| LMAO !! Thanks! "I would like to accept this award today by thanking everyone who has looked at and laughed at my bike ...." I'm also on your TPB site, btw ...
Seriously, though, the whole reason behind the bike was to rebuild it in a way that would be functional and fun and NOT kill any of the performance of the bike. Okay, yes, it looks funny - that was the point!! The spraycan mod was something I'd seen several guys do on another site, and since my exhaust pipe was broken, anyway, why not go ahead and redo it? (I originally wanted a WD-40 can on there, but didn't have any empty ones laying around.) Once I got that on there, I started looking around and thinking, "What other fun and goofy things can I do to this bike without decreasing performance or totally messing it up?" The Altoids can air cleaner not only works, but works VERY well - I actually had to rejet to something HUGE just to handle all the extra air coming in. I drilled the original main jet out to something like a 74 or a 76, so one of my next tests will be to try running that jet in the bike, and seeing how it works. Gas filter? Had a spare for my car, figured it would be a lot better than that Briggs&Stratton lawnmower filter I had ..... I have one of the original-style killswitches that is screwed into a hole drilled in the handlebars (how many guys have one of those?), and I needed a way to protect it from accidentally being hit, so a spare dremel wrench was bent 90 degrees and screwed down under the killswitch. Despite the way the bike looks, it performs quite well.
If you could have seen the mess the bike was in when I got it, you wouldn't believe it was the same bike. It was literally a basket case - the previos owner had used it like a dirt bike, and had beaten the hell out of it. The bars had been drilled for self-tapping screws because the original bolts were stripped (idiot didn't even bother making sure the handlebar angles matched before drilling), the exhaust was bent in about three different directions, the engine would barely turn over - I think the guy was running straight gas in it or something - the wheels were flat, the fairings (what was left of them) were destroyed, the rear brakes weren't working, the front brakes worked but not real well .... it took a long time for me to get the bike repaired to the point where it was rideable again. About the only good thing was that the frame was fairly straight, and the engine turned over.
Like I said, The Rat was built for fun. It's not a "serious" race bike - I have another HF Cag for that purpose. This one is something to goof around with, try out silly and funny things, and basically was built the way it is to make people laugh. I don't have to have a high-dollar bike with a custom-built motor and 32 layers of clearcoat over a thousand-dollar chameleon paint job (not that I wouldn't LIKE one, mind you, but not everyone can afford something like that)... just give me a decent running engine, a couple of wheels to put the power on the ground, and a three-dollar can of flat black primer. While everyone else is buffing their Blatas, GP's, and BZM's to mirror shines and polishing all that chrome, I'll be out riding. | 
