Old vs New

Some comparison photos from the beginning with this bike when I first got it home and now that I've bobbed it.

More Than Meets The Eye

Purchased some custom vinyl off the Internet and had my son, who once did vinyl application for a living apply it to the rear of the Bobber. This is a grey 3M reflective vinyl.

Must cover up the nasty bits

In most projects, there's the last untidy area, the nasty bits that need some kind of covering. In this project, I removed the stock side panel covers since they were hideously bulbous and covered up essential parts of the engine. A motorcycle after all is all about the "motor" or engine in this case, so I removed the panels, but this left the LH side wiring and fuse area messy.

I created a cardboard template (several in fact, at least 5 iterations in total to create a minimal cover over the tidbits). My farrier/blacksmith/fabricator, Kevin Mead, said he could recreate the template in metal, and he did an excellent job. I only had to tweak the final metal cover a bit to fit perfectly. Took some fabrications on my side as well.

Here's the completed cover, painted and installed.

This is of the untidy area without cover. Very unsightly.

Here's the raw cover before I cleaned it up and painted it.

That little hole in the middle mates with a standoff that I fashioned myself using aluminum stock and drill & tap. Had to align the standoff in the correct place using paint on the inside of the cover. When I pressed it in place, the paint left an impression where the hole needed to be drilled. Presto chango.

Here's a close-up of the standoff. I used an existing bolt welded to the chassis and removed it's nut. It was m6x1.00 and I purchased this 12mm hex aluminum stock, drilled a 5mm hole centered on each side and tapped both ends. It was a bit tricky to get the length of the standoff just right to hold the cover in place.

Front end done

I completed the front end by finishing up the upper fork covers. Here they are in all their splendor. I purchased raw aluminum tubing with an internal diameter of 44mm to go over the 43mm fork tubes, cut them to length (7") and painted them with rattle-can gloss black. I used a little electrical tape wound around the tops and bottoms of the upper tubes to keep make up the 1mm difference in diameter so they fit tight. Looks pretty good.

The rest of the pictures are the various steps involved.

The raw upper tubes.

Tubing cut to length, sanded and washed with soap and hot water to remove any oils, thus the paper towel.

Painted.

Both tubes. Pre-installed.