Work was really getting along. All major fabrication was done. Tank was ready. I removed the rear wheel to get some things done on the rear suspension. To do this I put an extra jack under the block. All went fine, worked the whole day like this. At nine in the evening we heard a tremendous noise, the couch in the living room shook. The last thing i expected that this noise was coming out of the shop. A bold was torn out of the table that held the motor. It tilted of the table, landing dead on the cockpit.

Concrete floor damaged! major dents in the tank. Scratches on the top face of the tank with concrete embedded in it prove that he rotated the full 180 degrees on the way down. I cried like a small child, I can tell you that.

On top of this: oil is dripping out of the block!!!

So it took me a while to get over this and get started again. I managed to take some pictures of it all. Now the work of the re-rebuild is getting along, I'm able to write about this all. In Holland we have an saying: shared sorrow is half sorrow.

 so here are the first pictures of the re-rebuild.

wish me luck. I've booked a day at the track 28the of march. Payed for it in advance. Only need a bike...........

the battery placement is changed. I saw that there was enough room beneath the old battery brackets to store at least half a battery. So I took some more measurements to be sure. The old brackets had to go! Easy task for the grinder. The battery almost sunk 4 " in the hole that came available. The battery sits almost tight in between the frame. It only needs some better support on the bottom. Fabricating a bracket from aluminum was a quick job. (no photo jet). I only needed a bracket to secure the battery. Nothing good came to my mind. I tried to imagine the finished job. The new routing of the main cables was not I had in mind. Then I knew what it had to be: The securing bracket had to bolted direct to the battery pole. Make the bracket of copper, looks good, guides current well. better ground wire is difficult yo find. This enables the possibility to attach multiple ground wires to this bracket at a convenient place, Out of sight, safe for moving parts.

This good idea only needs copper sheet!?! I had some half kettles lying around. So after some cutting in cardboard I had some templates. 

The last time this was a complete half water kettle.

 After cutting the first bracket, ready for bending.

 I took the time to heat the copper before bending. This material is probably 30 years old and 1,3mm thick. It is more easy to bend as 1 mm aluminum.

First bracket, fitted around rear brake fluid container. All the ground wires will be attached this face at the back.When the battery needs to be removed, all these wires can be left alone.

For the second bracket the same work is done. Cutting and bending:

  This is how the result is so far:

 I added a slit to monitor the fluid level for the rear brake. I need to add more threat holes for all the terminals. Make some kind of bracket for the positive terminal. It has to look the same as on the other side, but bolting it to the frame is not a good plan I'm afraid. 

This one is for fun. I had a perfectly good backet that holds my licence plate and turning signal lamps. Welded of angular iron, small, good shape, good position. Only sand it, paint it and ready. But it didn't feel right. It had to be aluminidized. And so we went to work.

This is the original, a little rust, 4" by 2", 290 grams heavy.

step one: the blank:

The reason I want to do this, is had to have those coole flared holes in a bracket. Molding them by hand is not a good idea, it will never get nice and consistent. So after one hour of fabricating we ended up with a (wooden-)flaring tool.

cutting the holes in the blank:

Pressing the flares in the blank:

Making all the bendings. Quite a challange with all these corners and flares, but we made it.

Only 96 grams, 4" by 5" by 3" big. So more than three times the size, and only a third of the weight. This is almost 10 times more efficient material use!

I can't get enough of looking at these details. Getting on with the remaining work on the bike is getting more and more difficult.

This is a tricky one. Under this -nice- layer of paint is an aluminum tank. I want the alu look.. so the solution is only one layer of paint away.

It still is strange feeling, removing your own spacial paint... what has to be done, has to be done..

as the tank get cleaner.. the rest gets dirtier..But the result is beyond my expectations. A completely clean tank, no bondo needed to fix welds or dents!! The only thing that is left is the big dent that I produced myself...

Look at those welds, this is dutch craftsmanship at it best..

Looks good from this side, but horror is on the other side:

 this is a decent size dent. I cannot / will not use bondo on this one. We want the naked look of aluminium. Not held back by any knowledge: hacksaw in it!

 this is the view from the underside of the tank. Left is before and right is after the visit of the hacksaw.

 The result after an hour of hammering on the inside. I learned that the hole should not be too small. You must be able to acces the whole width of the dent but you need also enough room to use a hammer where it was ment for: hitting and not rubbing. The biggest part of the dent was hammered with only half an inch of room to make speed.

So now started the fine art of finishing the surface. Hitting the outer side with a pollished hammer, holding all kinds of dollies on the inside. Again, holding a heavy dolly through a tight hole is not easy. Keep your patients. A pollished hammer is also importand. Every hit the surface of the hammer molds itself in the aluminium. Every dent in the hammer surface will copy itself 1000 times on your tank!!

I'm more than happy with the result after one evening of work!

Now we can start on the thing that caused this rebuild: a broken windshield. As mentioned, a lot has to be done here:

• New headlights,
• new windshield,
• better fitting of instruments

This is what we start with:

I started with opening up the front of the fairing. Although the new lamps are round double units, I want to get an other look. To keep the fighter look, the opening should look like an air intake from some older jet plane's like the MIG's. The lamps should be as far back as possible, trying to hide them in the back. therefor I bought a set of relative small diameter lens lamps. Only problem is that these are relatively long.

