if I may ask... how did you guys....

[angus67]

if I may ask... how did you guys with the sporty tanks get them to sit over the back bone?Ive been studying pictures, and rackin' me brain.
My tank dosnt sit down, it has to sit at a steep angle , wasting 1/2 gallon of gas. And since its a 2 and a halfer, any waste is too much.
Did you all just grind down the and re-weld the seam on the neck gussets, or what? I ground through the welds, and had to re-weld there. Im thinking, remove the neck gussets all together, and replace them with one 5/16 plate there. but still looks to be too wide for my tank tosit fully. I have a fiberglass cheap tank, but is cracked, but it sits the way I want.

clue me in, huh?

 

[ember]

I think what you are looking for is a deep tunnel tank. Not much you can do if your tank has a shallow tunnel, other than cut it open and modify it.

 

[angus67]

it is deep. just wont fit down. its a older sporty tank, cam style cap, i think 57-72?

 

[Hairyblackdude]

I cut off the 2 stock "cups" for the stock tank & gave it a little persuasion w/ a hammer & mine lays right down... Although, the tank is a little different...Yours looks like they are already gone though...

Maybe you could cut the front mounting tabs OFF the tank & reweld them farther out if thats whats holding it up.

But in the end, if the tunnel isnt wide enough to slip over the frame, than the tunnel isnt wide enough to slip over the frame !! Sell it & buy something different. I can measure my tunnel width for you Friday night if necessary. It fits real nice.

 

[Luke4554]

I cut off the 2 stock "cups" for the stock tank & gave it a little persuasion w/ a hammer & mine lays right down... Although, the tank is a little different...Yours looks like they are already gone though...

Maybe you could cut the front mounting tabs OFF the tank & reweld them farther out if thats whats holding it up.

But in the end, if the tunnel isnt wide enough to slip over the frame, than the tunnel isnt wide enough to slip over the frame !! Sell it & buy something different. I can measure my tunnel width for you Friday night if necessary. It fits real nice.

What he said.. cut the cups off .. 2lb sledge (bfh) one or two wacks and it will softly go in with little effort.

Luke

 

[Travis]

Smashing in the sides of the gusseting will more than likely ruin your paint or powder unless you only need a little clearance. If you're going to ruin the paint job, you might as well remove all the gusseting and add you own where it will work.

 

[Luke4554]

Just do it when you grind off the cups. The paint will already need touched up and its not a matter of smashing.. Just a little "motivation" is all that's needed. Typically I would think there would be several things ground off and smoothed out by this point anyways and this would be something you would do before final finishing was complete.


Luke

 

[Travis]

Luke, from the looks of it, the cups are already off on his bike. And it's a finished bike were he wants to modify the angle of the tank.

 

[Luke4554]

True.. I guess my point was mine didn't need any paint attention after I fitted my tank. And if he goes th the extent of cutting out the gusset and making his own he's going to be respraying some of it no matter what.

Luke

 

[Travis]

^ Gotcha...

So Angus, how wide is that tunnel?

 

[malloym]

who needs efffin gussets

 

[rustynail99]

yea i have a king sporty on mine and i just ground down a good bit of the gusset that stuck out and then used a good size ball peen hammer to further persuade the neck gusset in a little further. then it fit right down. hope it works out for ya. do you know what the tank is hitting on? you may have to cut the whole thing out. hope that helps a little.

 

[angus67]

thats not final paint. its just to keep it from getting surface rust out here in the great northwest. its hammertone green krylon. Might go green metal flake for the 'real paint. any ways, I think I'll just cut out the neck gussets, and weld in some new ones, once I get it back apart for tidying of wires, and what nots. those original gussets are ugly imho. especially the later years with the tab for the reflectors. i'll get some 5/16 plates from work.
Ive never ridden this bike. Ive yet to decide forward contros, or just slightly forward of stock. I'm 6 ft tall.
no brakes yet either.

 

[angus67]

but the paint on the tank is final.

 

[Teebs]

thats not final paint. its just to keep it from getting surface rust out here in the great northwest. its hammertone green krylon. Might go green metal flake for the 'real paint. any ways, I think I'll just cut out the neck gussets, and weld in some new ones, once I get it back apart for tidying of wires, and what nots. those original gussets are ugly imho. especially the later years with the tab for the reflectors. i'll get some 5/16 plates from work.
Ive never ridden this bike. Ive yet to decide forward contros, or just slightly forward of stock. I'm 6 ft tall.
no brakes yet either.

Thank you. It drives me friggin insane to see guys going to all the trouble of chopping a bike and leaving friggin ugly_ass stock neck gussets. How hard is it to grind them off, make a cardboard pattern for new ones, cut them out and weld them in? It changes the whole character of your chop, making it look like someone gave a shit. IMNSHO.

5/16 is way more than you need though. 1/8" is plenty, unless you're going to fill it with speed holes or something, then I might bump it up to 3/16.

Nice malloym, are you going to get rid of that fugly cross-brace too?

 

[angus67]

5/16 is just what I have at home. I can get 1/8 easy. that seems thin to me.
thanks for holding back comments of predictable sporty tank , teebs. I got it cheap, and is clean inside.

so, for the new gussets, I'm thinking, use two plates that are together at the top under the backbone, then separate them to go down the down tubes. I'm thinking same size, as in the length that is attached , with like a 'c' cut out of it like a scallop.

 

[inxs]

 

[angus67]

c was how I pictured it. but the top of the gusset being more toward center of back bone.

 

[Hairyblackdude]

Kinda past this now, but I remember what I did...

I used a large C-clamp to bend the pieces in a little bit- not a hammer.

 

[Teebs]

1/8 is plenty if you do it as inxs laid out in his diagram C, 5/16 is serious overkill. Go with 3/16 if you think it needs to be heavier. You want the gussets welded as far to the outside of the tubes as you can without causing tank clearance problems.

Brother, I'm not going to give every dude I come across a hard time about using that tank. It's cookie cutter. It's also YOUR scoot. If you look at my comments, I don't usually go off on a guy's personal build. It's the "professional" builders who use these tanks, unmodified, along with other bolt-on and prefabricated crap that I get tired of. I can think of a few on this site. I've been trying to ignore them. We'll see how long I can hold out...