The Sport Fairing Project (end of the saga)

Started by Extent, October 18, 2004, 09:32:07 PM

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Lucky

Extent, do you know that there are 2 threaded bolt holes on the frame, on either side of the steering tube for the original fairing frame bracket?.. can you use those?
1982/3 XZ550 Touring Vison, Gold on Black

Extent

Oh I forgot about that, I am using the stock bolt holes, but they hold a bracket across the front of the steering tube with tabs on it to match up to the bolt holes on the base of the stay.  I never liked fiddleing with the bolts in the original location, so I thought a two piece design would be just slightly more convenient for the countless times I'm sure to have to remove this thing.
Rider1>No wonder, the Daytona has very sharp steering and aggressive geometry.  It's a very difficult bike for a new rider.
Rider2>Well it has different geometry now.

Blake

Hey Extent,


Just curious but whats the thickness of your main bracket(forks?).  Just curious because when i had the gsxr 600 fairing on my bike (see avatar) from lock to lock there wasnt much more than maybe 1/4" (if i remember correctly.) are you going to have to modify your fork stops so you can have enough space in the middle to place that bracket?


reason i ask is because i had to take off my fairing because i was simply using 1/8" x 1" steel strip reinforced with some 1/8" square solid steel strips to help stiffen it up.   


Also, what are you doing with all of the wires that are there infront of the fork (used to be in the headlight bucket?)   mainly what are you doing to keep those out of water/rain? (thats another problem i had that simply didnt have time to figure out). 


Great work though!  makes me want to go weld up a similar bracket and get my fairing/clipons/new gauges back on.


Blake
"At first it's like a new pair of underware... Frustrating and constrictive.  But then, it kind of grows on you..."

Extent

When I made my current one I "measured" the clearance and found that there wasn't room for anything between the forks.  At the Cali ROV meet Ron told me to measure again and lo and behold there was space :D .  The number I'm currently working with is 1.5" total.  I've got a 3/4" square tube up through the center right out for extra bracing, and I roughly measured the distance between the forkleg and that tubing to get that number.

The fork is 3cm wide, which should allow for .4cm (just over .1") clearance on each side.  I'm going to do a cardboard mockup to check my numbers before commiting it to steel.  I didn't feel like taking the whole front end apart to get my measurements for the cad simulation so i'm only about 80% confident in my numbers.

Right now all of the wiring harness is just kind of hanging out in the open uncovered  :-[  This new bracket should give me something that I can wire tie the bundle up to along the bottom leg of the fork and then make a nice cover for the top and fit a plate on the under side of the 1/4 fairing to cover the bottom.
Rider1>No wonder, the Daytona has very sharp steering and aggressive geometry.  It's a very difficult bike for a new rider.
Rider2>Well it has different geometry now.

kiawrench

i will say what many are thinking,,, hurry as much as possible,, this thing is starting to look really good!
  keep it safe , make it your way , and start thinking of a price, i think you are going to be making a few more!!

  If nothing else, may end up with my bike in your yard getting a custom hand laid lower set for the fairing i have now , lol
keep your bike running,your beer cold ,and your passport handy.all are like money in the bank .

Extent

The best laid plans....



That's right, it didn't fit.  Not even close.  I had something that fit perfect between the forklegs, but I completely forgot to take into account the keylock and brakelines and bracket *doh!* Well that's why I wanted to prototype it in cardboard first.

So some hasty redesigning that took all the rest of the day and I once again completely blew through the timeline I had figured for this segment.  Since properly modeling out all the bits that I would need to for a virtual simulation would take forever for me to do I settled for taking realworld measurements as best I could as I went along and coming up with a "close enough" draft.  Here is the results of that process.



And for reference here is what the old system looked like when it was stripped down.


Forgive the crappy camera phone pics, it's just so much more convenient to use to take snaps as I go along :P

I regenerated the plans from the new model and marked out the side pieces on the 16ga sheet steel.  I cut it out using both a cordless sawz-all and a sabre saw with a metal blade.  This ended up being a real pain and needed a lot of cleanup and pounding back flat after it was done.  I'm not quite sure what would have been a better way of do it, maybe an air nibbler.  If I was going to do it again I'ld defenatly look around and see what it might cost to get laser or water-jetted for something with these long thinish parts.

The sides I cut as long as possible and bent into shape, rather than welding along every possible seam.  I had the top two bolt holes off by about 2mm so I drilled them out and put a new section over top of it, that's why there's the second plate there.  Here it is tacked up.



Here is what I did to bolt it to the headstock.


It worked resonably well, but the 16ga still flexes a bit more than I wanted it to horisontally.  I tried bracing it across with some of the roundstock I had handy, and I plan to cut off the "extra" bits which are above the crossbar, but I'm not quite sure how to make it stiffer.  It seemed fine enough on the test ride, but I don't know how much it's really moving about.


In this case the roundstock was originally just temporary to hold it in place, but I decided to keep it.  These hold the headlight in place very securely.

At this point I nearly took the tip of my finger off with the bench grinder, which put me off for yet another week with only about 1 hour of work left to do, grrr.  Note to others: when grinding the flash off thin pieces of metal make extra certain that the platform is adjusted as close to the wheel as it can go!

Here's the completed assembly in place, with all the fairing brackets in place as well.




The mirror brackets hold the guages in place as well.  There is a third point on the fairing that is held down right under the nose.





It clears everything just about perfectly, juuuust enough room right where it's needed.  Even with the welds ground down it touches just barely at full right lock, but I'm willing to accept that, my tankbag gets more in the way.



