And writing LOTS of rambling (but for the most part grammatically acceptable) shit along with it.

First, here's what the bike would've looked like fresh from the showroom. Mmmmmmmm, plasticky

And here's what the poor old thing looked like when I got it, 20 years and 50,000 km later:

Now then, with a few pics thrown out to appease the clamoring hordes, here's a bit about me and my intentions for the build. First, I'm a noob to streetbikes. I grew up working in the family Honda dealership and pretty much lived on dirtbikes and trikes until I was 16, but at that point my interests turned to cars. They were just so much more practical for loading up half a dozen friends and booze cruising to neighboring towns :shocker: Also, by the time I got my license we weren't selling streetbikes anymore; there just wasn't a market for them in a rural area. But I sure gave my old man a hard time when he wouldn't order in a Hurricane so I could drool over it in the showroom. I didn't get back into bikes until last summer when my gf got a ZZR250 to commute to work with -- because she works in a scuzzhole and won't leave her Harley parked there out of her sight. That's right -- Harley! RUH RUH RUH RUH! ****!! :LolLolLolLol:

But anyway, with 2 bikes around I had to get my license so we could go riding together. Somehow I'd forgotten how much I loved riding; I was addicted all over again and after a few weeks I decided to get my own bike. And what else to get but the one I'd lusted after all those years ago? Of course, since I'm saving money for school and hadn't budgeted for a bike, I had to get a beater. Hence, the purple eyesore you see above.

I'm also an old fart compared to a lot of guys here -- I'll be 40 in 3 months -- and I have some very non-streetfighterish (or at least, old-fartish) attitudes. I don't much care for flat black. I hate loud exhausts, I find them tacky and irritating. RUH RUH RUH RUH! I don't hate fairings as a matter of principle like so many here; I like some protection from the frigid arctic blast I ride through. Even in July the temperature was often in the single digits early in the morning when I leave for work. I freely admit I'm a big pussy, but I hate being cold and god damn it, after 40 years in Saskatchewan I've paid my fucking dues in that respect

But what I DO like is the talent, craftsmanship, and ingenuity I see on this forum every day, the "built not bought" philosophy, and the close-knit supportive community which is like no other on the internet. So if you can forgive a discreet exhaust, a modest amount of fairing here and there, and HUGE FUCKING GOBS OF METALLIC CANDY PAINT, then read on. :thumbsup:

But not right now. Even my weapons-grade insomnia has given up for the night.

 

[RedEye669]

The Evolution of a Project

It's kind of funny the way this project escalated. At first it wasn't a project at all; I was just happy to have a bike of my own. Sure, it was a bit rough, but it ran just fine and most importantly it would run rings around the girlfriend's Nightster

But one little thing started getting to me -- the inner cowl fairings as shown in this gaily coloured photo (pun definitely intended).

They were cracked and had some broken tabs. They looked like ass, but more importantly, they were rubbing on the tank and the front fairing and SQUEAKING LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER. I'm getting enraged right now just remembering. But taking them off didn't help. The noise was gone, but there are few things uglier than the exposed wiring and fairing stay those little cowls conceal. Looking at it was nearly as bad as putting up with the squeak. So in my innocence I decided to buy some new ones.

I checked the price of new ones. After the paramedics restarted my heart I looked on ebay. I searched the classifieds on the Honda forums. I found that those little pieces of plastic are hard to come by, and people who really want to restore an old F1 are willing to pay a lot more for them than I am.

At this point I was stuck -- didn't want to buy the cowls, but the concept of a streetfighter was completely unknown to me. Then one day on the CBR forum I saw this:

I thought it was the most insanely awesome thing ever, Acerbis headlight and all.

A bike like mine, but modified with parts from other bikes. No longer would I be a slave to the capitalist swine who sold inner cowl fairings at outrageous prices! I could make my bike like that one!

In fact, I almost went and made my bike exactly like that one. That same day I bought the same belly pan on ebay:

I almost bought the Acerbis headlight as well. I didn't know any better :doh:

But for once I was smart enough to do some research and found that its functionality as a headlight wasn't going to cut it on deer-infested rural roads, so I spared myself the indignity of "noob-with-Acerbis" syndrome.

So now even though I'd never ventured outside the CBR forums into fighterland, I was thinking heavily about bike mods. I saw an F1 with the RR tail conversion and once again I was like OMFG that's the most awesome thing in the history of the universe!

