As I have mentioned before, we have gotten to the point where there is very little I can do on my own on this project. In order to make sure I don't take time away from normal working hours at the shop, Eric has agreed to stay at the shop after hours on occasion so that he and I can work exclusively on the cafe project. This is an extremely generous use of his time and I'd be mired without it.
Consequently, you're going to see Eric doing a lot of the work in the pictures too. You'll have to rest assured that I was both present and helping to the best of my abilities, but we decided that things that were permanent and external should be done by an expert.
Tonight's priority was mounting the tail section to the frame of the bike and determining the best way to mount the tail light. We decided that the most simple (and most elegant) solution would be to use the already existing hardware which held the stock seat to the bike. This seemed to be how the manufacturer of the tail section envisioned it attaching as well, as there were dimples on the tail section which corresponded with the stock hardware. Still, we did not use the manufacturers drilling locations, choosing instead to measure ourselves. Then we made our first permanent modification to the tail section of the night.
After drilling all of the holes we used rivets to attach the stock hardware to the tail section. The tops of the rivets will eventually be covered by the upholstered seat. The added benefit of attaching the tail section this way is that if we need to access the area under the seat or we need to remove the tail section (as is important for several routine maintenance tasks) we can simply use the stock hinge to lift the tail section.
After successfully attaching the tail section, the next step was to figure out how we wanted the tail light to attach to the bike. We considered several options, including cutting the stock fender and using it as a platform for mounting the light, but we decided that the bike would look cleaner if we abandoned the back fender altogether and mounted the tail light directly on the tail section.
The tail light had a bracket where it was meant to attach to the fender, so that was the first to go. Eric used the cutting wheel to reshape the bracket. The flying sparks made me feel like I was on one of those bike build tv shows (haven't you noticed that sparks are always flying in the promos for those shows?).
Next it was time to mark where we wanted to drill the back of the tail section. We're inserting the back of the light fixture (where the wires come out) into the fiberglass so that it sits flush on the back of the bike (making it look like it was built into the fiberglass). We needed to cut a hole 1/2 of an inch in diameter for this to work and we wanted to make sure it was centered. We measured using calipers and Eric drilled the hole.
The measurements were perfect and we now have tail light which is cleanly mounted into the fiberglass.
All of this fabrication was huge progress for the project. The gas tank, side covers and tail section will be ready for paint this week. While they are being painted (a process which may take between 6 and 8 weeks) we will rebuild the headlight bracket and rewire the bike. I'll send the tail section to the upholsterer as soon as it gets back from paint to have the seat made, then it'll be a simple matter of assembly.
