Monthly Archives: March 2011

The lucky seat.

Posted on by Soulcraftcandyman
Reply

That'll do nicely.

Day two dawned and the first few parts that I’d ordered arrived, crucially the handlebars. Flat and black. The previous evening I’d spent some time wondering about the seat and what I could do. It took my subconscious all night to remind me that in the loft was the old seat from my Speed Triple and that it might, just might, fit. I fetched it out and took it with me along with the bars. First job then was offer the seat up to the mounted petrol tank and frame.

There is a moment at a time like this when your brain seems to be ahead of you somehow. Just the act of walking up to the stripped down machine filled me with a sense that I was onto something here. It’s as if your subconscious has already worked everything out using all of the visual information that your eyes have previously supplied. All bike seats seem to affix in a similar way, a tongue under the nose of the seat fits under a bar in the frame and the rear is then fastened down. I went straight over to the bike, got the seat out of my bag and plonked it on, stood back, raised an eyebrow and put the kettle on. With coffee in hand I returned to see if my luck was in.

Looks better already.

By God, it just sat there looking like it was destined for the job. I removed the old cover material and propped it on some wood for a better look. It was going to work. I’d already spoken to some seat coverers, P&P Seating, and their delivery time was the same as my deadline pretty much so if I sent it off that day for covering I’d get it back pretty much as my build finished. I had to move fast so I needed to make the seat fit before the day was out. The tongue on the front of the Triumph seat is integral with the seat base moulding and was not in the right place, so I cut it off. The Suzuki seat on the other hand had a pressed metal tongue screwed to the seat base, so I removed that too and offered it up to the now trimmed smaller seat. A bit of fiddling and three drilled holes later it was attached to the new seat with three bolts with the nuts sitting snugly under the seat foam.

My under-seat mods

The rear was a bit more awkward but fortune smiled again. The rear bolt holes of the Triumph seat sat directly in line with the mounts for the rear shocks, all I needed was to make a bridging piece mounted to these points to support the rear of the seat. But for now I merely cut a piece of wood as a stand in and gingerly sat on it. The middle of the seat sagged and thus required some support but, again the moulded seat base provided half of the solution. Four moulded bosses protrude from the seat moulding and it was simply a case of putting a packing piece under two of them which would rest firmly on the frame rails below. A bit of scrap 6mm ABS sheet did the job perfectly. Finally I filled the gap between the nose of the seat foam and the tank with a piece of shaped modelling foam and taped it to the original. At the same time I bent some steel strip to form a makeshift rear support to confirm my suspicions and sent it off. I reckoned I could use the newer seat from the Triumph as a reference to check the rear mountings as I went, knowing it would all fit the recovered seat when it came back. Job done, I hoped.

Ready for the chop.

With the new handlebars quickly mounted on the top yoke I could get a fair idea of the stance that I wanted the bike and rider to have. I was feeling quite pleased with myself until I noticed the two huge frame spars sticking out from behind where the seat would mount, an ugly legacy from supporting the original “bench” seat with a welded on cross piece sticking up too. There was no doubt about it, they had to go. I wanted a sleek curving fender there, not a rear end dominated by a couple of girders. A watershed moment approached, the first major modification of the frame and as it turned out, the only one. Now, where to make the cut? Before getting the hacksaw out I wanted to be sure that nothing was going to end up twisting once they were removed. The lateral frame bracing around the rear shock mounts looked pretty sturdy and so these rear rails didn’t seem to perform any other function  than to support the seat.

That's better.

With some masking tape applied I marked where I wanted to make the cuts and took a moment for a final check. Reassured that all would be fine I sawed straight down through the roots of the spars and part of the surrounding box bracing. Nothing moved, I grinned like an idiot. There is a plastic inner mudflap inserted into the space in front of the rear wheel between the frame rails so I marked and cut that down to size too, giving me a clean approach for mating up the new rear fender. To finish the day I filled the holes in the end of the cut spars with hard body filler and sanded it flush ready for painting.

 

 

 

 

 

Let’s get naked.

Posted on by Soulcraftcandyman
Reply

There is nothing like the appearance of a large assembly of parts to give a project a real spur. I’m sure every project bike builder who’s spent months or even years waiting for the commencement of a new undertaking has felt oddly in limbo until that first day when bits of metal are actually there for you to pick up, touch, feel and smell. In a way it’s the same as with a design project where for so long things exist only on paper or in the rarified atmosphere of the computer screen as a photorealistic rendering. There is a palpable sense of things actually happening when that first model is made or the first prototype arrives for testing. So with the bike acquired and the workshop ready it was time to take those first tentative steps.

In the best traditions of passionate and lustful young relationships, there was an almost unbearable urge to get the old girls clothes off and see what lay beneath. To find what mysteries, if any, she concealed under those heavy swathes of chromed steel and whether her heart really was as true as she’d intimated on that first journey home. Like an expectant youth on that first night when his parents are finally out for the evening, I plumped the cushions on my metaphorical sofa by constructing a low workbench out of scrap wood and board. I made sure everything I needed was to hand by laying all my tools out nearby and, even in readiness for any severe grappling made sure I had the appropriate protection to hand in the form of a fresh box of vinyl rubber gloves.

The correctness of my choice of machine was apparent immediately in the ease with which I was able to remove parts. It wasn’t long before I’d started to build a substantial pile of bits of motorcycle on one side of the work space. It was also a sign of how well looked after the bike had been that all fasteners were easy to undo, no rusted up nuts and corroded bolts. If I’d been blessed with a set of air tools it would have taken even less time to take it apart. Within an hour I’d got it back to a state where I could see clearly what I needed to do. Over a cup of coffee I made a note to weigh all the parts that had been removed never to be put back on. It amazes me how much metal even these small bikes have to cart around, without the added mass of a human being on board. No wonder they are generally so slow. The seat alone weighed a ton and, so did the rear rack, and that was what someone had added. No matter it was off now.

Serious diet required.

As I stripped bits off I got busy with a pile of rags and some WD40 and cleaned everything of all the accumulated road dirt and general crud which manages to occupy every crevice of a bike no matter how fastidious you are at keeping them clean in use. Thus duly cleansed I could prod about to my hearts content without getting covered in muck. I revisited my pile of bits and separated those I knew I wanted to keep from those I knew would be sold or chucked. When it came to the time to disconnect all electrical components I took out my handy little bag of tie-on labels and attached one to each wire or connector block. I’ve never had much of a clue about bike electrics so labeling everything was the only way I was going to remember what connected to what when it was time to put it all back together.

Briefly going back to my point about weight. It’s only when you take a part off a bike do you realise the amount of material contained in it. And all that metal must have a detrimental effect on performance. The headlamp brackets weighed about three pounds and the front mudguard about a further ten. I knew I couldn’t do much about the engine at this time but, I resolved to keep the weight down as much as possible in a bid to minimise the mass that the little engine would have to push along.

In the days before I got to the workshop I’d made a list of all the parts that I knew I wanted to buy and had ordered those which were easy to source such as handlebars, rear shocks, headlight brackets and a bit pot of mixed stainless steel fasteners. I’d rather optimistically thought that I might be able to modify the seat unit by basically chopping it in half but now that it was off I could see it was a flawed concept and, would have been pig ugly to boot. I knew I didn’t have time to make one from scratch. Time for a bit of a re-think.