πŸπŸ—πŸ‘πŸ• π”π§πœπ₯𝐞 π’π­π«πžπ­πœπ‘ 𝐂𝐨π₯𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐗𝐋𝐖𝐁 - BO17 Build Journal - Finished in 3rd Place - 1937 Uncle Stretch Colson XLWB

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I love the cycle of life some of these Rat Rod Bike forum parts have. I got this light (along witht the set of fender skirts on this bike) in a trade with @Machine Age Victim about 8 years ago. I've never used it yet and as I opened it up to swap out the mounting bolt for something smaller, I remembered that this was a light that he had LED-ized years ago. I'll have to dig back and see if he documented it on one of his builds. Searching around it is a KD894 spotlight (that is what the handle is for up top).

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You can see where MAV had cut the back of a sealed beam headlight for this.


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I was surprised at how little corrosion there was in the cool little rubberized battery pack he had.

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With some wishful thinking, I sprayed everything down with some CRC Contact Cleaner and put some new batteries in. Nothing lit up. But there is hope. The hard work is done.

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That’s a kissing cousin to the 7” Bates motorcycle light.
 
I dig that headlight, looks a lot like a Bates on vintage Triumphs. I seem to recall the thread when it or one like it was built. A possibility for mounting it could be making an under mounted swan neck from a chrome water supply pipe.


That’s a kissing cousin to the 7” Bates motorcycle light.


Yes, they must be related. Doing a little more googling around this is the KD 894 version of the Bates light. This model has the hand grip attached to aim it as a spotlight. That is the piece that I will be removing from it.

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I remember trying to find the bulb for one of those Bates, and none of the auto parts stores carried that bulb. I ended up buying a set of Yankee lights for my bike that night, and changing them in the parking lot.
 
Check out this blast from the past. Here are Jake and I in Philly eight years ago today. Build Brothers for over 11 years now.

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OK, the Belushi doll was a shocker. Not exactly part of the he-man collection

Say hello to our little friends

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I still have to work on the tank and also the pipe brackets, but DrT and OJ got me thinking about painting today, so I chased that squirrel a little.
Silver or gray tones have been in my mind, but after doing an ugly sketch in gray, I'm just not feeling it.

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DrT had suggested some blues so I looked back through my idea folder and found these two bikes that I had safed off for ideargeneratin.

One is a Colson bullnose Firestone

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And the other is this wicked custom stretch

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I picked up some Behr Inked Gloss from home depot today and did a sample half of my sacrificial paint fender. I think it may be a bit too blue. It looks a good bit different than the examples they show online.

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Looking through my paint box, I found this Satin Peacock Blue that I tested for SteamRoller a couple of years ago. So I painted the other half of the sacrifical paint fender with it. This one may be a bit too teal like for my build.

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About the time I started to sit back and study them, it started to rain a little. I've just got to dwell on this more as I work on other stuff. I think I like the grayer blue on the big stretch bike. I'm sure that I will be making more runs out to see what paint choices are in stock.
 
I picked up some Behr Inked Gloss from home depot today and did a sample half of my sacrificial paint fender. I think it may be a bit too blue. It looks a good bit different than the examples they show online.

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Looking through my paint box, I found this Satin Peacock Blue that I tested for SteamRoller a couple of years ago. So I painted the other half of the sacrifical paint fender with it. This one may be a bit too teal like for my build.

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About the time I started to sit back and study them, it started to rain a little. I've just got to dwell on this more as I work on other stuff. I think I like the grayer blue on the big stretch bike. I'm sure that I will be making more runs out to see what paint choices are in stock.
Darker blue
 
Digging back through other paints that I've tested in the past, I realized that the first place that I tested these exact skirts was on SaltHammer shortly I had to change from the FloCycle frame to the normal Silver King frame. These are currently painted Hammered Antique Pewter. I had completely forgotten that the skirts where in play on that build or that I mocked them on the front too. They didn't make the final cut though.


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Another color that I remember using for some parts on starNbars was Hammered Black. One of the places was the star outline on the headlight glass.

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Back to work on the bike today. Paint choices can wait.

I started looking at the tank and decided i wanted a better nose and also wanted to try and mimic the Colson bullnose tank a little.

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I couldn't find the other desklamp piece, so i picked up this modern led bike headlight that I pulled from some bike that I flipped awhile back.

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It's the right shape and size. All of the internals work great and it has a 2 way solid/ flashing circuit. It's a shame to cut up a good light, but I will reuse the guts for my headlight.

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So i used some tape to get an approximation of what part of the nosecone would be on the bat tank.

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Then i cut away the trim lip of the light

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My idea is have two darts wrap on each side of the tank to pay homage to the old Colson bullnose tank trim.


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I am following the lead of a couple of other builders that taped up an area so that they could more easily mark up and layout cuts they needed to make.

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I wasnt very confident on my centerlines or how plumb my bat junction line was with this conical shape, so I abandoned the idea of being precise with my initial cutout lines. So I simply marked up rough lines with plenty of margin all around and came up with this Boba Fett design.

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Broke out the dremel and ended up with this samurai helmet.

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