Little did I know that the RR was the Acerbis headlight of tail swaps, and this time I wasn't smart enough to figure it out before I bought the parts.

Used seat from ebay:

Clear integrated tail light, ebay:

Another view purely for blatant picture-whoring purposes:

'03-'04 RR tail fairing and solo seat cowl, also ebay. The cowl was $50, with free shipping to Canada. From China. This was a great deal since ebay shipping to Canada is usually best described as "assrape". It must've been on the proverbial slow boat from China because it took almost a month to arrive, but I was in no hurry anyway :tongue: At that point I had no tools and no place to work anyway, but more on that later.

And finally, the little trim pieces which I got from the dealer. Actually from my brother -- my parents retired last spring and sold their dealership, but a condition of the sale was that my brother the parts manager stay on for a year to help with the transition. So I can get some parts fairly cheap through him even though they haven't been a Honda dealer for several years, since Honda closed all their smaller dealerships and started selling everything through their car dealers only. But I digress.

While I was at it I got a new chain slider as well since the old one was hanging in tatters:

And since my tires were about done I got some new ones. There isn't a lot of variety in the sizes the old bike takes, I ended up getting Shinko 006s because they were dirt cheap. For now they're serving as garage wall ornaments:

So at this point I had a set of tires, a belly pan, and the parts for a modest tail swap. I'd also replaced the D&D slipon with a stock muffler because I found the D&D to be just plain offensive. All I needed at this point was a headlight . . . or so I thought.

Then I clicked on an innocent-looking link on the CBR forum and ended up here. :shocker:

 

[RedEye669]

And now for something completely different . . . I'm in the middle of fixing our renter's treadmill, so while I'm doing that I can post up a few family portraits. We have quite the gang out here

First my dog, Kodiak. He's half Rotti, half Bullmastiff, and 100% lapdog. He loves everything and everyone, except Shitzus. He was classified as a dangerous dog after a shithound challenged him and he sort of ate it. If we still lived in the city he'd be under all kinds of restrictions, but out in the country he has his freedom :rock:

 

[RedEye669]

Next is the girlfriend's dog, Nikki. Her ex was Greek, and apparently it's a rule with Greeks that as many family members as possible be named Nik. So since the gf already had a name, the dog got stuck with it :fu:

She's a Lab/Kelpie cross, loves to run all day even when it's forty below, and can dig holes halfway to China when she's going after a gopher. We call her the Labscaper:

I don't have too many pics of Nikki by herself, usually she's inseparable from Kodiak.

Some dual-labscaping action:

 

[RedEye669]

One more dog at the RedEye ranch . . . a month ago we rented out the spare room in the basement, and gained a dog with our new tenant. Sky is half Wheaten Terrier, half unknown. She looks like a cross between a Fox Terrier and a baby gazelle. She has bright blue eyes and jumps like a fricking velociraptor. She spends her time either wrestling with Kodiak, or being dragged around by him when she clamps her jaws around his hind leg and refuses to let go. :LolLolLolLol:

 

[dnbltn]

Nice!

 

[RedEye669]

But wait, there's more!

On to the cats

As anyone who lives in the country knows, cats are a necessity for keeping down vermin. Our cats work for a living. They'd be true indoor/outdoor cats but my gf is allergic, so they live in the garage which has a cat door to the outside and is partially heated so it never gets too far below freezing. In the winter they have a heat lamp and heated water dish -- luxury accommodations by farm cat standards.

First, the mighty Puffycat. In the summer he's a 14 lb killing machine; in the winter he sits in his basket under the heat lamp and gets morbidly obese to the tune of 20+ pounds. He is also the happiest living organism on earth. He purrs so hard he squeaks.

Here's Puffycat max-relaxin, the cat version of Hugh Hefner. All he needs is a smoking jacket.

Here's our girl Tiki. She's a lethal hunter and a true survivor. She spent a Saskatchewan winter out in the wild and came home alive in the spring, scrawny and missing the tip of one ear but otherwise intact. Barn swallows like to dive-bomb cats and dogs that get too close to their nests, but that shit doesn't get them far with Tiki. She snatches them right out of the air.

This is the reason Tiki spent a winter outside: Evil Kitty. I had him before I moved in with the gf, and let's just say his social skills were a bit lacking. He claimed the new house as his territory and drove the other cats right off the premises. Except for Pufffycat, who is far too big to push around, and in the winter far too lazy to fight. They had an uneasy truce.

