Crossover Commando with Featherbed style tank

Off the beater path.

Gareth in NZ sent a photo of this super clean fully kitted 71 Commando in Featherbed trim. Check out the tank, pipes and seat. Its an eye catcher for sure. Looks like the frame and sundries have been modified (no seat loop).

The tank does not look level at the bottom. Seems to be sitting up on the spine at the front.

That is a sweet looking bike!

Very neat.

But "in featherbed trim" just means in this case a featherbed-looking type tank,
its 'merely' a Commando with the seat loops chopped off... ?

And some very flash looking brakes installed.
And, I must be getting old, those handlebars look uncomfortable for road use... !

Very neat...

Great looking bike but could not live with the gastank the way it sits. Needs lowering and leveling out horizontally quite a bit. :wink:

Torontonian said:

Needs lowering

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Those sexy fibreglass SS tanks that sits low over Duc bevel motors have a large false 'lip' on the lower part of the tank that does nothing but make the tank look to sit lower.
Maybe this style of tank needs something similar ?

Rohan said:

And, I must be getting old, those handlebars look uncomfortable for road use... !

...

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I'd bring them up against the top yoke, if I was going to ride it.

Its set up for laying on the tank to cut the wind when letting it have its head. That doesn't mean its going to be comfortable when driving at normal speeds like it was when it was stock. The owner wants something different. The motor is tweaked to do things that a stock motor could never do. Check out the carbs (above photo). Yes its a bit extreme. I can relate to it because I ride a street racer and its asking me to take it for a spin. For my tastes - flat drag bars are low enough for fast street and highway work. But each to his own. He's got still got the isolastics but he's leaning toward the classic stripped down featherbed cafe racer look and has a performance package that can deliver the goods - along with brakes to bring the speed down in a hurry. Note the tank/seat similarities of the photo above to the featherbed racer below.

Clip-ons fitted too low make braking difficult. You feel you're trying to avoid vaulting over the bars.

Those are both beauties, thanks for pposting them up here Jim. :mrgreen:

Interesting pipes. Is that a 2-into-1, or is there another silencer on the drive side?

Ken

not sure but it looks like a viking 2/1 system.

lcrken said:

Interesting pipes. Is that a 2-into-1, or is there another silencer on the drive side?

Ken

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My Featherbed tank sits over the top rails, it don't look right sitting on top and more on the inside of the top rail, but both bikes look great, I say it has 2 pipes one on each side, nice and loud with straight open pipes, when I first built my Featherbed it had open pipes but was a bit to loud for the road.

Ashley