While wifey is away...

...the garage rat shall play!

Well, as the title eluded to, Karen is out of town this week, so I spent a long day in the garage on Saturday. Looking forward to another long day tomorrow before I head back into to work.

Things accomplished yesterday:

Fabricated and welded mounting lugs for the coils. This was not very complicated, just time consuming using only a hand drill.

First, I built a jig with the mounting lugs the correct distance apart. I clamped this assembly to the bike and welded away!

Next, I welded the lugs to the frame, removed the jig and mounted the coils.

And the finished product...

The next step was to figure out how to support the fuel tank. The fuel tank had a pair of eyelets along the front edge, but no means to support in the vertical direction.

For this, I fabricated a "T" and affixed a piece of high-density foam to the top edge. The foam is intended to dampen vibrations and prevent fuel foaming. This sounded easy, but it involved a lot of blind cutting. Sand a little, still too tall, sand a little, still too tall, etc. I was able to use a straight edge to get in the ball park, but fine tuning was required.

The finished support is shown below.

Finally, all the bolts were tightened up and everything lined up!

I used a level across the fuel port to gauge level. As you can see, I hit it pretty close to the mark.

And finally, I cleaned up the edges of the homemade exhaust system and hit it with a couple coats of bar-b-que hi temp paint. I am not concerned with the visual quality of the paint as everything will be wrapped over, it was rust prevention that was on my mind.

Now onto figuring out what I am doing about the rear fender and tail light.