This time with pictures.

Seeing as I'm going into hospital on Monday for an operation on my foot I've been trying to spend as much time as I can in the workshop. Fortunately for this blog I've pretty much finished the wiring and have gone back to fabricating stuff so I've got stuff I can actually photograph and put up here.

First of all I had been wondering how to switch off the electrics. I wasn't going to bother with a locking switch as for a bike of this type it's so easy to hotwire so they don't really add any security. The Stuart pointed out that at least if I have a key to remove I know I have switched the bike off and don't need to worry about coming back to a flat battery. As I have to go back to the workshop at least once every time I leave to make sure I have turned off the lights/closed the valve on the welding bottle/close the garage door I figured this was a good idea. As I'm skint I re-used a switch I had lying around and knocked up a small bracket to mount it.



Next task was to sort out the mounting for the tank. I had planned all sorts of fancy ways of doing this but in the end decided to keep it simple and just use a piece of 8mm threaded rod blagged from Blackjack. So I mounted the tank and used a centre punch to mark where the rod needed to go. With the position marked I removed the paint from the area and positioned the rod where I needed it using a magnetic clamp.



Some not very pretty welding later....



With the rod welded in position it was a simple matter to put the tank on, establish how long I wanted the mounting stud to be and mark it with a sharpie. With the tank off I cut the rod to length with a hacksaw. All that remained was to machine a lipped spacer on the lathe and it was job done. Certainly not as elegant as some of my original ideas but it does the job.

Next I moved onto the rear brake master cylinder. To be honest I had been putting this off for a couple of reasons but mostly because I hadn't made up my mind about whether or not I wanted rear set pegs. However with the seat in position I found that the rear set pegs were more comfortable than the foot pegs I had been considering so rear sets it was.

Another thing I had been concerned about was welding onto the frame for such a safety critical application with my elementary welding skills. However with the rear sets in place I realised I could use the redundant mounts for the tool box so all that was need was the fabrication of a bracket to hold the master cylinder and a rod to connect the rear brake pedal to the master cylinder.

So a job I had been dreading took less than an hour. It just goes to show that it's possible to think about these things too much and sometimes you need to get out into the workshop and JFDI.





With the rear brake sorted I turned my attention to the carb. I had been worried that I wouldn't be able to fit the carb and bell mouth with the central oil tank and a mock up proved this correct.



There simply isn't enough space for the bell mouth. I have seen shorter bell mouths and I may try to hunt one down.

This final shot shows the RHS of the bike and shows shows how cramped the area behind the carb is.