Today has been an epic day of work on the bike! More was achieved today than in the last 3 months, I reckon.
I started off at 8:30am making my way down to Port Kennedy to pick up the tank and seat from Mattpack. He also graciously helped me whip up a battery tray for the SR. It's quite humbling to watch a real fabricator work .. he makes TIG look so easy.
With all the right tools and a top gun welder it only took an hour or so before it was done. Then I linished the welds and drilled the holes and so on at home.
Here's a look :
It's basically a simple tray, but my design also mounts the CDI unit in place. Then Matt had the idea of folding the tray up with only three sides, then welding one on of 3mm ally (the rest is 2mm) as I wanted to drill/tap the holes for the CDI mount.
Without his skills with the welder (I can't weld aluminium any more .. so out of practice I'm basically useless) I wouldn't have been able to do this elegantly.. it's all under the seat anyway, but I'd know it was there!
The end result is awesome and I feel very satisfied with the under tail area, with the shaped electronics tray following the curve of the subframe, there is no visible protrusions from the line of the frame, and it doubles as an inner guard and protects the electronics. It's tight in there but very neat.
Now .. the paint! There's a bit of a story to this but the long and short of it is, the original painter did a reasonable job, but got some black mixed in some how and tried to rub it out, but it left a mark so it needed to be sorted out. So Matt took it back but then due to other commitments the painter couldn't do it.
So stock to shock ended up completely redoing the paint. It is flawless, I can't even compare it to the last job which really wasn't that bad to begin with .. but this is something else. I reckon there are double figures of clear coat on it. It's deep.
I haven't had a chance to get some real photo's of the finish yet .. but I managed to get the exhaust on and bolted up firmly and the battery mounted today as well as numerous other little things. I just finished working on the bike at 10:30pm after starting the day at 8:30pm .. so here's some teaser shots and I'll get back to you with more updates soon! I'll be finishing off the seat upholstery and starting the wiring in the next couple of weeks and will have video of it firing up ASAP! Not long now til it's finished
Lastly I wanted to post the details of Matt's welding and fabrication business, V&F Welding, and The Trikpaint Shop who did the paint.
The only parts of the bike build I've had to farm out have been the paint, and the exhaust. Matt's been kind enough to help me out with all of that. Thank you Matt!
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