Custom Motorcycle Frames - Rolling Thunder

Here, Mikey is finishing up a bend with the withdrawn mandrel visible.

For the neck area, solid 2-1/8-inch round stock was placed into the CNC turning center and bored out both for the neck stem and the bearing races.

Here, a short section of tubing destined to be the seat side rail starts to get coped...

... at the proper angle to fit snugly against the mating frame sections.

Here, the back end of the frame is being mocked up. As you can see, it's a precision operation.

The downtubes all the way back to the shock mounts were bent from one continuous piece of tubing that started out as a single 9-foot-long piece.

The frame was carefully loaded into the frame jig. The jig keeps everything straight while maintaining the necessary frame angles and dimensions.

The next step was to tack-weld the parts together before TIG-welding everything together with a handheld torch.

The laser cutter can slice through 1/2-inch-thick plate with a cut width of only 0.010-0.015 inch. It's fast and efficient, having a smoother cut than a plasma cutter.

The Bagger frame uses a flat steel plate in the area around the neck joint and other stress points. A laser cutter was used to cut the proper profile.

Next up was TIG-welding the swingarm together for the 200mm rear tire we're going to use.