Yay Welder!
Friday I ran some errands and returned stuff to Menards, and then came home and did another round of caulk on the tub. Still much to do in there but I'm trying to get it done a bit at a time. All the final trim is slow moving for me unless I'm in the right mood and can fully visualize the process and have the materials ready.
Saturday was up early for the market and then some errands afterward. tour_spot showed up a little later on her new bike. We got to looking at how to mount the givi sidecase rack that we had modified for the Intruder to fit on the new Shadow, then I grabbed the wingrack that I had removed from the ZX-6 and we started taking the seat and extra backrest off of the bike. The wingrack looked like it should go on no problem, and give a top-case mount as well. We would just have to get rid of the stock turn signals, no problem there as the wingrack has signals built in. We took some measurements from the bike and I started sketching ideas. While I was designing things and confusing tour_spot and alyska with my babble, we had dinner. Then, I went to Menards to pickup the supplies needed for my designs.
Sunday morning after feeding the kitties I headed out to the garage and pulled out the welder. After a few test runs to figure out settings and which rod to use I started in on the brackets. I needed to space the rack out 2.25" from the mount point on the bike. I looked for square tube or channel, but they only went up to 1.5" at Menards. So I welded a 1.25" angle and a 1" angle together to make a lopsided channel. Then I trimmed them to size and drilled out the bike mounting holes and the single rack mount on the channel. While making a template for a sheet-metal copy of the rack to use as a mounting point I remembered the bracket from the actual givi mount and incorporated that to make things much easier as I didn't have to try and support as much stress and distribute it as I was thinking of doing, along with the annoying shape to duplicate. So instead of the cutout I grabbed some 1.25" flat stock and measured, cut and drilled the down/bottom leg. Then I bolted everything to the rack to line it all up. After tacking everything together I removed the brackets and welded everything and cleaned it up a bit with the air cut-off tool and the grinder. I still have to clean it up a bit more before I do the primer and paint. It should then be ready to go on about the same time that the accessories she bought online (engine guards, wide levers, clock) while she was here are ready as well. Pictures then, as we forgot to take any over the weekend.
Yay projects. I still have to do the base and table that I have been planning for the flat files, but this one was more fun for this weekend. The table is going to be big and awkward to work on and kinda boring as it will just be a bunch of rectangles, I also need to do more cleaning before I can get at some of the parts, so that is the project for this week if the mosquitoes don't eat me alive first.