Now that I've got my hands on a Featherbed frame, I'm checking my nventory spreadsheets to see what I can toss together to give me inspiration.

On hand:

Featherbed chassis
Ceriani forks, Arces yokes, SLS brake
Commando rear wheel assembly, drum brake
Commando rear shocks
'69 T120R Bonneville lump
750 big bore kit w/ aluminum cylinders
5-speed T140V cluster conversion
Lytedrive belt drive primary system
Finned primary cover
Amal 930 carbs w/ velocity stacks
Bonnie tank w/ parcel grid (67 Euro paint scheme
Featherbed "bum stop" cafe seat with cutout
Upswept TR6C scrambler pipes with stock muffs
Early central-mount Norton oil tank
Simple clip-ons, levers & controls
Tympanium regulator/rectifier
Smiths speedo & tach with early 70s mounting setup

Needed:

Home-made rearsets
Home-made engine mounting plates
Sparx ignition, hand-made wiring harness (I have wire & connecors)
Retro lighting
Cables, chain, bits & bobs

I figure I'll toss it together loosely and park it between my garage door and shop door, so I can look at it a dozen times a day and get inspiration. I like Bones' latest mods, I figure I can aim in that direction...

Frame (also have the swingarm)-



Engine (probably not this head, I have several good ones to choose from)-



Front end (it's been cleaned up since this photo when I first got it)-



That's the basics of the project; now let's see when I can squeeze in some TIME!

For now, it'll look more like a bike if it has a tank on it, and I have a spare Bonnie tank with nice paint, sitting on a shelf.

I have a late 60s GP style extended aluminum tank on an old Yamaha YDS3 that I could PROBABLY use, but then I'd need a nice Yamaha tank to replace it with.



This entire project will be a slow simmering back-burner deal for quite a while; I really need to slowly pull out a couple of my former runners and get them re-started before I start losing main seals, that's 6 months of an hour here and an hour there as it is!

Mockup done; now it'll just sit there for a few months and get ideas while the play money gets replenished.

Suspension & wheels-



Hollow engine block & oil tank-



Mostly mocked up. For lack of any other tank that was even close, I set the High Rider tank in place for the photo-

There are several aftermarket rods available, as well as cranks, cams & big bore kits.

I'm keeping the bottom end stock for reliability, with a clean plug-in aftermarket 750cc big-bore kit that I have on the shelf. No hot cams for this build, just offset rocker arm buttons, a common budget solution to increase lift mildly & reliably. Anyway, the '69 cams were considered "race" cams by the factory, and are nitrided for durability. Everything will be balanced.

Overall, the engine should be "zippy", and the bike will be quite light; with the famed handling (Ceriani forks are definitely not a detraction from the Roadholders), it should be a pretty fun bike to ride when it's all done.

Here's the final mock-up, including quarter fairing, before it rolled off into the garage where the new clean space is-



A shot of the 5-speed cluster-



...and the Lytedrive kit-

This is the unmarked 750cc kit that is a drop-in to the 650 cases with zero modifications-



Venoila pistons-

I've never understood what the reason was for these hybrids. I suspect is was from Norton motors being pirated out of Featherbed chassis for sidecar racing. It sure doesn't seem like there would be any sort of advantage of using a Triumph twin in place of a Domi motor.

Danno wrote:I've never understood what the reason was for these hybrids. I suspect is was from Norton motors being pirated out of Featherbed chassis for sidecar racing. It sure doesn't seem like there would be any sort of advantage of using a Triumph twin in place of a Domi motor.

Pretty close, the Manx engines were used in F3(?) cars, Dominator engines were simply clapped out in most cases and short of the chassis' capabilities (although abut on par with the stock brakes!)

swooshdave wrote:

Danno wrote:I've never understood what the reason was for these hybrids. I suspect is was from Norton motors being pirated out of Featherbed chassis for sidecar racing. It sure doesn't seem like there would be any sort of advantage of using a Triumph twin in place of a Domi motor.

I think one of the advantages is that there are so many Triumph motors laying around. Plus the plethora of go-fast parts for them. Kind of how folks tended to put Chevy V-8s in all the hot rods. A ton of racing parts and because they are so common the prices are reasonable. Plus they tend to make good power.

Plus, I suppose Triumph frames were so flexy, the only way to make one handle would be to trash it and dump the guts into something better.

grandpaul wrote:

Danno wrote:I've never understood what the reason was for these hybrids. I suspect is was from Norton motors being pirated out of Featherbed chassis for sidecar racing. It sure doesn't seem like there would be any sort of advantage of using a Triumph twin in place of a Domi motor.

Pretty close, the Manx engines were used in F3(?) cars, Dominator engines were simply clapped out in most cases and short of the chassis' capabilities (although abut on par with the stock brakes!)

There was a local guy in this 'hood years ago that had one of those Manx-motored F3 cars in the back of his sportscar repair shop. It looked pretty cool with the knuckly-looking twin cammer sticking up out of the cowl behind the driver's seat.

OOPS.

Never mind.

I'm tired... I can't tell the difference on the Manx engines, only ever helped pull the head off of one in the pits and never looked at it in detail. Never studied 'em either.

Is this one?