Wherein I either make a seat or a fool of myself, and also other things with the bike

YEAH!!! :thumbsup: Outa sight, outa mind! I'm just concerned that you're putting heavy objects (battery) up high in the bike (raising the center of gravity). If you're planning on scraping the pegs and pipes carving twistys :rock:, you'll need to think about what that'll mean in terms of handling.
 
Yeah, handling wise moving the battery upward and rearward is rather the opposite of what should be done. It'll be a smaller battery than the regular lead acid though as I've already got it set up kick start only (by default really as the starter didn't work when I bought the bike). Between the smaller battery and cutting off the back half of the rear fender/moving a smaller tail light forward I don't expect it to make that noticeable a difference. I don't use the bike for twisty riding really, though I have done it in the past. The bike just isn't good at it, whereas my CBR is better than I am at turning. I mostly just fart around town and ride to work and back on this.

It's actually kind of funny, when I got this bike I expected it to be good in corners because of it being so small and relatively light weight. The best comparison I had at the time was my 1979 CB650, and I used to take it out and ride it pretty hard. The XS (or at least mine) isn't good handling wise in comparison to even that bike though. I wish I had never sold that bike now, but at the time it was the right decision.
 

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Well, stuff got done Friday but didn't see the point in taking a picture of it. I cleaned up all the welding around the various seams and sanded the weld burn off the panels.

Today I got the bike to work and was able to I think finish the metal work on the seat frame and cowl. I made a couple small cover pieces for the seat hinges and welded them in place, added some rubber bumpers to the bottom of the seat frame so it'll have feet to sit on the chassis instead of resting on the skins, and made a catch piece for the side latch.

The piece to smooth around the rear seat hinge was quick and easy and fits on fairly nice having to stick out essentially none at all. The piece for the front hinge was another story though, I had to bubble it out pretty good with the planishing hammer and to be honest it kind of interferes with the visual smoothness of the right side. It looks better than nothing though and I couldn't think of anything that wouldn't just look tacked on. I said it the other day, but I really should've made the whole thing wider.

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As you can see, I completely pulled the fender this afternoon while working on things and I really wanted to just stick the factory tail light on it and ride it home this way. Everybody's taste is different and all that, but there was a moment right before I took these pictures. I had the TV in the lobby on and tuned to the local (American) football game, came out of the lobby and walking back towards the bike it just looks fantastic like this. There are little details that need taken care of on the frame, brackets and mounts that aren't needed now and can be cut off. With the short tail now and the little kick up to the bottom of the seat, I'm totally digging it. The tail light is on a row boat or something coming from China though, so I guess I'll just have to exercise what patience I can muster and wait it out.
I made a little walk around video too, showed the seat latch and hinge. Don't have any way to lock anything right now but that'll be easy to do later.
 
Nice!

You know, a helmet lock could be as simple as a hook for the D-ring on the helmet strap - that is under the closed seat and is thus accessible only if the seat is unlocked and opened.

That would dead simple I’d guess.

Pete
 
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That's what I was planning, haven't bothered to drag a welder over to the bike as of yet though. When it gets to the point of cutting the grab bar tabs off the frame and welding rear fender mounts I'll mess with the helmet hook and a simple pad lock setup for locking the seat down.
 
Been lazy this past week barely staying at work past the eight hours of the day. I went Monday and bought some primer and a can of silver to try out, then Tuesday night I did the whole clean scuff clean prime thing on the seat frame and cowl. I started to take a picture of it then but it didn't look like anything new really. Then came the excuses.

Got back to work this afternoon though. Today I made the outer rim for the seat pan, lots of time at the shrinker stretcher then just hammer and dolly work to fine tune everything. The front of the seat is nothing but complex curves, things turning on multiple planes. Weirdly I ended up with almost no pictures of things when I thought I had taken more, so who knows if that is an equipment malfunction or just the beginnings of old age.

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So, yep, two pictures of the border half done, that's all I got. The thing is about a half inch tall broke over the bottom and goes all the way around the seat pan. Also you can see I finally got the attachment bolts welded onto the pan too. Getting that extra bit of metal around the outer edge will accomplish a pair of things. One it will strengthen the pan up, especially with all the curves and crowning. Second it gives a nice rounded edge to the seat pan which will hopefully prevent the seat cover getting cut through by the edges of the pan.

While my kids were doing their swimming lessons this morning I was drawing out designs for the seat cover and think I've got something settled on there. After getting the seat pan welding and shaping finished tonight I got it cleaned up and primed too, so now I need to make a full size layout of the seat cover and then wait on it to get made. Other than that it's bodywork and paint, but mostly bodywork and I hate bodywork.

Also the guy in the rowboat hasn't made it here from China yet, so I'm still waiting to find out if I like the tail light I ordered.
 
I forgot to add, not that it's especially important but I did some math and realized that for the time I have put into this seat if you take it at our regular shop rate it would add up to more than I paid for the bike and the various parts I've put on it combined. I've spent somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 hours on it so far if I'm thinking correctly.
 
I enjoy metalwork, it's still new enough for me that it's a blast and I'm always learning while doing it. I was just thinking about things and it struck me as interesting. Stuff like that makes me grateful for what I do and where I am too. There is no way I could justify paying for something like this if I couldn't simply do it myself.

Thanks for the kind remarks. (again)
 
Back at it again today, just not for very long.
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Start off with the primed seat pan which was where I left off last night. Picture ends up showing the crown well.

