developing a tailsection.........

[JA-Moo]

I have been working on a new tail section for the RD 400's, and other bikes that have "squarish" tanks. Most of the round ones, and squarish ones are pretty simple looking to me, and I wanted to do something with a bit more "flair" and modernish look, but still be faithful to the vintage side of things.

Just looking for honest opinions, as it needs more work before I mold it. And I didn't want to put a lot more time and money into a project that I would be the only one to like.

I "borrowed" dxrats pic for some photoshop work, as it was a great side view. I also did a flattrack mod, which would just entail trimming the tail section.

Thanks for any input..........

 

[DreadRock]

Nice looking seat and bike . maybe taper the rear of the tail alil from like the middle to the rear ? not much just a lil tho....has the shape of a old race seat but alot of the newer seats are wider in the middle then taper in . besides that looks great

 

[hurricane7]

Nice work! I prefer the trimmed down version. Better flow / balance. The one in the top pic looks a bit bulky in my opinion.

Cheers,
-Jeff

 

[JA-Moo]

Thanks for the comments so far. And that's the nice thing about fiberglass, you can modify to your liking.

 

[Brandon12V]

I really like it. I don't like to picwhore or thread jack but I would like to give some input since I went through the same dilemma when building a seat to custom fit my bike. I love the rd400 tank but incorporating it on my bike was bit of a dilemma thanks to the angle & width of the backbone. It is my first bike build and structural integrity/frame straightness were a concern so I did not change the angle of backbone's rise. Regardless, you should get the idea even tho the tank does not sit level in correlation to the rest of the bike. My seat has the same look with rounded edges at the top. I think incorporating rounded edges at the top, like mine(around the back of the seat pan), and the sharp edge border at the bottom, like yours, would compliment the tank better. I wanted to do the sharp edge around the bottom of the tail section, like you created, but it's made out of 22gauge steel. Symmetry became a problem for me(since I did it free hand and have never mug welded in the past). Just my $.02. Excellent work!