Brian Casey's 800
Lime green paint was done by my local car body repair shop for the princely some of £160..
...not too bad, its not brilliant but its a lot better than I would have done with spray
paint. The colour was the closest they had to 'kwak racing green'.
The pipes are from the states made by hard chrome and supplied by a custom shop in
nottingham (custom bikes?) I have had the bike dyno jetted to get it breathing right.
The pipes are VERY loud and quite different to the harley sound, probably because I am
constantly thrashing the tits off it. Friends have commented that it sounds like a
spitfire on a fast dive when I zoom past. do not use these if you want to be discrete.
The seat came from 'flatland motorcycles' in Holland, it cost about £100, very good
quality, service was great too. I built the bracketry to fit to the bike, fairly simple
with small mig and stick welder. Its mounted about 100mm higher and the same further
forward than a standard seat. This gives tons more control over the machine, you can feel
what the front end is doing and allows you to slam on the front brake without losing it!.
I am 6'4" tall and just cant sit in the standard 'low' position, just kills my back. The
new seat is very comfy and I can do 3-400 miles a day no problem.
I raised the headlight by modifying the bracket and remounting under the top yoke, it
makes the bike look more 30's.
Its got a huge air horn mounted on the left hand crash bar and at 134dB its great for
waking up dim witted drivers.
The crash bars are courtesy of e-bay and cost £45.... a bargain and quite handy as it
gave me somewhere to mount the 55w stainless spotlights (autojumble £25). These are also
effective at getting traffic out of the way, as in a rear view mirror, they look a bit
'police'. The rear spotlight is a beehive 50's harley replica, required modified mountings
but looks much better than the stock item.
The saddlebags are another £45 from ebay and they are sitting on the old double seat frame,
with some supprort struts added. Not very pretty but zero cost and its somewhere to stuff
a set of waterproofs and the shopping
All up the mods paint and bits cost very little, I guess that including the bike it stands
me at about £4000, nothing really considering the laughs I have on it.
The standard drifter is very pretty but a bit plain for my tastes, this bike doesnt just
turn heads it practically snaps necks. I get more comments about this bike than anything I
have ridden in the past 30 years (and that includes harleys, ducatis and all manner of jap
bikes) non-bikers particularly love it.
I dont ride the bike like a cruiser, and tend to thrash it everywhere, it goes really well
and if you look well ahead to avoid too much braking and acceleration you can surprise a
lot of race reps.
I totally love it and i go everywhere on it.
I have a second drifter which is currently up at dream machine where its getting a full
50's hot rod flame job, looking forward to putting that back on the road.