the build(s?) (mysta2)

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mysta2
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#11 Unread post by mysta2 »

Well, this one’s a bit out of sequence… oh well.

The seat was in the cards from the beginning. Originally (and still, actually) I had wanted to pound it out of aluminum… well I’ve never worked aluminum, and am more than a little embarrassed to admit that I have no idea how to weld. Not that this was enough to stop me; not having a torch, hammers, a welder, or sandbags however did stop me. So I decided to do the next best thing and lay it up out of carbon. I briefly considered fiberglass but I wanted a running theme through this bike to be the truth behind its’ makeup (hence the ground tank, the visible machine finish and the polished parts) I had partially chosen this because I hate trying to pick a color… I think any painter will tell you the same.

I don’t have any pictures for the first part so I’ll have to try and explain it as best I can. I started with a sheet of corrugated cardboard that I cut out to the shape of the frame to makeup the bottom of the pan. Using the same board I also cut out some ribs to outline the hump at the front of the seat where it mates up with the gas tank. Then I covered the whole thing with painters tape to fill in the holes, and make a solid foundation that I then laid fiberglass matt over. This made up everything with the exception of the rear end cap. Just to make sure everything was all symmetrical and straight I created the end cap I wanted in ProE and machined it out of #10 foam (also commonly called sign foam, it’s what most of the fancy 3D signage is made out of in your’ local mall) The first half of the seat was Bondoed smooth and a heavy coat of primer was applied and sanded. I glued the end cap to this part and then mated them together with another layer of fiberglass:
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That part (the plug) was also Bondoed, primed, painted, polished, waxed (don’t use expensive car wax for this, many types have a cleaning agent in them that will stick to your’ mold… ask me how I found that out). At which point I laid another couple of layers of fiberglass over it with some ribbing built in to hold it straight (the mold) once the resin has kicked off the two can be pulled apart. Now the mold needs to be cleaned of any residue and waxed for the carbon fiber to be laid into. It’s best to keep the plug around and stretch the carbon weave over the plug before putting it into the mold, this way it will already be stretched to the proper shape, and will go in much easier. Lay the carbon fiber into the mold (I think I used 3 layers, with stripped foam core for support on the seat base and the back) and let it kick off. Pull them apart and trim your’ part:
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On the left is the plug painted black and polished. Remember what I said about the wax… I used the wrong kind and had to rip the plug in half in order to extract it from the mold. In the middle is the mold and on the right is the part.

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Here you can see the dirty finish that using the wrong wax created. I decided to wrap the whole thing in a fourth layer of carbon to clean up the finish and round out the edges. Unfortunately with all the resin that went into the last layer to make it smooth and pretty, the seat’s not very light (in comparison to how light it could have been)

I didn’t want it glass smooth glossy, but more like the carbon you see on race machines so I gave it a real quick sand and buff but didn’t clear it.
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ba-donk-a-donk

Add a little shaped foam for comfort (mostly shaped with the belt sander and finish sealed with a heat gun)
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I’m still on the fence whether to get this covered or not. If I did, the leather would wrap the entire front of the seat leaving just the end cap exposed. But I do like the honest street fighter-esk quality the bare foam has.

BTW: thanks for the encouraging words, they help keep me motivated
Last edited by mysta2 on Mon Oct 24, 2005 5:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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-Holiday
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#12 Unread post by -Holiday »

Just thought i'd say what nice work you do. I've been reading your posts on this board, and on the international cafe racers bbs and you're really getting me excited about starting work on my winter project, a 76 CB 360T i picked up a few weeks ago.
I've put put up a page about it, but I havnt had time to start any work until I get moved into my new place next week:

http://64.202.167.206/bustedgroove/machine/360.asp

thanks for keeping me motived!

Oh and, btw, would you mind if I put a link to your project pages at the bottom of mine in the "related links" section?

-brian
2000 Suzuki Bandit 1200s
Vespa Rally 200 in pieces

[img]http://www.brian-payne.com/bikes/VisitedStatesMap.jpg[/img]

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Aggroton
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#13 Unread post by Aggroton »

yeah your bike is amazing...defiantly inspirational...

and holiday...let me know when you want to sell a scooter...
thats a sweet bike.

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mysta2
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#14 Unread post by mysta2 »

-Holiday wrote:...thanks for keeping me motived!

Oh and, btw, would you mind if I put a link to your project pages at the bottom of mine in the "related links" section?...
thanks in return

I don't mind at all, please do

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ZooTech
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#15 Unread post by ZooTech »

Keep up the good work! It's lookin' sweeter and sweeter every day! I hope to have the time to do stuff like that as soon as the kids are a bit more self-sufficient.

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Iain
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#16 Unread post by Iain »

Wow is all I can say. Thats pretty incredable. You must have a great shop to work with. The seat is looking amazing. I can't wait to see this bike put together. Way to go! :thumbsup:

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R Dresden
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#17 Unread post by R Dresden »

Wow....you're my new hero my friend. Maybe if I had the time/place to tear into my piece like that I would do it. I have all the manuals to do it but seem to lack the final courage when crunch time comes. LOL
Keep up the work and feeding us new posts my man!

