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

When this is all over and you start riding your bike. You will get compliments. You will be asked where did you get that seat. It is then when all this work your putting into your seat will pay off when you answer "I made it".
 
ZACKLEY!!
The pride of ownership of a nice bike will only be exceeded by the fun of riding it and the saitisfaction of knowing that you made it totally unique by having made that seat.

...and yup, a mid-70s Suzuki GT two stroke taillight was my guess too.

Pete
 
Worked some tonight blocking filler. Took a picture of the tank and seat together but it's not like you can really tell much with just the picture.

blocking.jpg

I would say I'm tired of it already, but I was tired of it before I even began blocking. Big issue right now is when my buddy was wiping the seat Saturday he apparently wasn't doing a good job making sure his wipes were clean. The result is there are several spots where it looks like he was using filler that was already starting to harden and there are air pockets in the filler now. So when I was chopping stuff down tonight I was opening these bubbles up and having to grind them open them all the way up with a dremil and fill them back in.

tail light mocked up.jpg

Sat the tail light in the cowl too tonight just to see what it looked like. Whenever I get down to actually fitting it I'll tuck it farther up and the tag bracket will go away. I'm thinking right now I'll definitely have the license plate come off the fender rather than up on the cowl.
 
I see what you're doing there. Getting the skin shape of the tail to match the tank. Pretty cool...

Got it fairly close too. If for whatever reason I had to make another I would do the top edge of the side panels different as they bow out too much and it causes the angle panel to be wider in the middle than the ends where the tank that angle panel is a straight front to back taper. Something would have to go horribly wrong for me to start over though.

The issue with the license plate bracket is that I want the tail lights up high, and I wasn't accounting for the angle of the side pieces so the plate itself won't fit up in the tail.
 
More blocking tonight, but I feel like I'm finally getting somewhere close now. The fuel tank seems ready to skim coat it and I'm down to just a couple spots on the seat that need work. Also tested the tail light since I didn't do that the other day.
 
Lazy yesterday, was going to go in but ended up with daddy things keeping me home til 4 and by then I just said fuck it. I went in today though, albeit later than I really should have. I also made a stop at the store to grab some paint and primer and things and found a red I like so that's progress.

color test 1.jpg color test 2.jpg same panel in two different lights

guide coated once.jpg

I had got both pieces to where I thought they were pretty good so I shot another coat of primer on them then cut it out with 320. Had some low spots and a couple of specks that needed filled on the seat. The biggest issue was the line here had a low spot which I hadn't noticed before so had to build it up more. The tank had a low spot right above the right emblem and a couple specs that needed filled.

hung to prime.jpg

Got things cut back, cleaned and hung up for another try with the primer. Looking at this picture now I'm seeing what looks like the leading edge of the cowl being completely crooked. Haven't seen anything like that looking at it in person though, so optical illusion maybe?

hung and primed.jpg


Both pieces primed again. I ended up being disappointed at this point. The belief before was that both pieces were really close to being good, but with this coat of primer I saw a bunch of pin holes in the seat and a couple of rough lines on the fuel tank. I quit for the night at this point (at 9pm) so I'll have to wait to see just how off things are. The pin holes will have to be filled and that's getting frustrating because ever since my buddy blocked on the seat I've been dealing with pinholes and air bubbles. One of my coworkers suggested just hitting the thing with a heat gun to get all the bubbles to pop that way I'll know just how bad it is. I'm not sure I want to know how bad it is because my worry is that I'll have to redo a lot of what's already been done.

A little side note, I was getting in the car to head home for the night when it hit me that the colors I wanted are almost identical to Ohio State Buckeye colors. Without the context before I hadn't thought of it before and it was purely a coincidence. I'm from Ohio though having moved to Tennessee in 2003 yet don't care what so ever about OSU anything. Struck me as funny though.

It just occurred to me, had I done all this months ago while the TV crew was at the shop this all could've been done in a day and a half "through the magic of television". Kinda bummed now.
 
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Don't get discouraged, Nash. Bubbles ("pinholes") in filler are typically cause by overworking during application. After you mix it up good, "butter" it on, and resist the urge to keep working it with the spreader. This is what I was told long ago by a body man, and it's worked or me ever since. :thumbsup:
 
Looks great! I dig the shape to match the tank...very clever. For the tail light/license plate, I'd leave as is too...I think it will be a good height and allow for clearance if you end up bottoming out the rear suspension like when going really fast over a pothole or something ridiculous (Ask me how I know). :)
 
Took a good while off from working on the motorcycle stuff but went in today. Work has been weird so I haven't felt like staying late, and last weekend I had other stuff I had to do both days, so not much got done the last couple weeks. I did order and receive in some poly primer and clear coat for when it gets to that stage. One of the last times I did anything to it one of the body guys gave me a hand on the seat getting the pinholes filled.

Today I went in and did a bit, starting with digging back out the hole for the latch that the guy covered up weeks ago. Then I cleaned up some low spots in lines on the seat and tank. I got both parts to where I'm happy with them. The guy who is going to shoot them was there today and I told them I had the shapes as good as I cared for and got everything run over with 220 so whenever he felt like it they should be ready to prime. He ran his hand over them for a few seconds and said "No, they're really not." To that I reminded him that his expectations are much higher than my own and that I had ridden the bike for two years with a spray can clear coated bare metal tank with a large dent in the right hand side.

His argument was that it was close enough that he could make it quite nice without too much more work and that he'd mess with it after work one night this coming week to get it there and then prime it. I said if he wanted to do that more power to him, but this is already nicer than the CB650 I had for like eight years and never got bothered by it. So I guess I'll owe him a case of PBR sometime in the future.

Anyway, the upshot of everything is that maybe I can have some color on it by Christmas so that'll be nice.
 
Cut some holes and fitted the tail light. Found out interestingly enough, the bracket they send with the tail light doesn't have the proper bolt spacing to fit a Tennessee motorcycle license plate. The seat itself would need to be about a half inch wider to tuck the plate up in, so I'm locked into hanging it below the seat which is what I was planning anyway.

tail light 1.jpg


Happy with the light, and real happy it is fleshing out like it was in my head. Unhappy that the tail light being in there exacerbates the wonky nature of the back end of things. Now I'm just waiting.
 

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Well, it's been a long while since I've done anything to this thread, and that's because it's been a long while since anything has happened to the seat. In the interest of brevity, the coworker who had said he would help me out with the final bodywork, painting, and seat cover, is no longer a coworker. I've no hard feelings towards him and don't really fault him for his decision, leaves me in a shit spot though.

So literally nothing had happened, the parts sitting on top of my tool box unmoving since before Christmas. Today I went in an did what hopefully is the last bit of bodywork to things filling a couple of pinholes and blocking the primer coat with 220. I also painted the seat pan, the underside of the seat cowl, and the latching strap, with some black paint.
 
Stick at it Nash - you'll get there! You have certainly done a great job to date. As my old Grandpa used to say..

"The only difference between a poor carpenter and a great carpenter is a bigger hammer, two pounds of putty and some sandpaper."

So....go for it.

Pete
 
Yes Nash keep at it and don't worry if there are some minor flaws.

The only people who will find fault with it are probably the people who will brag about how they built this bike or car when in fact the only work they did was to swipe their credit card through the machine!

Or if they were real ambitious they might have gone as far as writing out a check by hand!
 
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