okay, well as some of you may know, i work for NASA and due to a lapse in funding i have been out of work since the 1st of october. =( however the bright side of that is that i have had plenty of time to work on the bike. I havent posted anything as i have been so busy, so this should be an interesting post (or two... i have a bunch of pictures.)
to get right down to it, a co-worker gave me old sportster carb; a Zenith. Anybody have any experience with this carb? i am going to try and hook it up so i can see the difference between this pure mechanical carb and my more modern CV Kehin carb.
I also painted a local guy's SV650.
before:
After:
and now, on to some carbon fibery goodness. I have two yards of 2k twill Areo grade carbon fiber to make my parts. I also have kelvar cloth and kevlar/carbon twill.
I prepped my molds, and released them with several layers of car wax, with a couple layers of bowling ally wax on top. The molds were finished with off the shelf sealer-primer that was sanded smooth and buffed shiny. I layed up the first layer of carbon fiber paying close attention to follow all the curves and let them cure.
then i put two more layers of carbon, a layer of kelvar/carbon and topped with another layer of carbon. once cured, i popped the parts out.
Sadly, the off the shelf primer was just too porus and some of the paint stuck to the parts, but nothing some soda blasting couldnt solve. then i trimmed and sanded the parts flush with the flange on the mold, bolted the molds together and taped the parts together, took them out of the mold and ran a line of tape over the seam to seal it.
With the seam sealed i put the parts back in the mold halves, bolted them together and laid up layers of carbon over the seam, and put 5 more layers of carbon and kelvar on the seat area. this section has to be be really stiff as it will need to support my weight.
then i let the resin cure up overnight. before popping the part out and peeling off the tape. and here you go! seat and tail
I trimmed it to fit over the subframe and had to get a picture.
now, due to photo limits i have to end this post, but dont be sad... there is more.