Don, Charlie, and JBenard, you guys aren't offending me in the least. I expected something much more "factory-like" for $1000, from someone who's been doing this for years, but at this point it is what it is. At least the bike is all fitting back together well, with the exception of the pipe.
As for the welds, the local guy I took my bike to to finish the fabrication and fix the pipe, does AF conversions too and has hand built about 30 custom cars from scratch over the past 30 years. I went to him first to do my project, but he was too busy and I was in a hurry. It NEVER pays to get in a hurry!!! Anyway, he looked at the welds and thought they looked OK, but agreed with some of the comments on here that he wouldn't have gone the route George did with the down tubes. He said he would have bent brand new tubes and installed them (as stated by others on here), instead of piecemealing the tubes together.
His ccraftmanship is nothing short of amazing (like the pics at that link). He built two KDX220/KX250F hybrids for a father-son team I race with, and their bikes truly look better than factory. And he did each bike for about $1,100.00, including final assembly. All they had to do was pick them up, fire them up, and go racing. You can't beat that!
I'm picking my bike up from him today after work and I'll put some more pictures on here of the completed pipe, airbox, and radiator mods he did for me.
I just hope my frame doesn't break. I'm a racer and that could be really ugly!!! You can bet I'll be inspecting that frame very closely after every ride for a while.
I'll keep this thread going and post a race report after my first hare scrambles, 1 March.