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Last Friday I ordered my tailight and some other stuff and they still haven't arrived. Since the weather has been so nice here lately and my bike has been down for this long I decided to make a better taillight today. The big boxy stock one wasn't doin it. I took apart one of my stock front blinkers and figured that I could replace the bulb socket with one from the tailight. turns out the taillight doesnt seperate as easy as the blinker. What I had to do was file one of the slots that the two filament bulb fits into so that the uppermost pin will seat a bit higher. After that I drilled some holes in the fiber washer that normally has one contact and fit the oem taillight wires into them. Once I was certain that it worked electrically I fit the assembly into the blinker housing and sprayed the body black after riveting on a ground lug for the factory spade to attach to. The only flaw with the arrangement was that when you replace bulbs the fiber washer is free to spin a bit out of alignment. I drilled another smaller hole in the outer edge of the washer so that if need be I can spin it if it becomes misaligned. The lense was the easy part. I found my stash of model paints and painted the inside with clear red Testors leaving a small area at the bottom to shine through for the tailight in the normal amber color. End result was that it looks good andI hope that I still like my cat eye that I ordered when ever it does arrive. I can post pics of the process of blinker conversion if anyone wants to see em. just lemme know.
Tony
As the center stand will be removed once on two wheels again I left it in as a sacrificial paint stand.
Tomorrow I see a guy about a pair of Ducati 1098 rearsets and silencer. And oh, I did the swingarm as well a bright silver and am contemplating what to do with the wheels. Suggestions are welcome as it's already taken apart.
Things still left to do is
*Clean up the brake bar
*Paint the tank and headlight bucket
*Make fender mounts
*Finish wiring (UGH)
*Make rearset mounts..I got the Duc parts
Can we say just the right amount of red on the tank? Yes we can! Sometimes red can overpower the rest of the bike, but looks like you've got just the right balance going here. Great job!
I got some one-shot paints on order from eastwood so I can learn striping and lay some paint. I need a source of pin-up girl decals or similar for my tail. You know the kind from bomber nose art and such. I would search but I am on my work PC.
Tony
hey man if you haven't figured out how to get the water out of the gauges yet i found a really simple trick. if you have access to a heat gun that works best, if not im sure a hair dryer would work too. just set it to hot and blow it at the face of the gauges, you dont want to melt the plastic so i usually do few seconds on a few seconds off until the water starts to evaporate. it works fairly well and is very simple. at least it beats opening the gauges and wiping them out. hope that helps, let me know
Thing is though, how does one expect the water to get out of the gauge? I appreciate the advice and will try it but I expect the water to turn to a gas and at which point it has nowhere to go. Perhaps there is a tutorial on resealing them to not leak? Hint hint hint.
Thanks, Tony
I'd take them off, take out the rubber sealed back-lighting bulbs turn, them upside down in a sunny spot. that way the moisture should (hopefully) evaporate out.
As for keeping out the moisture, i know on mine there are a couple of vent holes on the bottom. maybe yours are plugged?
Thing is though, how does one expect the water to get out of the gauge? I appreciate the advice and will try it but I expect the water to turn to a gas and at which point it has nowhere to go. Perhaps there is a tutorial on resealing them to not leak? Hint hint hint.
Thanks, Tony
trust me, it evaporates out with just the heat gun, ive done this a ton of times with cars headlights, turnsignals, gauges. its just condensation on the lens, its the easiest fix and only takes a few minutes.
OK. I will give that a shot on those gauges. Otherwise I got my striping kit from eastwood on thursday and have been playing with ideas. I thought I had the hang of it enough to try something besides scrap metal and did my headlight bucket.
Heres how the rest of it looks.
Not a whole lot of other stuff done. waiting to get an idea for the exhaust and nothing sounds good yet. I am thinking about cutting the pipes just after the swingarm pivot and angling up a bit but IDK. I liked the look without pipes but we know thats not really an option. Thought about building a 4-2 but tucking the cyl 1 and 4 primaries into the 2 and 3 tubes so they would ride under the bike and not so much on the outside of it.
What would look best and not be so expensive?
Wow, I dropped off for a bit and I sunk all the way to page three. I told my mom about the thread so she could see how I am passing my time. BTW Happy Moms day Mom. I decided to take my exhaust off and start chopping metal until I had the makings off a 4-1 exhaust. As of quitting time today I have everything tacked up and just need finish welding done. I have the feeling that this will be plenty loud and has to work better than the 4-2-2 that came on the bike. On a less balsy note my medium cat-eye taillight came in from DCC saturday. I have the feeling that it is a bit large, it doesnt't quite match the curve of the ally cowl. I do think it is a bit brighter and hence safer than the tiny ex-turnsignal that I forced into tail and brake duty. I am gonna trim some curve into the very back of the cowl to match the headlight visor. Perhaps that will lend some symetry between front half and rear half. We'll see. Pinstriping is goining well I need more colors but I am too bullheaded to order it and wait three days versus to look for a local place. I think I had better buck up and order though beeing a lost art and all.
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