It defenatly looks like there is a lot more room for weight savings, now that I've seen this thing in the real world, it's probably heavier than the ~3lb estimate that I had from the CAD work, but I attribute that to the last minute redesign  :-\  I think there's room to bring the whole headlight back about 2 inches and bring the weight bias further inside (which would be really good) but I really think that'll have to be for my next project, I'll just have to chalk it up to experience this time around.  As it is it holds the headlight in exactly the same position as my original tangle of metal, and I'm pretty happy about that at least.

I still have to put the horn and turn signals somewhere, and then tie up the wiring harness, but most of that will have to wait untill after my test ride tomorrow, the weather is just too good to pass up.
Rider1>No wonder, the Daytona has very sharp steering and aggressive geometry.  It's a very difficult bike for a new rider.
Rider2>Well it has different geometry now.

QBS

You go guy!!  I nominate you for status "Vnary Extraordinare".

Kenny

 Awsome !  Awesome!
   What a great job you are doing,I have done this sort of project when I decided to put the Hannigan SS on my 82.(1983) Hannigan did not make a bracket to attach their fairing to the bike.
   I figured I could make one easy enough... in a raised garden shed with a buzz box. My first attempt was a failure as the bracket broke after a couple of hundred B.C.'s frost heaves! Managed to get back to my R&D facility before anything else let loose. I had not heard of a  CAD program a this stage of the game. No computer either.
   I determined I would purchace a Vetter Quicksilver mount which would fit on the V, after o bit of modification I was able to fit the fairing to the bike.
    Now it's 24 years later, still riding Visions & will put the same fairing on my 81 XV 920 rh. Should be a bit easier with a Mig/ tube bender & shop.
     Can't wait to see the finished product.
                   Cheers Ken S       
2 XV 920rh 81
1 Red/White 83
1 Blue/White 83
Bmw R100rs 84
TDM 850  92

Extent

Ok, so quick update.  Of course it wasn't good enough, and the headstock mount flexed quite a bit and after a couple of bumps in the road I ended up with a fairing resting on my front fender, not good for steering  :-\  So I chucked it and made a new one that fit closer to the headstock out of thicker material.  Once I had it together it was apparent that a lot of the vertical movement was actually coming from it pivoting against the bolts, and not the bar flexing.  It just has too much leverage too far up and moving it closer to the frame tube didn't help any.  So I quick made up a top piece that would wrap up over the spine of the bike and bolt on to hold it in place and this finally did it.





It's finally stiff in all directions now, I had it out all day Monday running errands and it was working great.  Finally I can try to get back to making forward progress on the project :p

I also took the opportunity to weigh the parts.  It came out to 14.2 lbs (ouch) for the whole quarter fairing.  Of that 3.8 lbs is metal bits, the rest is the headlight, FG, mirrors etc.
Rider1>No wonder, the Daytona has very sharp steering and aggressive geometry.  It's a very difficult bike for a new rider.
Rider2>Well it has different geometry now.

Humber

Man, where are the very first pictures of this project? Can you re-post them?
nie ma podpis?w

Extent

Were there any ones specifically you wanted?  They were all on my old domain which is gone and dead.
Rider1>No wonder, the Daytona has very sharp steering and aggressive geometry.  It's a very difficult bike for a new rider.
Rider2>Well it has different geometry now.

Extent

Alright, so I'm calling it quits on this one.  It's been a long almost 2 (!) years and I've learned alot.  I've been growing more and more dissatisfied with what I have, the poor design and the poor shape, things being off center etc, etc, etc.  So I'm taking all I've learned and going back to square 1 and going back to a completely new design and a lot of testing in CAD.  But that is a journey for another day (and a new thread)  I want to dedicate some time to some of the other things I've been wanting to work on like replacing the exhaust system, doing some dyno time, making a new set of electronic guages from scratch, and a couple other things that we'll just call "top secret" (lol) for now  :P

But! I couldn't stand to just leave the rough edges of what I have now quite so rough so I wanted to do something to finish off the top that would make it a little easier for me to hide some of the wiring and stuff, so back with the foam!

click images for larger view


I've been using 2 part Polyurethane Foam instead of the foam-in-a-bottle.  It's much stiffer and a load easier to work with.

Did the lay up right on the bike


Pulled all the foam out of it and reinforced the seam between the old and new on the inside of the fairing.  I'm just rushing the whole thing so the surface is bad and wavy, slap on a bunch of body filler, cut it down with a rasp, sand and prime...



The rasp works great for getting things mostly flat, it's not perfect but it's about as good as the rest of it so I'm not going to fret over it too much.  I can always go back later and smooth things more.

And that's about it.  I've already destroyed my molds and original plugs so the prototype markings come off for good.  I'm not happy with everything (of course) so I'm not going to go with the yellow and black paint scheme I had planned on, but I'm just going to stick with flat black for everything (kind of a shame, I like the silver paint, but it's just getting rattier and rattier)

the Extent stensil is coming off, I still have another coat of black to shoot and I was just playing with masking








And so with a triumphant "meh"  I pronounce this project over! :p
Rider1>No wonder, the Daytona has very sharp steering and aggressive geometry.  It's a very difficult bike for a new rider.
Rider2>Well it has different geometry now.

QBS

I don't care what you say.  You're a better man than me.  Considering what you started with (a vison of what could be), I think you did great!  Can't wait to hear about the other projects you're dreaming up.  Cheers.

Lucky

Hey Extent,
If i ever get another Vision to play with, i'd be interested in mounting this fairing if it's just gathering dust somewhere...
1982/3 XZ550 Touring Vison, Gold on Black