Peace,
Rodger 8)

BTW...that first color you had on your helmet is a sweet color...it's the same color scheme we went with on the race car this year. We added some fuchia(sp) stripes to it as well.....Green for the Money, Pink for the honeys.
Why don't you try practicing random acts of intelligence and
senseless acts of self-control?

motohead
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Hi mysta

#18 Unread post by motohead »

Do you mind my translating this into Chinese and post it on my Chinese Blog?

Wait for your feed back. Thanks!

[email protected]
From BeiJing CHINA
GS125

MSN:[email protected]

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mysta2
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Re: Hi mysta

#19 Unread post by mysta2 »

motohead wrote:Do you mind my translating this into Chinese and post it on my Chinese Blog?

Wait for your feed back. Thanks!

[email protected]
LOL, no, that's cool. You have to give me a link though... I've never spoken chinese before :)

Time for some randomness:

Check out the freshly packed, non tapered, open bearings. Lovely
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good old molybendium

Bat-Pac:
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Well that’s what it looks like, I filed a couple of notches in the housing so it couldn’t vibrate out of the clamp. I also sanded the far end of it flat to get rid of the overfill resin (I just can’t seem to help it)

I also soldered a larger terminal onto the ground wire so that it would fit in the same place as the original strap (and re-soldered the original while I was at it)
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None of this modification is really needed if you don’t want to do it. You could just bolt the original ground line to the end of the original batt strap, but that would have left me with a bunch of wire I didn’t want to have to tuck.

Strapped in place:
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that engine bolt that’s half out of frame in the second shot is the one that the ground is mounted to, see why I didn’t want 10 inches of extra wire. I must admit that hose clamp is pretty gross, I’ll work out a better mount for it if I ever get it to work out dependably.

If I haven’t said this here yet, the bat-pac worked wonderfully for the first day I was riding (photos below in the latest wheel entry) until the sun went down, when the headlight switch doubles as the kill switch. Although after installing a freshly charged battery that quickly ran down also (and I was able to swap in the bat-pac which I still had in my pocket and get the bike home that night without a headlight) so there’s obviously another problem with my charging system, so I’m hesitant to yet declare the bat-pac a failure.

cables
when I found out that I wasn’t getting my wheels back for a while again, the bike started falling apart some more.

This is not how you pull your’ bungs:
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ask me how I know (:

The method was suggested to me (by someone who builds cars and bikes from scratch for a living) that if I clamp a channel lock onto the bung and heat it up the solder will soften and the bung will drop off (if anyone has the real word for what I’m calling the bung please e mail me, I’d like to know) Turns out… the whole bung is a big glob of solder. So after screwing that all up, I took my clutch and brake cable down to 2WheelWorld and had Mike cut them down and put newer style bungs on them. A lot of shops I found out later wont mess with old cables but only shorten new ones. Often since the old cable’s been lubed and greased over and over the solder won’t stick, 2WheelWorld’s pretty old school though.

rubber
I love this stuff:
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I shoot all the rubber I can get to with it.

wrap
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some brands of this stuff want you to wet it down just before wrapping so that when it dries out it will conform to that orientation better. Mine didn’t say anything about it and considering that the engine wont be fired for up to a week after the wrap goes on I didn’t want the thing holding water in and rusting out the pipes before I got a chance to burn out the moisture.
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I used the one inch and varied between third and half overlap depending on the contour.

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the only tip I can offer is to cover up when you do it, I did it sweating and shirtless on a very warm night, and couldn’t sleep in my bed that night, I had to sleep on the carpet to even out the itchiness and get my back off the ground a bit.
Last edited by mysta2 on Thu Oct 20, 2005 4:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

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mysta2
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#20 Unread post by mysta2 »

Another night in the garage and a bunch more parts fall off
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ugly aren’t they

first order of business is to rid myself of those cheesy ball ends on the levers
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as you can see, one of them was seriously bent:
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until I heated it up and beat on it
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BTW map gas isn’t nearly hot enough to do this job very well, I would recommend oxy-acetylene. Although my levers are this weird cast aluminum so I can’t really even be sure how that would work. The ball has already been roughly chopped off with a band saw in that shot.

Looking a it better after some belt sander lovin
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and hand sanding
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Also needing some work
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both stock original parts:
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the spring on the right I haven’t touched, the one on the left is the result of about 5min at a wire wheel and 7min at the buffer.

All parts ready for sandblasting
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although not absolutely necessary I like to put the parts I’ve modified or sanded to the buffer right before sandblasting to check for any scratches or imperfections. The levers, brake stay, and brake actuator have all been polished in this shot (the threads on the end of the actuator will be masked before sandblasting)

freshly sandblasted batch ready for paint
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sandblasted parts should be handled very carefully, the fine surface you just created will stick to and “absorb” anything it touches. They should never be handled with bare hands between sandblasting and paint, but if it can’t be helped special care should be taken before painting to remove all oils and fingerprints.

Etch primer
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Polane (two part epoxy coating)
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“Dead Flat Black”
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I figured out why my last parts came out so glossy, I thought the flatness of the finish depended solely on the catalyst, but I came to realize that there is actually a flat black paint afterall.

gloss black
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next morning
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mmm… so fresh and so clean clean
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even better than new parts…
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… old parts that look new again. Well, the shocks are new, but believe me, I’m not happy about that. Also pictured are the cables: post shortening.

All back together again, again.
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Last edited by mysta2 on Thu Oct 20, 2005 4:06 am, edited 1 time in total.

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