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Seat pattern that I plan on using, plus the first one I drew out peaking in the bottom of the frame. Drew the design out yesterday morning in a notebook, then actually cut out a template to fit the seat pan today and put a pattern down. Decided the first one was too tight looking with one inch spacing between the lines so I went back and did it again with inch and a half spacing. I like the other one so that's what I'll give to the guy making the cover.

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Next thing to show is the fuel tank stripped down. Along with more random shop crap in the background, we have a hording problem, yes we need help. Didn't bother to completely strip every spec of the tank as not all of it really needs to be smooth and nice. The parts around the filler and behind the emblems I'm not too worried about, plus the underside I just scuffed with a scotchbrite pad because all I'm concerned with there is rust prevention.
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Fuel tank primed and hanging there.
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Lastly for the afternoon, putting some Fibertech one the seat cowl. There are a lot of areas where the panels didn't come right out to the edges, or places where the welds didn't have enough build to make a nice edge. Also where the back panel was welded in it put a nice dip in the skin, especially the top panel, so I'll build that back up. The Fibertech goes down and will build those areas out and have more strength than just straight body filler. Once I get all the edges to nice crisp angles I'll go back and smooth everything nicely with regular filler to get a nice smooth look, then cover all that with primer again and paint.

I was headed in today and my sister called and reminded me that our parents were coming to town today and asked about dinner, which had completely slipped my mind. That cut my time today to about three and a half hours instead of the five or six I was planning, but things will be done eventually I suppose. I'm hoping now that it's down to straightening work one of my coworkers will offer to help with it. I really hate this part of things, it's too monotonous for me to enjoy it. I like stuff with immediate return like regular mechanic or metal work, sanding Bondo for hours to make a bunch of tiny changes sucks.

Should be able to make good progress in the evenings this week though, I want to get paint on this thing bad. The tail light too, I want my freaking tail light.
 
Well, so much for getting stuff done this week before the holiday. I was sitting on my couch last night more than four hours after leaving work, when I felt something go into my left eye and just couldn't get it out. So I ended up at the eye doctor today after basically no sleep last night and found out that somehow I ended up with a piece of stripper disk stuck to the inside of my left eyelid for about 15 hours. And now my cornea is scratched and I get to put a cream in my eye four times a day that makes my vision blurry.

Hoping again that coworkers get bored and empathetic enough that they do some bodywork for me.
 
Great thread, fun watching you do, and can see the learning going on, cool stuff.
Wanna hear a hint from an old guy?
Well you're going to anyway. o_O
The single most important part of gas tank painting is getting every LAST, BLASTED little bit of paint out of that seam around the filler neck. That paint is soaked in gasoline and will bubble your new paint EVERY TIME. Been there, seen it lots of times. tape off top of neck where the gas cap rubber will sit then when the paint is all done sand that paint line on the neck smooth, and carefully q-tip isocyanate glue or other strong sealer on the edge so gas can't wick into the primer bubbling the paint. Do the same at the petcock flange.
 
Formally trained auto body tech here, glad I quit early, still enjoy some contour sanding and painting. I've never seen filler applied over primer, always on bare, roughed, metal. Good step with the chopped fiberglass filler. I'm not saying it's wrong, just wondering if the body guys at your shop fill over primer?

Scott
 
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Standard practice for us, but we work differently than what a collision shop would because we deal with restoration and customization work we tend to strip or sandblast entire cars. Then they'll spray on a 2k epoxy primer and bodywork it from there. Then a different primer and paint.

I'm not a body guy or trained as one, so take this with a grain of salt. With the nature of the business we do it's not abnormal for cars to go weeks or longer between being stripped and then having the bodywork done, so my assumption is they are primed first so the bare metal doesn't rust while the filler is being applied.

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picture showing it
 
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That's why I stick to doing mechanical stuff there mostly and have been adding metalwork in over the last year. That stuff I understand, and if I don't know something immediately I can find it quickly. The body guys start rattling off numbers for the different paint components, primers, sealers, or clears and I'm just sitting there with a blank look on my face.
 
YAY!! Taillight showed up yesterday while I was doing bodywork on stuff.

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It's not perfectly what I wanted, but I do think it'll look OK on the bike with the light tucked up high under the overhanging bit of the tail. The license plate bracket portion will be separated and possibly moved down to the very bottom to serve as a rudimentary fender lip. I'll have to see how everything looks together and then decide if I want to use that or just make something.

Bodywork yesterday though, for.......six and a half hours, a couple of those hours I had a guy helping me out too. So now just several more hours of bodywork left, which is why I hate bodywork. I've got the dents worked out of the fuel tank and just putting a final-ish skim coat on it and it'll be ready. The sea. t itself is requiring a bunch more work which isn't surprising given it's makeup of multiple pieces of metal where the tank is a single stamping on the visible part.

I'm grateful for the help, but my buddy is going a bit overboard with the work on the cowl. I'm not looking for perfect on anything because it's not a show piece. It's going to continue to sit in my garage with my 5 and 10 year old boys occasionally banging into it, and I'm going to continue riding it in the rain, and letting it sit outside the shop all day when I ride it to work. So I've told people I'm not looking for perfect, I just want basically smooth with consistent lines on it. He's trying to build the lines out to make the thing identical side to side though and I just don't care about that.

It'll get done eventually though. My folks are planning on spending the day with me today so no work today, should be able to get stuff done after work this week though. The other news is I got the thread I needed ordered for the seat cover to maybe it will be started on next weekend. It's amusing to me how guys here are being with this now, both the guy who was helping with the bodywork and the guy who will be doing to seat cover actually came to me to ask if they could help. I'm not used to people going out of their way to help me out on things, I've always been the guy people went to when they needed something done themselves.
 
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