Trying my hand at some sheet metal, feedback welcome!

Since I have a running bike again as soon as my battery is charged I'm looking into the three things I want to fabricate for my project.
[list type=decimal]
[*]A new dashboard.
[*]Housing for the switches on my handlebar(s).
[*]A battery box.
[/list]
I already drew up some plans for the dashboard and will do the same for the other two somewhere soon.


I've had a waterproof phone for some time now (Xperia Z) and never really made use of the waterproofness, I figured it would make a neat navigator / speedometer so I started looking into mounts and they're all butt-ugly. So I thought why not make a speedo / phone bracket crossover. So far I've come up with this:



This fits right onto my original triple tree and around my fork legs, has lights for neutral, high beam and neutral and a light- and killswitch, with a black and red waterproof cap respectively. The ignition switch will go in the battery box under the seat together with the starter button. A long bolt under the phone will clamp a piece of elastic cord on the underside which will hook behind the bolt on the upside. Still working on the shape and layout but it should be close to this. According to my stress tests 2mm aluminum sheet should be strong enough, but I might do 3mm just to be on the safe side.


So, what do you think?

Yeah that should be pretty cool! I made some for my xs out of some scrap 1/8 aluminum that worked out good. I was able to use two turn signal indicators by doing so. Go for it!!

If you can find a way to do some vibration dampening for the phone, that would be good. Even a rubber mat (like a thin mouse pad) or similar would help.

-Deek

Nice idea Tijmen. I am all for making custom parts that give tour bike individuality. I made a clock mount recently for my T500 build. I used stainless steel, and polished it. I opted for 2mm, and even using softer aluminium, I think that would be adequate. I fitted mine under the top yoke, and folded it twice to get it where I wanted it. It's function is simpler than yours, but similar. I only need 2 warning lamps, neutral and high beam, and I have opted for coloured LED's which look great.
I chose to have my design waterjet cut.......this is what it looked like raw, and then fitted. The other item is a fender stay.

ILoveThumpers said:

If you can find a way to do some vibration dampening for the phone, that would be good. Even a rubber mat (like a thin mouse pad) or similar would help.

-Deek

Click to expand...

Yeah I have a piece of cellfoam I wanted to use for this, not sure if it's marine grade UV / waterproof but I'll definitely get some of that if it isn't. Still trying to figure out how to dampen the vibrations of the speedo and how to keep it put, for now I'm just counting on the speedo cable to keep it in place but not sure if it will suffice.

Titan performance said:

Nice idea Tijmen. I am all for making custom parts that give tour bike individuality. I made a clock mount recently for my T500 build. I used stainless steel, and polished it. I opted for 2mm, and even using softer aluminium, I think that would be adequate. I fitted mine under the top yoke, and folded it twice to get it where I wanted it. It's function is simpler than yours, but similar. I only need 2 warning lamps, neutral and high beam, and I have opted for coloured LED's which look great.
I chose to have my design waterjet cut.......this is what it looked like raw, and then fitted. The other item is a fender stay.

Click to expand...

Cool, I mailed some shops with water cutters in the area, tried some for lasercutting a piece of plexi a while back and ended up doing it by hand because I didn't want to pay 50 bucks for 2 minutes of laser-cutting. I can get the materials for nearly nothing at my university so I hope I can use a machine for a case of beer somewhere.


I thought about using stainless steel but the shop at my university only has regular steel and getting it at a regular shop will cost me over 10 times what I'd pay for a sheet of aluminum so I'm just using that.

I'm sure the aluminium will work well, and it can be polished or finished pretty much how you want. Luckily, due to the volume of stuff we put through our waterjet cutters, small jobs like this cost me very little. As for holding the clock in your mount....usually the small after market instruments are supplied with a U shaped bracket, which the clock sits in, and the top edges of the U butt to the under side of your mount holding it firm.

No luck with the watercutter yet, two quotes and the cheapest was €52 when I supply my own material. For that money I'll enjoy a sunny afternoon of sawing and drilling, there's a makerspace nearby who might be able to sort me out, fingers crossed.


Want to finish the battery box quick snap because I needed a new battery and it didn't fit the old box by a couple of mm's. Dropped the idea of having the ignition there because of the weird frame tabs, probably nothing structural but I don't feel like finding out... I'd either have to add 2" of height to the box or put it on the backside and I don't want to have to squeeze my wrist between the shock and fender to start my bike. So I think I'll sacrifice a clean dashboard for a clean rear-triangle, might even gain some functionality in the process too.





Dashboard with the ignition switch, will probably end up a tad bigger, but don't have the switches yet and can't find clear info on the size of the stuff behind the panel so I'm just eyeballing it now from the pics:





And the bar controls, wishful thinking here; they'll probably end up a tad higher because again I'm not sure of the size of the stuff behind the panels. I really wanted to go for the look of Posh's control but they use non-waterproof switches which are way smaller than the waterproof ones. Might work for a trailerbike but far from practical in the wet Netherlands.

Tijmen....I will happily approach our w/j's for a quote if it helps you. Feel free to email me on titan.performance@yahoo.com with a drawing and measurements. It would cost nothing to find out.

Thanks for the offer Titan, but I got a reaction from a metal-working school nearby and they will cut it for €2,50 so all in all the part will cost me €4, more than acceptable I'd say.


As soon as I have the pilot lights I can make some mock-ups and finalize the design, not sure what's taking USPS/PostNL so long.

Still gotta crunch some millimeters but it's pretty close to a final design:





Gonna go RFID keyless, so that solves the ignition switch problem.

I like it!