Clive and Chaddy doing all the thinking …
A custom tank’s next on the to-do list.
I’ve heard of people going for suit fittings, dress fittings, and even shoe fittings, but rearset fitting was new to me. Still, I rocked up at Chaddy’s workshop for said engagement and got a bit of a surprise while I was at it. I knew him and his mate Neil had been hard at work on the Moto3 bike, but what I didn’t know was they’d dressed it up as a hipster mobile, complete with a minimalist seat that was suitably sized for a fouryear- old, and a tank so huge that it could fuel you all the way to China. Thankfully both components were quickly removed from view, leaving some impressive welding work to drool over. Having dropped the bike off with the guys a month back, they’d been busy working out the best options for producing the bike’s much needed subframe. The challenge is that the TYGA seat unit is very sleek and long, so short of running large, exposed sub rails from the lower parts of the frame to support the subframe, they’d have to come up with a minimalist design that allowed the unit to be out of sight but strong enough for the job. And as was always going to be the case, they absolutely nailed the task, using some fancifully welded sections of ¾in steel tubing. It looked an absolute treat and proved more than strong enough to hold my fat arse when I cocked a leg. This meant I could give the guys a realistic idea of where the rearsets needed to be mounted, which turned out to be quite a bit further back than I’d first thought. I’m not going to bore you with every minute detail, but making those rearsets is going to prove one hell of a challenge, because they need to sit a good foot back from the Suzuki’s main frame. The hope is that we can make a bracket to suit the fitment of some ‘off-the-peg’ rearsets, but we’ll know a bit more about whether that’s the final direction we take next month.