Eventually we found Evil a new home at a farm where he could live in the house, go outside as he pleased, and most importantly be the only cat. I'm sure he has his new owners resigned to his reign of terror by now. :knucks:

And here is the only known photograph of the elusive Bobocat, who is just an all-round great cat. He was pretty scarce during Evil's reign when most of these pics were taken. With the tyrant gone he's returned to his rightful place under the heat lamp.

And now I've procrastinated enough and should get back to fixing the treadmill. It's a folding model and during the moving process our tenant and her boyfriend managed to fold it in such a ballistic manner that the entire control console sheared off, snapping all the mounting tabs and tearing out all the wiring. I said I'd fix it because I don't have my own treadmill, and my fat ass needs to do some cardio :doh:

 

[projectphoenix]

uh....well.....uh.....hmmm....since when does a build thread turn into animal planet? get back to the very descriptive, overly worded, but well put hurri build!!!! lol I feel your pain... you should have probably waited to get your tires....I have a feeling your gonna want to change your swingarm and your forks. ESPECIALLY once you see how thin they are...(your forks)

 

[RedEye669]

A little OT I admit, but my furkids go in all my logs, which inevitably turn into a repository for every random thought that goes through my head. Also, I was organizing pics from different accounts and stuff recovered from a crashed hard drive, and when I had them all together I had to post them somewhere.

I was planning on going through the history of the project, such as it is, in chronological order before I get to the present, but I made such a nice score on ebay today that I have to post a teaser

 

[KongBastard]

Keep it coming. Nice to see another older CBR on the site...and fellow Canadian as well.

I won't hold the Saskatchewan thing against you, I have relatives there.

KongBastard

 

[RedEye669]

Ok, where was I? Oh yeah, I was going to fix the treadmill. That didn't happen, because my gf came home with the new netbook she ordered on Boxing Day, that wasn't supposed to be here until Monday. Which would have been great -- in theory. Who doesn't like playing with new toys? But since the thing came with an invalid Windows product key, a pdf user manual without a pdf reader installed, and no touchpad drivers, I spent a few hours getting the thing running properly. Including a lovely chat with Microsoft's automated phone activation system. Screaming "Continue! CONTINUE!!!!!" at a robot voice that keeps replying "Sorry, I didn't get that" is about as much fun as you'd think.

Yeah, I'm rambling again. ADD and OCD are engaged in an eternal struggle for domination of my brain, and no matter who wins, I lose. I just try to sit back and enjoy the ride. I think the last bike-related post got us to here:

Then I clicked on an innocent-looking link on the CBR forum and ended up here. :shocker:

And believe me, the Shocker is an appropriate smiley, because it was a whole 'nuther world in here. I think I read every damn word, and looked at every damn pic on the site. Twice. CF choked my slow-ass internet connection like Gene LeBelle choked Steven Segal. My head was spinning with so many new ideas that, to borrow a phrase of my dad's, I didn't know whether to shit or go blind. "Hmmm, I was going to do this, but if I did that instead then I could also do this, but then I'd need to buy one of these, but if I had that then I could make this other thing. . . " Fork swaps, swingarm swaps, hell, everything swaps. Build something from scratch. Build damn near everything from scratch. If you were making a graph of how far in over my head I was getting, this would be the point where the curve went vertical.

But back to reality. A lot of the stuff I was drooling over was way outside the limits of my time, budget, equipment, facilities, skills, attention span . . . ooohhhh, shiny! And I already had all the parts I needed except for the headlight. So I surrendered reluctantly to sanity and decided to go with the original plan and just use the wealth of knowledge here to make my modest project the best it could be instead of plunging balls-deep into a project so far beyond me that I wouldn't have a hope in hell of completing it.

 

[RedEye669]

As I'm sure you've noticed, this is as much journal as work log (actually, there's been no work in here whatsoever so far). Feel free to just skip the yakkity yak and keep scrolling until you see a pic of something with wheels on it. I'd probably do the same. But meanwhile, the saga continues.

