Hi,my name is Jim and my cycle friends call me Swiss. Long years ago when I was just a lad, new in the Army I played with racing a Honda SL125. Starting out I couldn't do much with it and figured that if I drilled a few holes in the stamped steel frame that it would lighten it up a bit. So I got out my 3/8" drill and started drilling holes from 1/16" up to 1/2" in diameter (biggest drill bit that I could afford and stepped down to fit my drill). Ended up with almost 200 holes in the frame and my Army buddies looked at it and called it Swiss-cheese! So from there on out I was called Swiss by them. By the way, never did break that old frame and retired it as a swingset for my boys after I built a chrome-moly 4130 frame for the 125 engine. I read all of the old articles in the Popular Cycling magazines about how to build the "Ultimate Honda 100/125" and I built my own. Being young an in the Army with a wife and 2 kids I couldn't afford to go out and buy a new bike so I kept modifying the one that I had. I found a couple of Race car fabrication shops one of which had a frame jig for building cycle frames so I didn't have to built a wooden jig like in the articles.
Finished up that 125 and it weighed about 175lbs/79kg. I didn't have much space to drill holes in it but I did a few anyway!
I decided that I liked a dirt bike that felt like a bicycle and had some go power but didn't want anything bigger than 175-200cc because bikes like the XL250 and soon to be introduced XL350 were just too heavy for playing in the woods. Then I went to the MX races at Puyallup, WA and saw a shop fabricated XL403 from University Honda in Seattle, WA (they were the early local sponsors of Jim Pomeroy) built into their own custom frame and they said it weighed about 222lbs/101kg... I had to have one but checked and the prices of one of their frames or one of the C&J or other frames was just too much to afford....
So I built my own. I could afford to buy a few parts each month so I bought the best that I could afford and find. Started with an engine in a crate from Honda and built the bike around it. It never ran before it had a 403cc big bore, and Web Cam and 36mm Mikuni! Also again went to building a custom frame and bought the 4130 tubing by the foot at a Seattle Aircraft Supply shop. I found a custom fabrication shop that had a nice mandrel bender and agreed to bend the cradle tubes for me. Dropped them off and he said 2-3 weeks and he would call me. Well 3 weeks + went by and I finally got a call and he asked me what the specs were on the tubing, as someone had carried them off! I told him and a week later picked up the tubes all ready to go. Then started the dragging the frame jig back and forth to the car shop to get the tubes welded a couple of pieces at a time. Would stick the heavy steel plate jig in the back of my Honda Station Wagon and drive back and forth to get done what I could afford and had fitted up. Eventually I got all of the pieces together and had a nice new bike. Weight with no gas was 219lbs/99.4kg.. I took it up to the Honda dealer where I had bought the engine new in a crate, and the shop foreman took a ride on it and said that it felt real light, "What does it weigh?" Well I told him it weighed 219lbs/99.4kg and he said , "No Way!" So I asked if he had a shop scale and he said that he did. So he got it and we weighed each wheel and subtracted the pounds/kg for the gallon of gas that we could see in the tank. He added his figures up and I asked him what he got? He said, "217lbs/98.4kg." I told him that I liked his numbers better than mine!
I have been building on the same bike for 35 years and almost have it finished in build #6... Taking a couple of more pounds off. It has gone from 6" of front and rear travel to 12"+ of front and rear travel. I am right now putting a set of 43mm USD KTM 85 sx forks on it to replace the TT600 front end that has been on it for many years now. That is pulling about 6 lbs/2.7kg off the weight and dropping the front travel to 11". I am getting older and need a lower bike to comfortably ride the woods. Engine has been fully gone through with bigger cam, bigger carb, porting, big valves and big custom exhaust. That is what I like to play with is custom exhaust systems.
Thanks, Swiss
