Gas Tank Progress

Well I cut up an extra 883 tank I had laying around a month or so ago.  Well, tonight I decided to weld it up.  As you can see from the pictures I need some practice on my sheet metal welding.

Sissy Bar Almost Done

Well, with the wife possibly going into labor at any moment I stayed home from Hockey tonight.  So I got to work on the sissy bar a little.  Pretty much done except for trimming it down to sit closer to the fender.  Waiting to do that till I get the bungs so I know how much to trim.  This is not as tall as some of the pictures make it look.  It is 21" from top to the fender.  Enough talk, here are the pictures.

Sissy Bar

So I got a little time in the garage today, was nice to keep my mind occupied and off the shit going on in the lives of some loved ones.  Took the time to get my sissy bar bent up.  I used 603 SS 1/2" round so I can just polish it up once it is done.  I had 2 pieces that were 4' long so I bent them to match and I will weld them together at the top and grind it smooth.  Should turn out pretty nice once I am done.  Right now it is bent up, still need to cut, weld, and grind the top to finish it up.  You can see what it will look like when done.

I think I might trim done the bottom of each side so it sits a little closer to the fender but we will see.

Headlight and Lower Triple Tree

Tonight I got a few hours and worked in the garage a little.  I went ahead and got my headlight mounted.  I decided to weld the mounting tab directly to  the lower triple tree.  This limits me a little bit down the road but I really like the tucked, tight, clean look.

I also welded the holes up on the sides of my lower triple trees.  Cleans them up and will look great once painted, never be able to tell.  Now I just need to weld up the holes on the top triple tree.

 

Bars

So my bars were 8 7/8" wide on the bottom and my top tree is 8 3/8" wide.  So most people will never notice but I wanted them to be the same width so I decided to take a 1/2" out of the bars.

So I figured I would cut them in half and then cut 1/2" off then plug them and weld it back together.  I placed the cut so the weld would be under the clamp so if I didn't get it completely smoothed back out you would never see it.  Well, that didn't matter because I ended up having to cut them again and have a piece welded in.  For some reason I was getting a lot of porosity in the weld.  I tried to grind it out with no luck.  Ended up cutting it out and adding a small piece and that made sure the metal was clean and still porosity.  Needless to say I was fucking pissed.   I am still not sure why the porosity is there.  Only thing I can think of is there is a small leak in the gas hose that is pulling in air with the argon and causing it but I am not sure.  So I was at the point that if I messed it up again I was not sure I was going to be able to save the bars so I dropped them off at a local shop and had them weld them up.  Not very happy about the situation but they are done.

I decided since I was sanding down the welds from the narrowing job that I would smooth all the welds out.

Controls

Took a set of stock HD controls and cleaned them up a bit.  I didnt care for the lip around the one edge, I guess that was to mate up to the switch housings.  Now I just need to re paint them and they will be set.

Before

After

The Little Things

I hope you all had a great holiday season and here is to a great new year on two wheels.  Be safe out there.

So I really think it is the little things that make a bike.  So today I took some time and worked on the lower triple tree and smoothed it out.  First up was the tab sticking off the side.  I guess they might have been used to mount a wind shield or something, I will never use them so off the go.

There was also a ridge around the whole thing, I guess it might be from the casting or something.  Anyway I wanted to get rid of it so a little time with the file and some sand paper and it is nice and clean now.