Artie
Certified Gear Head!
Well, after buying and wasting a sum of money on a whisker bar for passenger foot pegs, I've decided that I needed to engineer a better way to mount some on the bike. My friend Jim and I came up with a good idea and thought it was worth sharing. The project started last Thursday and I mounted the final product Sunday afternoon. In total probably 22 hours of work, not bad! The billet 6061 T6 aluminum was $30 or so, and blades, sandpaper and grinding wheels came to about another $30! I had a set of pegs so whatever those cost add on to the total...Enjoy!
Art
I first started with a block of billet 6061 aluminum that was 10" long, by 2" thick and 3" wide. We shaped two opposing mounts and sketched the shape with sharpie so we could rough cut the blocks out. I decided that the rear fender strut mounting point would be most suitable and least destructive to any other part of the bike... I traced the shape to continue the line of the strut and the fender.
Here's the rough shape and sketched sections to cut out.
Here's both sketched up and ready to cut!
The left side needed some adjustments since the frame is offset for the left side drive. I wanted the strut I was making to come down past the belt so the passenger would have a reasonable foot position.
Starting to cut! Used the hacksaw to start the cut very straight, then....
The Sawzall! They don't call it a sawzall for nothing! Notice the bimetal wood cutting blade! Cut thru the billet like butter! Used 3 blades total!
whittling away!
Cutting the strut body down, used a drill to radius the back side instead of leaving a sharp edge. Easier to polish into to!
Right side mount cut rough and ready for shaping with the angle grinder, which I used 60 grit zirconia sanding discs on to round the edges and take out the saw marks and nicks and scratches.
Here's the right side mount after cleaning up and rough sanding.
Next thing is to mark the mounting tab holes. I pulled the fender off to access the bosses that hold the struts in place. We used sharpie marker to blacken the top of the new mount tab and took a scribe to mark the outline of the hole, then centerpunched the drill point so we could get the hole centered in the material!
I got 3" long 5/16" bolts to install the mounts onto the frame, I used black oxide hardened bolts to ensure I got the needed strength for the whole assembly!
Now we mocked up the right side for fit and see if any adjustments were needed. Actually fit better than expected, no adjustments needed!
Onto the belt side! This posed a tricky problem with mounting. Since the bolts stick out about 3/8" from the new mount, we countersunk the heads so there was no intereference with the belt. I also had to do quite a bit of finishing with the angle grinder to clear the belt all around by about 1/8" or more. We used the same cutting, drilling and grinding technique to get the left side done. Here is the test fitting. Only challenge now is having to twist the belt some to get to the allen heads on the bolts.
Here are both mounts now cleaned up and final sanded to prepare for polishing. I have an industrial buffer for polishing metal in my shop so I polished them myself.
Emery polish to remove surface imperfections and scratches. This will be a black stick.
Tripoli polish to smooth the surface and polish to a shine this is a red stick, you can use white too, but it's another step and another wheel, I only have 2 wheels on my buffer so I go coarse and then fine. I work the coarse more than most would, but if u let the wheel do the cutting you can skip the middle step and achieve a good result...Anyway, back to the program. Here's the finish polish
.....And.....Voila! Mounted with pegs and ready for a ride!
Art
I first started with a block of billet 6061 aluminum that was 10" long, by 2" thick and 3" wide. We shaped two opposing mounts and sketched the shape with sharpie so we could rough cut the blocks out. I decided that the rear fender strut mounting point would be most suitable and least destructive to any other part of the bike... I traced the shape to continue the line of the strut and the fender.
Here's the rough shape and sketched sections to cut out.
Here's both sketched up and ready to cut!
The left side needed some adjustments since the frame is offset for the left side drive. I wanted the strut I was making to come down past the belt so the passenger would have a reasonable foot position.
Starting to cut! Used the hacksaw to start the cut very straight, then....
The Sawzall! They don't call it a sawzall for nothing! Notice the bimetal wood cutting blade! Cut thru the billet like butter! Used 3 blades total!
whittling away!
Cutting the strut body down, used a drill to radius the back side instead of leaving a sharp edge. Easier to polish into to!
Right side mount cut rough and ready for shaping with the angle grinder, which I used 60 grit zirconia sanding discs on to round the edges and take out the saw marks and nicks and scratches.
Here's the right side mount after cleaning up and rough sanding.
Next thing is to mark the mounting tab holes. I pulled the fender off to access the bosses that hold the struts in place. We used sharpie marker to blacken the top of the new mount tab and took a scribe to mark the outline of the hole, then centerpunched the drill point so we could get the hole centered in the material!
I got 3" long 5/16" bolts to install the mounts onto the frame, I used black oxide hardened bolts to ensure I got the needed strength for the whole assembly!
Now we mocked up the right side for fit and see if any adjustments were needed. Actually fit better than expected, no adjustments needed!
Onto the belt side! This posed a tricky problem with mounting. Since the bolts stick out about 3/8" from the new mount, we countersunk the heads so there was no intereference with the belt. I also had to do quite a bit of finishing with the angle grinder to clear the belt all around by about 1/8" or more. We used the same cutting, drilling and grinding technique to get the left side done. Here is the test fitting. Only challenge now is having to twist the belt some to get to the allen heads on the bolts.
Here are both mounts now cleaned up and final sanded to prepare for polishing. I have an industrial buffer for polishing metal in my shop so I polished them myself.
Emery polish to remove surface imperfections and scratches. This will be a black stick.
Tripoli polish to smooth the surface and polish to a shine this is a red stick, you can use white too, but it's another step and another wheel, I only have 2 wheels on my buffer so I go coarse and then fine. I work the coarse more than most would, but if u let the wheel do the cutting you can skip the middle step and achieve a good result...Anyway, back to the program. Here's the finish polish
.....And.....Voila! Mounted with pegs and ready for a ride!
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