After building my Featherbed café racer, I had tools, time and an idea to rebuild my Fastback into something special.  First and foremost was putting a big drum brake in front so I bought a Grimeca four leading shoe drum.  Another weird idea was to put bigger wheels and after searching for the tires I could buy without pulling teeth, I settled on 21”  Another weird idea was to use rose joints to replace all the shims and Teflon washers used on the Commando.  Since I made most of the parts I used except the rod ends, the cost out of my pocket was probably less than getting all new parts to replace the worn out ones.

On my Featherbed, I managed to hide most of the components like the oil tank and the battery and I wanted to go in the same direction on this build.  After looking at many pictures of other bikes with the oil tank in the frame, I decided to use the backbone tube as an oil tank, but to increase the capacity, I cut the bottom of the tube and added steel plates to increase the capacity to 3 liters in the tank not counting the lines and filter.

I had planned to use an aluminum tank which I would have modified to go with my frame, but instead chose to go with m old Fastback tank which I modified to fit, I also protected it from the dreaded ethanol laced gas by lining it with a layer of fiberglass soaked with vinyl esther resin plus a couple of coats of Hirsh sealer.

Being crazy helped me build this bike, I made most of what is seen, I welded, machined and formed the parts until they looked and performed the way I liked them.  I started the build in January of 2011 and had it running in time for the Empire Rally, the only thing left to do is to get a good paint job, right now it was rattle can painted in white, I will get it done right next spring.  

So there you have it, my version of a Commando, I’m sure the purists will scream, but that is what I wanted.

Jean