XR650R Baja 1x Dream Bike Build (Update 2)

Wow time has flown!  Apologies for anyone following the build via this blog, but I have somewhat neglected my duties, although I have been keeping people up to date over on my Advrider build thread.

New house, means new shed, means loads of space, means lots of progress over the last year (but still not enough in my mind!).  The bike is showing serious signs of completion now and I will attempt to add a whole lot of information at once. Moving forward I will make a new post for each component to keep it easy to read, with regular 'update' posts to show overall progress.

Please use the menu on the side of this blog to jump straight to the topic you are interested in as I add them.

Since I last wrote I have put a lot of time and effort into finding sources for parts and it has been amazingly successful.  I will touch on this a little later though.  Just three months ago my shed looked like this:

And after many hours watching Ebay and the internet for parts this is what the bike now looks like (well actually this was a few weeks ago but I want to take you through the stages):

Shows the custom rear shock fitted

The motor is cleaned and back in with exhaust fitted

over all things are looking nice and new again

So I ended up having a serious run of luck after inadvertently meeting the father of Mike Childress who was one of the three riders to ride the exact bike I am replicating to victory in the 2005 baja 1000.  It also turned out that since then Mikey had the front suspension (by Precision Concepts), fuel tank (IMS) and the works race exhaust system (T4 by Pro Circuit) off the actual bike sitting in his Dad's garage and they were looking to offload it!  So amazingly, along with a front brake rotor I got from a BITD bike ridden by Johnny Campbell, I now have many major parts that have a strong link to the real bike.  I am not sure what one calls a replica that has real parts on it but I do know that It makes the build that much more important to me and any followers.

I got the rear shock sent away and rebuilt into the CR500/XR650R hybrid which Precision Concepts did on the original, even copying the red rear spring.  I can't wait to try that out with the original fork combination!  I will post more on this soon.  I have also had a large OEM Honda order arrive which includes tonnes of new plastics and other bits to freshen up my rather tired XRR.  I must say that even I am impressed with the way it looks after fantasising for all this time over photos of the real thing.

The most recent major addition has been the Fluidyne radiators which arrived this week.  They were used ones so I have cleaned them up and fitted them.  More to come on this later too.  The major parts still needed are triple clamps (the blue Johnny Campbell Signature ones) which still elude me unfortunately, the wheels need respoking, the steering damper and various smaller things like digital speedo (for roadworthy), handlebars, footpegs, chain and sprocket, tyres etc.

So my personal deadline on the build is now set at March/April 2014.  In some way, shape or form I will have between 90-100% of the bike complete by then so that it is back to being ridable rather than a museum piece which it currently is.  Watch this space for any updates and thank you all for sticking with the build, and as always if you need any help or advice or even information that I have left out, please get in touch!