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Rocket Racer

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10~18kustoms

Wore out three sets of tires already!
This project didn't really start out as a racer/roadster/board tracker style bike, but it just kinda has evolved that way! It started when a fellow CABE'er had a Monark Rocket for sale or to part out. I was first just interested in the tank & possibly the chain guard and rear rack because I already had another red Rocket frame and thought these would be a good start to building it out. But, as it turned out I ended up with the whole bike. So now I had 2 frames and parts etc.

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At first I was thinking of just trying to find a close patina match front fender and truss rods and building it out as is. But when I had it on the work stand I noticed the frame color was faded to an almost red/orange color. Knowing I had another loose Rocket tank that was also faded to about this same patina I decided to try it on. As it turned out the match was almost perfect, and in my opinion looked better than the original tank. So thus started plan B.

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Time for a seat. I had this old long spring saddle laying around for a while that was pretty sad and had a very amateur repair done on it at some point past. I also had some new upholstery material that I thought would be a good color compliment to the bike. I've done a lot of recovers before, but this was a little out of my comfort zone. 1st) Using a new material, my old favorite was discontinued. 2nd) Also trying a different padding material. And 3rd) the big one...first time doing a single pan recover. (before I have only done double pans). Not really happy with the results, but it will do for a rider quality bike like this one.

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I've built a few fenderless board track racer style bikes before but they always just seem to look simple and missing/lacking something in my opinion, This bike was already missing the front fender and the rear was badly damaged on the back 1/3 so it seemed a good candidate for the fenderless look, but it just wasn't working for me so I decided to compromise and go with the bobber look. So I trimmed off the damaged part of the rear fender.

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I also really wanted the bike to have a chain guard and remembered how cool this 24" guard I had was and wanted to try to use it. First picture is as I originally found it. It was pretty crusty and back when I was first experimenting with OA a few years ago I dipped it along with a rack for a test. It cleaned up pretty good, but being a 24" guard I have never had a use or bike for it but I so loved the large Rocket graphic on it I've saved it. With a little faux color enhancement and tweaking it now has finally found a home.

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I've built a few fenderless board track racer style bikes before but they always just seem to look simple and missing/lacking something in my opinion, This bike was already missing the front fender and the rear was badly damaged on the back 1/3 so it seemed a good candidate for the fenderless look, but it just wasn't working for me so I decided to compromise and go with the bobber look. So I trimmed off the damaged part of the rear fender.

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Im likin' that bobbed fender.
 
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