So: I needed tools and a place to use them. I hadn't had either for years -- they were now my ex's :fu:

Not that I'd had much in the way of automotive stuff anyway. I spent a lot of my 20s farting around with car audio, and my 30s building heavily overclocked computer systems and customizing cases. Not a huge amount of wrench twisting required. And I for the last several years I'd been living in a teeny little apartment where power tool use meant eviction, but only if the landlord got to you before the other tenants put a shiv through your kidney. But last spring I moved in with my new gf, who had a potentially awesome place to do work. 80 acres of land only 10 minutes from the city limits, double garage with attached heated workshop -- sounds like a paradise for a fighterer and his dog, right?

Well, the potentially part comes from her ex: they'd split up about 8 months before, and he'd left a complete disaster in his wake. Besides the garage and workshop there's also a 40 foot seacan for storage, and you couldn't have crammed another cubic millimeter of shit into any of it. You could've removed the walls and been left with a perfect cube of tightly packed random crap. Cleaning it up, organizing it, throwing the unsalvageable stuff away and selling the rest on kijiji took . . . well . . . shit, it still isn't finished. That plus catching up on 80 acres worth of long neglected yard work consumed pretty much all of my spare time up to now. But at least now we can get one car and a couple bikes into the garage, with a bit of workspace to spare. The workshop turned out pretty sweet, but not as a workshop. . . because I turned it into a gym. Remember, at that time I hadn't been on a bike in almost 20 years; I didn't forsee any need for a shop. But it's a dual purpose facility now -- and hell yes I'm going to inflict pics on you. It's what I do.

The workshop before -- well, before I redid it, but after I removed a truly astonishing amount of christ knows what. If you went to a military psychological warfare specialist and asked him to come up with a colour scheme that would be most effective at inducing subtle yet debilitating depression, this would be it.

It doesn't actually look that bad in the pics . . . you had to be there in person to get the full effect, the way the light babyshit tan of the walls perfectly accented the dank stains on the floor. The room was like a vampire that sucked all life and motivation from you. And it smelled funny. The workbench was pretty nice though, except for the colour:

Time for a new look. I'm one of those people whose mood and energy level declines sharply when the days start to get shorter, and that's a serious thing here where the day is less than 8 hours long in midwinter and the sun only gets 14 degrees above the horizon. If I'm going to stay functional under those conditions I need bright. I need cheery. And if you thing bright and cheery = gay as fuck, these pics won't do much to change your opinion:

If I'd known how much of a pain in the ass marking out halfway-straight stripes 10 feet off the ground was going to be, I probably wouldn't have bothered. But I like the way it turned out -- and it just occurred to me that the colour scheme in the gym matches the factory Hurricane in the first post. And so, the circle of life continues. :thumbsup:



Here's the final layout, complete with workbench, which has come in very handy so far and will see a lot of use as this project continues:

So amidst all this rambling you'll notice that I'm slowly zeroing in on the concept of actually doing some work Getting the bike, discovering modding, making some design decisions, and now the process of cleaning up the homestead and creating some workspace. And once you have a place to work, you need tools -- and acquiring some was a great opportunity to exercise my most highly developed skill: bargain hunting.

 

[RedEye669]

Keep it coming. Nice to see another older CBR on the site...and fellow Canadian as well.

I won't hold the Saskatchewan thing against you, I have relatives there.

KongBastard

Another refugee from cbrforum, excellent!

But as it seems that everyone in Saskatchewan is related to one another in some way, it follows that you and I must be related! Cheers bro! :thumbsup:

 

[Garret]

So wait... there was a bike build thread here?

Oh my bad I just realized you were from Saskatoon...

 

[RedEye669]

So, tools. And not just tools, but preferably tools obtained as cheaply as possible. Between what I had when I started, and what I found as I cleaned out the garage and storage, I had . . . not much. A bunch of screwdrivers, a few sockets and wrenches, and for some reason at least 4 sets of Allen keys and half a dozen each of hacksaws and tape measures. A few other items here and there but you get the idea. I had a Dremel and a heat gun from my computer casemodding days. The gf had a skilsaw that was her dad's, a cordless drill, and the stuff her ex left behind. Which was really hers anyway since she paid for all of it. In fact, by the time the divorce settlement was finalized I'm pretty sure she paid for all of it at least twice over

There was a table saw, a parts washer, most of a sandblaster, a vise, and a few bolt bins that came in very handy for sorting out the lifetime supply of miscellaneous fasteners and hardware the garage came equipped with. Her ex was an appliance repair guy, and the tradeshow appliance stands and plywood he left behind were put to good use when making my workbench. Not the nice workbench from my last post; the fugly-but-functional one you haven't seen yet :rock:

