One of the bigger issues I was going to have on this build was the rearsets. I knew from the get-go that I didn’t want the forward controls anymore, but moving them was a whole ‘nother level of “no going back”. Before I went to the level of hacking off bits, I wanted to sort out how I was going to do this. This whole section was actually spread out over several months, but I’m consolidating it into one page for the sake of sanity, or at least a better understanding of the whole process in context.
As I mentioned earlier, my initial plan was to make all of this at the Makerspace. I was going to use the water jet saw to cut the brackets, the CNC machines to carve out the adjustable foot pegs. They were going to use a system of interlocking gears that could be taken apart, rotated and slid back together to get whatever angle you wanted between the rearset arm and the attachment holes for either brake line or shifter shaft.
Then COVID happened. It was late March when UC suspended all face-to-face classes. As of this writing it’s Nov. 11, 2020 and I have literally not been back on campus since then, teaching everything online. The other downside is that they shut the Makerspace down to us normal user types. Completely threw my plan off, so I had to decide whether or not I wanted to wait til whenever it reopened. I decided the answer was ‘hell no’, so I had to come up with an alternative plan.
First order of business was to mock up a couple options. I started to use cardboard, but getting things in place on the bike to test for sizing was not optimal, as carboard will bend and I didn’t want to botch a metal part ’cause some cardboard flexed a little and I didn’t notice. I first thought about making the bracket mount over the top of the swing arm pivot, but quickly realized that would make mounting the whole thing a nightmare.
I decided to defer (again) to the method the RYCA guys used (mounting from under and behind the pivot) and played a little with Fusion 360 again to map it out, and then made the first bits on the bandsaw.
Adding the rear footpeg, arm and toe peg verified this -should- do the trick.
Since I couldn’t use the CNC machines at the moment, I finally gave up on my idea of brewing my own rearsets. I’ll still almost certainly will take a crack at it when the world opens back up, but at the moment progress wins over, um, -not- progress. Dammit. I ordered some indexable rearsets from Dime City and started testing placement.
Time to make it for real. I picked up some 4″ wide by 3/16″ steel from metalsdepot.com and it arrived in just a few days. I cut two chunks off the bar with my angle grinder, traced the pattern I used for the wooden inner bracket mockup onto one of the pieces with a sharpie, double-side taped the two pieces of metal together and then first cut away all I could with the cutoff wheel, then used a flap disc. Appologies for the crap video here – the exposure is all outta whack. And when I started to use the flap disc to shape it it instantly became stupid clear that I needed to hack off the triangle of metal beyond the line from limb-tip to limb-tip. I stopped the video, changed back to the cutoff wheel, hacked it off, and then apparently bumbled the record button for the next step. So imagine, if you will, some absolutely brilliant cutting away at that inner concave curve with the flap wheel.
The end results were surprisingly serviceable, so I did my hopefully-precise measuring from center to center on the existing allen bolts I’d be using to mount the whole shebang. Did the double-sided tape trick again and went to the drill press.
I want to reiterate something here before going farther. Up until this project, I had -never- thought I would be working with metal like this. For whatever reason I just assumed steel was too hard to work without super specialized hardened tools. Even though my modestly-priced drill bits (for example) said “for wood, metal, plastics” I just sorta assumed that was limited to aluminum. Don’t know why that was stuck in my head, but those brief classes at the Makerspace really opened my eyes, and as it turns out, what you can do with an angle grinder, a drill press, drill vice, and cutting oil is kind of amazing. BTW, that stupid angle grinder is the best $30 I’ve spent in years!
Now that the inner brackets were sorted, I needed to make the stand-off bars and outer brackets. I started on the stand-offs with a bar of square 3/16″ tubing and chopped off two pieces to length. I -intended- to use the cold saw at the Makerspace so I had to punt. I entertained the notion of using the cutoff wheel on the angle grinder, but there was no way I could figure I’d be able to keep it even remotely square, and it -had- to be perfect. I knew I had two perfect ends (the opposite ends of the tubing, factory cut), but I couldn’t find anyone in my network with a viable solution. I tried mounting a 7″ cutoff wheel in my chop saw, but as I feared it just didn’t spin fast enough and barely made a scratch. I ended up at Harbor Freight getting the cheapest cutoff saw they had. It worked, at least the cuts were square. I then hit the ends with the flap disc to create a little chamfer for welding.
For the outer brackets I used the exact same procedure I had used for the inner ones. Chopped off small chunks of the flat 3/16″ bar, taped them together, traced the pattern and used a combination of cutoff wheel and flap disc in the angle grinder. This also better illustrates what I managed to miss capturing on the steps for shaping the inner brackets.
Everything seemed copacetic, so on to the weld.
I took the finished piece down to Killer Koatings across the river in Covington, KY. Man, talk about fast service. I dropped it off around 1pm on a Thursday, ran a couple errands, and right when I was pulling in the drive at 4pm, the phone rang, it was done!
I’m starting to notice a trend in this process. I have yet to find a company that sucks. It’s been kind of humbling. Anyway, I ran down and picked it up the next morning and bolted it in place. It works exactly as planned. It’s almost like I know what I’m doing…
And there it is. One of the bits I was most concerned about, and it’s solid as can be. Still need to work out some mechanics (how the rear brake line and light switch will work, and there’s a whole ‘nother monumental mess to deal with surrounding the sidestand.
I’ve been putting off one of the other leaps into a pit of potential despair…rewiring the harness. I’d been putting it off ’cause as I mentioned before in the distant recesses of my consciousness there was a glimmer of whimsical fantasy that figured it wasn’t gonna be -that- big of a deal.
Oh, how wrong can a bipedal electrically controlled meat sack be?