So, if I’m going to be serious about this, one big hurdle was going to be getting the bike stable while I started ripping bits off of it. The little Harbor Freight jack-stand I bought just wasn’t going to cut it, mostly because the Savage has an annoying little quirk – the bottom of the thing isn’t flat, anywhere. No matter what angle you go at it, there’s -something- hanging down that makes it unstable even if you block the hell out of it with chunks of 2×4 or whatever. My buddy Mike was also starting work on his own build, a barn-find GS650, and he constructed this killer rolling work bench/bike stand combo. I loved the idea of the stand and designed something that wasn’t quite as tall. Some 2x4s, 4×4 posts, heavy-duty casters, a chunk of 3/4″ plywood and a motorcycle chock did the trick nicely.
A little more photoshop magic using the actual foam tank to see how it might work on a finished bike:
So, now that I have a platform to work on, it seemed like a good time to start thinking about actual bits that could be fabricated (even though at this point I honestly didn’t know how I would do any of it). I started by getting a couple lengths of aluminum tubing and hand-bending them over a chunk of 4×4 that I cut a nice curve in. I shoved a dowel rod in the end of the curved bit and pushed them together.
In order to suss out the cowl and seat setup I cut a center profile, then stuck a couple bits of wood stock together with double-sided tape so I could cut the ribs symmetrically with just one cut. Kind of like folding paper to cut a star. See, elementary school DID teach me something.
At this point, I had come to that lovely and every-rumored “inflection point” on the tank. I had two issues. First, and as can be seen below, it kind of sorta sucks in context of the whole bike. Granted, there was still a ton of carving to do, but I just wasn’t digging it. Second – due to the way I had to cut the top profile of the tank, I didn’t take into account that the bottom was no longer ‘square’ and flat due to the bottom of the side profile. The result was that the top was -not- symmetrical. The left side of the tank didn’t protrude from the centerline as far as the right side did. Not by a ton, but it bothered me. Also, trying to carve out the spine cavity was a friggin’ nightmare that relied heavily on the aforementioned bread knife.
So, not exactly back-to-the-drawing-board, but I did decide to abandon the new tank. Maybe one day I’ll revisit that project, but instead I decided to stick with the stock tank and figure out how to make it groovy. So I took the wooden seat mock-up and made a paper cowl to make sure I wasn’t losing my mind and that it would actually work.
Relatively pleased with where it was now going I tossed up a plastic drop-cloth so to get a sort-of cleaner photo of the actual bike to toss into photoshop so I could ‘check my math’ on the latest look:
I think I can live with this!