At the beginning of the tool-gathering phase my needs were few; the RR tail swap I was copying used the stock subframe with some new mounting brackets fabbed up, and the belly pan was supposed to be pretty much a direct bolt-on. I came across this 1KRR fighter here at CF and decided to use the same headlight fairing for my build. Again, not too much work required to mount it:

At some point I'd decided to try mixing my own pearl paint, so I needed a paint gun. Unfortunately one of the things the gf's ex took was the 60-gallon compressor. Replacing it was definitely not in the budget so when this cheapass HVLP turbine went on sale for $120 I bought one:

I'm sure it's a POS, but as long as it can throw the pearl out the business end it'll probably be okay. Anything can be fixed with enough wetsanding

Socket set, check. Regular price $270, on sale for $90. God bless Canadian Tire; they have something on sale for at least 60% off in every flyer. Watch their sales long enough and eventually you'll be able to get everything at half price or less. And god bless this picture, because I just knocked the fucking socket set over while it was open and now I'll have to refer to the pic as I put 241 pieces back in their proper spots.

Every shop needs an angle grinder:

This one was something like 70% off at Canadian Tire -- less than twenty bucks after tax:

I like to mess around with woodworking and acrylic as well, so some of the stuff I got wasn't strictly necessary for the bike build. Like this:

And this:

The jigsaw is awesome . . . top of the line Mastercraft Maximum, and of course -- half price! I can hardly bear to use it, it's too nice

Just about forgot the drill press and scroll saw. I was going to buy a much bigger drill press, but I found these on kijiji for $70 for the pair. If the drill press ends up being too small I can always sell it and get a bigger one.

Things were looking good. Design finalized, most of the parts on hand, tools acquired, and work area well on its way to being fit for human habitation. In other words, I was ready to do work. And yet, you can plainly see that no work has yet appeared before you. What dire catastrophe, you ask, could be responsible?

The answer is best expressed by this definition borrowed from the software industry:

Feature creep is the proliferation of features in a product such as computer software. Extra features go beyond the basic function of the product and so can result in baroque over-complication, or "featuritis", rather than simple, elegant design. Feature creep is the most common source of cost and schedule overruns. It thus endangers and can even kill products and projects.

 

[RedEye669]

Yep, it was all falling into place when a couple things happened that sent me right back to square one. First, I somehow became obsessed with the idea of undertail exhaust. Even though I know there's no room whatsoever to run a pipe up behind the engine or through the swinger, so it would have to come up behind the rearset and hence look like complete ass. Undertail exhaust was lodged in my brain for good.

And so my progress came to a screeching halt before it even started, because there's no clearance under the stock subframe for the exhaust. Instead of just fabbing up some brackets to mount the RR tail, I needed a whole new subframe. Which wouldn't necessarily have been a huge problem -- I've done a bit of stick welding in the past (the distant past, I admit), building a few squat racks like the one in my gym and some other equipment. I didn't have a welder, but again not a big deal because I was intending to pick one up anyway. Every acreage needs a welder, dammit. And secondhand stick welders are a dime a dozen.

Except that, being me, I didn't want to make a steel tubing subframe. I wanted to be different.

I work at a custom vehicle manufacturer that specializes in aluminum van bodies. And being a creative, tinkerer type (and often lacking in common sense), I tend to see potential in a lot of things that normal people see as junk. I call it swag -- and my workplace tends to generate large quantities of it. After the first few months everyone got tired of finding me standing by the compactor asking them "are you seriously going to throw that away?" and just started bringing all kinds of wonderful, wonderful crap straight to my workstation. Including large quantities of aluminum, which I decided to make my subframe out of. Mostly because I thought it would be cool, and partially because I wanted to show them that I was actually doing something useful with my swag and not just being one of those schizoid hoarding types, cackling insanely to myself as I gloated over my ever-growing swag pile somewhere in the back forty. It didn't help that my chief underling's hobbies include building racing lawnmowers and 1/64 scale farm toys -- he thought that building a subframe out of scrap metal rescued from the compactor was a great idea.

Of course, the swag didn't come in a form that was ideal for subframe building -- like square tubing. No, my biggest score came in the form of doors:

Side note: this is my car, a 1994 Colt Vista. It's a POS by any rational measure; I swear it burns a litre of oil a week in cold weather. But I love it, because it can transport an absolutely astounding amount of crap. The tall skinny door is 69" long; the rest (except for the tiny one, obviously) are 53" to 59". All 14 fit inside the Vista, with the hatch closed.

