First order of business, head to the Makerspace and grab a length of 1″ steel tubing, and using my aluminum mock-up as a guide, head over to the mandrel bender and make the hoop. It took me longer than I care to mention to figure out the machine. It wasn’t as hard as I feared, but fear was kind of in play the whole time. I mean, jeez, I’m using a big hydraulic press to bend a piece of thick 1″ steel tubing like it was plastic. That’s some force I wasn’t keen on seeing applied to my fleshy bits.
Once I got the bend made, I needed to take it home and check fitment, and kind of figure out how I was going to mount it to the bike.
It became clear I was going to have to bend the front two legs inwards towards the tank or it was going to look awkward at best. I went back to the Makerspace and did my best to sort the angle I needed. I did the math right, but somehow it didn’t translate to reality. I almost went too far, but in the end it worked. My symmetry is a -tad- off, but not enough to start over.
I figured out the angle everything needed to be by bolting some flat scrap steel through the original fender mount holes underneath the two frame ends pictured above. Once I had the length sussed I cut four short lengths of tubing (I only needd two, but since the Makerspace is a good 12 mile haul from the house I figured to err on the side of caution).
I discovered a guy who graduated with my sister lived a stone’s throw from my house – I can literally almost see his place from mine. Bill Devore is an avid avid motorcyclist and one of the founders and driving force behind the Garage Brewed Moto Show here in Cincinnati. It also turns out we -both- worked with the same local freelance film folks back in the late 80’s/early 90’s, and somehow just missed ever meeting each other when I got a gig as a full-time editor. Bill is one of the best humans I’ve met, he let me borrow his welder so I could take a crack at the next steps, mainly getting this seat mount sorted and fabricating the battery box. Please be kind during the following images, I was literally feeling out the welding process and learning as I did it. A lot of it ain’t pretty, but by golly it works!
A quick diversion in the middle of the seat hoop project. I had ordered the new tires, which was a surprisingly tricky process. There’s a whole new language of how tires are measured and described depending on, as near as I can tell, the time of day, angle of the sun, relative gravity at sea level, what you had for breakfast and the third letter of your wife’s maiden name. I knew I wanted to go with an 18″ rear rim, but getting the height of the tire’s sidewall would be critical or it would rub on the front brace of the swingarm. More on all that later. The point here is that I needed to figure out how long my new shocks would have to be, so I did some measuring and made a couple surrogates out of 1×2.
Having taken care of that for the time being I could continue on the combo battery-electronics tray/integrated rear fender. I knew I wanted to tuck the battery under the seat and at this point wasn’t 100% sure what the rewiring process was going to look like. In my head it wasn’t going to be that big a deal, I mean – jeez, it’s a battery, a starter, one spark plug and a few lights and switches. How complicated could it be?
But the battery compartment itself was going to need to fit all of whatever in there. So I used some manila folders to figure out the template for some thin sheet metal. It was a weird shape ’cause the frame itself wasn’t perfectly smooth due to bits that were welded on for things like the original seat mount, fender mount, etc. After some trial and error I was able to get it sorted.
I also had to figure out how to mount the front of the hoop to the frame. More trial and error and a little wooden mockup to get the angles right, then I fabricated the bracket out of a hunk of 1/4″ steel using the bandsaw at the Makerspace and my Dremel at home to finesse the pipe cubbies. I added a little bracket at the back of the thing to double as the rear seat pan mounts -and- rear turn signal mounts.
I needed to come up with a base for the battery holder, as it was going to need to lean back a tad to work in this new configuration. I cut another hunk of 1/4″ steel, and made the platform and two triangular brace/supports. I bought a 4″ wide roll of 1/8″ rubber mat. It will go behind the battery and on the face of the support to cushion and insulate.
Next I drilled a couple of holes in the pan and welded two nuts underneath to it to mount the rectifier.
Having sorted all that, I needed to figure out the side panels. This was more than a little bit of a head-scratcher since nothing about the new hoop matched up perfectly to the frame below, and the inward-bent front legs of the hoop crossed the vertical plane of the frame. I was going to have to do some sheet metal bending, which only moderately terrified me, but first I was going to have to figure out the pattern I’d be cutting. As mentioned before, since the hoop bends weren’t -perfectly- symmetrical, each side was going to need it’s own template.
You can sort-of see under the battery that I had welded in a couple of rods, the front one will be where the front seat pan hook is located, the one under the battery will be for the strap that holds the battery in place.
Next up – the wheels on the bike go round and round, er, right?