Battery Tray Trials

Given the capabilities of my bending jig, I decided to make the lower battery try in two pieces. The bends were too complex for my rudimentary tooling. Here's the redesign of the piece. I've added some notches along the edges to help align the part in the jig. I also added some relief holes, as a way of reducing effort needed to form the bends.

On the cosmetic end of things, I refinshed the front fender. In the sanding process, I discovered several layers of paint: Metallic blue, maroon, white, and royal blue at the bottom. Unfortunatley, the fender is not from this model of GSXR. Could possibly be from a '90 model like the fairing, but who knows. I guess some mounting brackets will be in the works next.

More Cosmetic Procedures

I'm slowly working my way throught the boxes of parts that I pulled off bike. Funny, it sure seemed to come off a lot faster thant putting it back on.

I decided to recover the seat because it wouldn't cost much and makes a big difference cosmetically. Also visible in the pic is the latest mock up of the lower battery tray.

Weight Watchers

My first attempt at a bending jig (can't really call it a brake), was barely able to bend a two inch wide strip of 3/16" aluminum. No way it is going to handle the nearly 12" required on the tray pattern. Granted the jig was only made of wood (oak I had laying around) and I was bending 6061-T6, but I was amazed and how much the clamping mechanism flexed during the bending process. The radius was pretty clean though, and there was only a minimal amount of micro-cracking, so I'm on the right track with the size of the bending radius.

In the absence of any real progress on the lower battery tray, I decided to start putting pieces back on the bike. While cleaning the rear Foot Peg Brackets, I noticed the large amount of material devoted to supporting the muffler and the seat lock. I really don't need the muffler mount and I never liked the seat lock setup. Time for a little weight losss surgery.

Like any good surgeon, I outline the sections to be removed with a sharpie. Armed with only a butter knife and ignoring the patient's requests for anethesia, I got to work reforming the brackets.

Ahhh... trim and sexy. Now about that butt lift Mr. Gixxer....