May the 9th, 2013….  Houston Texas

We have been looking around the warehouse to check if nothing has been stolen(another false alarm) and among the boxes I found an old Pantah Engine. I completely forgot I bought it several years ago in Italy for a project that I never started.  What to do with it? The engine is from the 750 Cagiva elefant but not the last elefant;  the older 750 version which came out after the 650s -pure old style pantah. It was never imported in the US at least officially. I really never liked the look of the 750 anyway but the engine seemed interesting to me so I got it for my projects. I like it is a Pantah and it has a kickstarter. In the last few weeks I have looked on the web and got a 650 elefant frame and some bits and pieces from my warehouse for this rebuild. I have some marzocchi m1, the exhaust, some bings, some wheels and yes…i have the alum tank ala silence of the lamb. Three years ago looking on the german ebay i found an oversize hand made aluminum tank covered with a fiberglass sheet. A very unsual tank because i never understood why its was covered with fabrics unless the previous owner didn’t like the scars (welds) on it. We picked everything up from the warehouse, loaded in the car and brought it home. Oh btw , i found the original bike were the engine came from, the previous owner sent me some pics of the supermoto version he built using  a monster 900 engine.

Strange bike…but who knew that you can install an Honda 650 acerbis desert kit on an elefant….that tank is huge…in an ugly way. I wanted to get rid of the mono shock that the original 650 came with and install 2 independent shocks. The mono shock system is very good but I like to be different and since it is total rebuild, why not? so yesterday chop chop chop chop, i have removed the mounts on the swing arm and removed also the ugly wiring metal tabs that rusted easily.  Next to fabricate mounts for the shocks….and remove the millions useless tabs form the frame and subframe…

May 18th. 2013

I have removed s many tabs from this bike…so many….and now it is sitting in the garage, up on the lift. I trying to get inspired, on what next. Let see, dual shocks, lower footpegs? larger cooler…mmh..

May the 27th, 2013

Darn is hot and humid….my friend Chris told me that Houston is the sphincter of  Texas  Darn right…cannot do anything out without breaking a huge sweat and drinking like my logo mascot. Anyway, Bong and I spent more days fabricating, looking and measuring, bending…..most of the work done by Bong but i helped when I could.  Naturally removing the main shock and installed twin shocks meant to make tabs out of alum for the swing arm and steel for the frame. We need to be careful that the mounts will not obstruct the chain,; the main reason they are offset on the swing arm.  They come out  a bit ugly but with some drilling they are fine.  Then we needed to make sure that the mounts on the frame were solid, I mean that they have enough support not to snap off and this resulted very tricky as the frame bends where the shocks mounts are. Last we spend some time evaluating if to weld the back frame to the main frame. It will result in a more rigid frame but would eliminate the flexibility to further modify the bike in the future. For this reason I decided to install mounts and to bolt the top frame on the same bolts of the shocks. In such a way the bike’s frame will result stiffer. Last we modified the main frame—-a secret for later— and the main tank (after peeling the tank and removing the carbon fiber). I must say that whoever built the tank is an incredible craftsman as the tank has many dividers inside to stop the flushing of the gas when you ride it. Oh yeah, how capient is the tank? 31 lts. measured yesterday. A good size.