You probably already know this, but cornandp went down a few weeks ago and broke his back. Please keep him in your thoughts as he recovers and gets ready to welcome his second daughter!
He encouraged me to post some updates on Seamus, no matter how small. So, here goes.
My daughter and I recently tested an iPhone's ability to swim in a glass of ice water (bad hand off), so I lost photos of my process to fab up a battery/electrical tray. I started with a cardboard cutout, traced it on a sheet of 16ga steel, and cut it out with the help of a 4.5" grinder and a Dremel. I learned an important lesson with the grinder - don't stand in the path of the spinning cutoff wheel!! I heard a noise and, all the sudden, noticed the spinning wheel looked different. I let the grinder come to a stop, and about 2/3 of the wheel was gone! Earlier, I had assembled my paint booth (plastic sheets hung in a big rectangle in the garage) to paint my rear rim. About 9' up the plastic sheet was a hole. I found part of the cutoff wheel in the paint booth. I found the rest of it a week later on the other side of the garage (went through both sides of the paint booth and, luckily, didn't impale my Jeep!
I'm not exagerating when I say I trial fitted the tray 30 times, making additional cuts between each effort. Once I got it to fit, I determined where it needed to bend to match the contour of the frame, hung it over my workbench at that spot, and leaned on it until I had the proper bend (poor man's brake). Here it is on the bike:
I couldn't find bolts long enough to attach the tray to the rear frame hoop (where the fender mounts on the stock bike), so I bought some rod and threaded it with a new handy threading tool (I've almost put as much money into garage tools as Seamus at this point) [INSERT]Wife rolling eyes[/INSERT]. Here's the battery in it's soon-to-be location:
Give me feedback on the above photo. Originally, the rear fender tucks up inside the rear hoop behind the battery. So, I'm about 5" below that. Am I hosing myself in terms of suspension travel?
My objective is to leave my hard-fought triangle clean. So, here it is from underneath. I don't think it'll be seen when looking at the bike on the centerstand:
Next up is fab'ing a battery tray and figuring out where to mount all the electrical components. Some guys say electrical is their weakness. For me, that's an understatement. My knees get weak and I start to throw up in my mouth a little just thinking about it. So, while not looking forward to it, I'll be glad to get the electrical bits mounted. Once I do that, I plan on welding about a 1/2" wall/edge around the tray to keep the elements out.
I've also been "gettin' my florist on." I bought a bunch of green florist foam blocks at my local Michael's craft store, glued them up, and started envisioning a shape for my cowl. I might be looking to bunk with someone locally here in Denver in a few weeks when Thanksgiving arrives, because our electric carving knife is TRASHED! The foam makes this annoying, super-fine dust when you carve/sand it, and it's deep in the bowels of the carving knife. No, I haven't broken the news to her yet.
So, about the cowl. I bought Traveler's tank off him when he upgraded to his super sweet alloy tank. I like the lines of it, and decided I'd try to mimic them for the cowl. Here it is, so far:
Since the foam is a solid block, I've tried to hollow it out as much as possible without punching through the outer wall. So, it doesn't sit as low as I'm envisioning. Once I fiberglass it, I anticipate it'll slide over the rear portion of the frame. It'll sit lower than in the pics, and I hope to use the rear frame holes to attach the cowl with dzus fasteners.
When on my workbench, it sits perfectly flat, so it won't point upward as in the pics. Also, from behind, you can tell I've a bunch of shaping work to do. It kind of looks like a slanted parallelogram on the left/right sides! I hope to make the right side better match the left.
The biggest boo-boo I've made is I glued the foam blocks too close to their edges. You might see in the pics that there are strands of glue on the surface of the cowl. You can't sand out the glue. Instead, you have to make numerous judicial cuts with an exacto to remove them when they surface (without damaging the delicate foam). So, think ahead to where you'll be carving your foam, and try to keep the glue away from those areas, if possible.
I went to my local fiberglass store today, and they confirmed what I read on the web - epoxy resin will not eat away the foam. Polyester resin will. I'm hoping to finish up the cowl and seat tray this week. If I get a nice day or two, I may even try my hand at fiberglass!
As for the rear wheel mentioned above, I messed up the paint job so bad that I had it stripped and powdercoated. It turned out great, so I laced the wheel to the rear hub I had cleaned up, put in new wheel bearings, and I had Woody's Wheel Works here in Denver true it and mount/balance my new rear tire. They did my front in the same manner, so my wheels/tires are ready to go!
When I met Brett_Bike at our local salvage yard a while back, he told me HondaMan is here in Denver. So, one of my next steps is to take my swingarm over to him for a rebuild. It'll be humbling to be in the presence of that much knowledge! I'm psyched to meet him.
That's it for now. If the stars align, I plan on posting more electrical/cowl updates by the end of the week!