I have a lot more swag than that now -- more doors, aluminum door panels, over a dozen 2 foot square sheets of 1/8" neoprene, half a dozen sheets of smoked lexan about the size of kitchen cupboard doors, even a 7 foot long bumper made of 3" square aluminum tubing skinned in checkerplate. Plus some nice big sheets of Intecel, blocks of .625" HDPE, thousands of small bits of true scrap, fasteners, hinges . . . I cleaned up the mess the gf's ex left and promplty replaced it with my own somewhat more organized and exotic version. What can I say, I don't intend to stay at this job forever but I'm looking forward to a whole lifetime of hacking shit together to see what I can build from it. So my philosophy is, swag while the swagging's good :thumbsup:

Now I was committed to building a new subframe out of oddly shaped chunks of scrap aluminum. The actual form of the aluminum wasn't such a big deal; in theory, I was sure I could cut some cross-sections out of the panels and make some girder-like frame members out of them. The real issue was that not only was I lacking a welder, I'd never welded aluminum. Knew nothing about the subject. Didn't have a fucking clue. :doh:

Sound retarded? You betcha! In case you haven't noticed, retarded happens to be my specialty.

 

[929_adam]

Lol. finally got to read all this! great thread...i'll look forward to the work once the schwagging is complete!

 

[RedEye669]

great thread...i'll look forward to the work once the schwagging is complete!

Wait, I'm supposed to do something with all this shit?!

 

[RedEye669]

How hard could it be?

Behold the man with a big ambitious welding project, no skills, and no welder! Gaze upon nature's cruelest mistake -- the silly sonofabitch who's not quite smart enough to know when to quit

Looking back, even I find it hard to believe how far out of hand things had gotten by this point. I was actually farther behind now than when I started, because now I had to go out and buy an expensive piece of equipment, and then learn a skill that people can spend a lifetime perfecting, before I could even get started with my build. Somehow, this picture was starting to seem appropriate:

The one redeeming quality of my plan was that I have unlimited scrap metal to practice on. So, let's go welder shopping!

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Well, that was easy! No really, it was pretty easy -- pickings were slim. I found some Power Fist welders for around $300 that were embarrassingly shitty even by my low low standards, higher end stuff that started at well over a grand, and in the middle a Lincoln Mig Pak 180 on sale for a little under $600. I scoured the flyers and the classifieds for a while but nothing decent came up so I decided to buy the Lincoln before the sale ended. But then (you knew there was going to be a but then, didn't you) at the last minute a new ad appeared on kijiji. It was a Lincoln SP175+. Nascar Special Edition, bitches! I googled it and found that it was actually better than the 180, the 175+ has infinitely adjustable voltage and wirefeed while the 180 that was on sale has tapped controls. Asking price was $400.

So I called the guy and yay! it was still available. The seller sounded like he was a thousand years old, and after about 20 minutes of incoherent muttering I arranged to go take a look at it. His shop was off a back alley in a part of town where little white boys like me go if they really need to get STABBED, and I had to wait around freezing my ass off for about 20 minutes before the deaf old bugger answered the door. It was mid October at this point, and it was fricking cold!

But actually the guy turned out to be awesome. He was over 70 years old, a retired university professor turned metal sculptor who apologized for being out of it because he'd been up all night banging his 40 year old date :thumbsup: He took a liking to me because I'd done some research, didn't ask a bunch of stupid-ass questions, and knew the difference between the SP175 and the SP175+. That + is the important part; when I started a thread here to ask about it back then I left that part out and just asked about the SP175. mpls|cafe|racer told me to skip it, I needed something more adjustable. But when I searched here for SP175+, the first thing that comes up is mpls|cafe|racer's classifieds thread, in which he states "If you are serious about welding and want a good home welder for your shop THIS IS IT!"

I guess the devil really is in the details, eh?

So I bought the welder for $400 and he threw in a cart, a 30 foot 220 extension cord and a spare gas cylinder (owned outright, not leased). :rock: I just wish I could remember his name so I could post up some of his work. He had a T-Rex skull made of old tractor parts in his shop.

I also got a solar powered auto darkening welding helmet for about forty bucks at Princess Auto -- the obligatory 50% off

 

[929_adam]

thats crazy! haha you gotta find a link for us to see his work lol