St4s Project

My best mate and I have just booked in to do a cafe racer rally ( The Great Mile 2017 - Malle London ) in August from John O Groats to Lands End mainly as a reason to kick our arses into gear to build cafe racers which we've always threatened we'd do.

I've been through loads of ideas and didn't really want to do the usual BMW RT or Honda CB route and have seen a few Ducati's done by the likes of Radical so set about hunting for a bike. The ST range seems to be quite popular if you don't have the deep pockets to chop up a Panigale or 1098 so the search was on. I knew I wanted to fit a single side swingarm so when an st4s with a single side swingarm and 5 spoke marchesinis turned up on ebay I knew fate was in play.I picked it up yesterday and so now the fun begins





I like the radical style cafe racers but they seem to be the common route, that's not to say I wont go for that style as I really like it however I might go with the Matador style by Radical too...



I'll use this thread to track the build

 

Sooooo - change of plan. I've found another bike that is almost done. It was actually a project on here done by Atilla and I've bought it off Mark at MADASL. The ST4s is now on eBay!

 

Ok - so to update on this

I sold the ST4s and turned my attention to Atillas old bike. It's obviously been sat for a long time and where things hadn't been finished things had started to rust and generally corrode.







The more i looked around I thought that the Radical look has been done quite a lot and so i thought about doing something a bit different - coincidentally at about the same time I stumbled across a carbon seat unit from a Norton Domiracer



I am no good with fabrication and was recommended to go and visit Viv Cowley at V-Moto just outside Oxford. After speaking with Viv about his time spent as an engineer with the Le Mans winning TWR Jaguar team and then with the Bloodhound SSC project and Kenny Roberts Proton Motogp Team I knew he was the guy to help me get this bike sorted. And that's when things started to escalate!!!

I wanted to have a really clean look to the bike and it soon became apparent that sorting the electrics is a big part of that so I spent a small fortune with motogadget getting parts that will be both reliable and compact and I've got Richard from wiring4bikes completely rewiring it. Being ex military and aerospace his attention to detail is second to none and a Ducati wiring loom is relatively straight forward for him. This is how it looked when i bought it





The new loom should be back in the next 24hrs and has now lost the ignition barrell and will have keyless ignition that can be used by carrying a fob or having my phone on me.

So we then stripped the bike completely so Viv could work his magic with the frame













Viv has put little tabs on the back of the tubes for the loom to follow, de lugged, making mounts for the S4r swingarm so I can use conventional rearsets, re built the subframe, re located the battery and ecu and made space for the motogadget stuff to be hidden away

 

Whilst the engine was out we also took the opportunity to clean it up



To fit the motogadget dash the headlight bowl has been reworked so we can house it there so the yokes aren't cluttered







As I type the frame is away being powder coated then its back to be built back up ready for a new exhaust system to be made for which I already have the end cans



The Malle Great Mile is only a couple of weeks away so things are going to progress quickly from here. I'll update as things happen but there are going to be a lot of neat touches that I'm really excited about

 

Thanks guys
The frame and headlight bowl went for powder coating today - dropped off this morning and done by 4pm









Whilst the frame was away Viv got on with venting the clutch case











And started working on replacing the rubber hoses with rigid ones



Tomorrow we start building it back up

 

So today we started building the bike back up. Now the frame is all powder coated it made the swingarm look a bit sorry so we got that all cleaned up with a bit of vapour blasting and some elbow grease and got it back in the bike. We also swapped out the standard ST4 shock for an Ohlins one from a 996.





Viv then started on the headlight bracket, I want the headlight as tight to the headstock as possible so he made a bespoke hanger for it mounted on the bottom yoke rather than from the forks to achieve what I wanted. This will get anodised black in due course.





The wiring loom has been away being worked on so that all of the Motogadget stuff works and has a dedicated loom for ease of troubleshooting should we need to do so in the future. We set out the components on the tray made ready for it all to be connected a fixed properly tomorrow.




If anyone is interested we are documenting the build on instagram. The account is V_motoltd

 

Oh and I forgot, we fitted the new oil lines



Got the rearsets on for trial fitting - they need to go back about 40mm



And started to mark up locations for the custom exhaust system

 

Today was mainly lots of stuff that takes time but you don't see the progress until its' all done i.e electrics!!

Richard from wiring4bikes has made a completely new loom for the bike and today was attaching it to all the component pieces:

this is what was removed from the original loom


this is some work in progress







Richard finalised where he wanted the Motogadget components attached to in the dedicated tray Viv made and Viv set about drilling the holes for it all to be fixed to and made the bracket for the bottom before painting







Viv also made the tray for the battery to sit in the 'V'





I left them to it and popped back later in the day. Again visually not much to see but lots of progress had been made!



The standard switchgear has been removed and Motone switches commonly used on custom Harleys have been used instead. The Biltwell grips have been fitted along with the Motogadget M.Blaze bar end indicators





The new clutch and crankcase breather are now on too



Tomorrow the electrics will be finished as will the exhaust & water pipes. Then we cross our fingers as we hit the starter button ready for dyno on Friday

 

Cheers
Got them from earle's at Silverstone, right next to Baines racing. They made them there and then. 70 quid with a range of coloured fittings if that's your thing.