So lets get dirty. This time no hacksaw but using the grinder. This gives more dust and noise but I'm not amused with the amount of saws the fiberglass needs.

More than enough hole... now filling it up.

This is the result of a couple of hours cutting, bending, drilling and fitting. The shape is relatively simple, only single curved sheet. Only need some attention on the fitting of the seams.

I'm pleased with the effect.Right now the bike is on a table of 50 cm high. I'm curious how "hidden" the lamps are when the bike is on ground level and you walk around it.

So the wooden block has to go of course. All the brackets and braces on the back have to be fabricated. I will start that when instruments and windshield are done.

Windshield.

The first piece of aluminum I tried was the right side of the shield. This was the go - no go item for the rebuild. When this double curved piece was looking acceptable I knew that I could pull this off. The problem of duplicating this on the left side was still there. But with the grown confident I started hammering.

Left and right side. One cut to size, one rough. I hope they like each other.. they will spend a lot of time in this configuration...

And of course fitting and checking as you go. The blue lines indicate that I decided for some more straight lines on the edges..more cutting and fitting.

Finished shield, front and back side. Only the front is sanded.

This is the start of the instrument cluster. Starting with a flat sheet.Making holes for the instruments. The nice thing of the aluminum sheet is that you are able to remove material with a file relatively easy.

To fit the reset wheel of the tacho, a relieve is made.

To prevent rattling a strip is attached in the middle. First step is making a nice row of holes.

Drill one hole, put the rivit in, drill next and fix the bracket. then start drilling the rest. You don't want to drill 12 holes on the wrong spot. The next time I do a project like this I get a set of cleco's.

View from the back of the panel. The white edge on the polyester marks the difference between the old screen and the new one. The new line is wider, more a match to the rest of the bike.

 Meet the new face I will be looking at for the next ten years. What still missing is the surface treatment: brushing. 

As you can see in previous posts: the rear lights should look like the engines of a F15 at full throttle. Starting with a mock up of the rear. A lot of tape and try to hit the right lines.

before I went further on this I had to make sure what the dimensions would be of the "nozzles". So I started to shape them first.

Having these around, I turned back to the bike with a hack saw. Unbelievable how quick a blade gets blund from the fiberglass.

Now the first step in filling the (huge)gap.

From flat to shape...

Fitting as you go...repeating these steps until .....

Detail of the poprivits I used to attach all the panels. Next project I want to try real countersunk rivits. This baby will have bad flying manners with these rivits, but then again .. maybe it is better that we stay on the ground.

and still growing strong. It tuned out that I needed 3 to 4 hours for every panel. The rear having 11 panels. Don't want to pay someone to do this for me. Hack..NO BODY touches my bike and I'm having to much fun in doing this myself.

Sight from the rear, with rear light unit in it. The unit is a replacement unit with LED for a R6, fitted up side down..

I'm very pleased with the effect the lights have...

You keep switching from the bench to the bike. Fitting and checking. I think that this will improve in time. I need as much time to decide how to proceed as I need to actually fit the panels.

The rear of the seat are two panels which have a more complicated shape. At the corner I had to create a double curve. It turned out all right. I still can ride it bare, without body filler.

Two times a half gives one complete panel. In the mean time I had to go to the hardware store to get a new box poprivits. 500 pieces this time.....

 So at last the shell is done. Because I removed the complete subframe some work still has to be done. The passenger seat is gone, and I will create a small storage  space instead.

Looking at it, I can say I'm pretty proud on my first full aluminum  body piece. Next time maybe a little bigger pitch of the rivits. I used now between 18 and 20 mm.

Sometimes you need a need a little help to start building your dream. In my case my bike helped itself.. he decided to jump off the stand. I put him on the driveway for his summer wash. (I know it. I should clean him some more) But he had other plans: running down the driveway on his own and take a dive on the pavement. This was not new to him.. he did it before, then it was the left side, now he took the fall on the right side.

here you can see the damage on the front of the motor: two sets of deep scratches, one on each side, no window anymore, brake lever gone and headlight broken. The big question was..WHAT DO WE DO NOW? I had enough wild plans for several rebuilds. But I drive it every day to work, so finding the right time to start one was difficult. The missing brake was enough to get the back-up bike up and running. the next push was the front fairing. This was a aftermarket piece, and I don't know where it came from. So the broken window is a major problem. The lamp was no loss, you get more light out of a 5 dollar flashlight. Finding a replacement for that useless candle is worth it.

So sweeping all problems to one pile...I decided that this was a sign from above to start a major rebuild.

List of actions:

• New (decent) headlight
• Led flashlights, with electronic flasher, so no fast blinking anymore.
• Led rear light, shaped as exhausts of a F15 eagle fighter plane.
• integrated cockpit instead of original rattling poorly fitted cluster

Example and half-way result: checking the light effect.