Here we are at update HUIT, seven...
No pictures this week. All I did this weekend was work on the oil tank and gas tank.
I have the inside of the oil tank all boxed in now and had some small pin holes that I had to fix, reweld. I have to do something about the core in my MIG cable as the wire is just jerking along and sometimes it just flies out and other times it just sticks a bit. This Miller is not that old, only burned a 2# spool through it since I move down here.
I would be using my TIG but I'm out of Argon and this tank is not up to date lease wise and it's from Michigan, not St. Louis area. So my MIG is what I have to work with. I'm using 16 ga. for my boxing in materials, but the China tanks are 20 ga. and it's a bit of a trick welding the tank with my on/off again MIG wire feed issues. But hey, nobody said I can't go back over welds and
fix any small leaks.
Back to the tanks. I got permanent front mounting tabs made from 11 ga. and have them mounted and finished welded inside the fronts of each tank. I'm using the stock rear mounts for each tank. I still need to come up with a front lower means to stabilize the tanks. With just the two mounts on each tank, they're pretty stout but if I try to push them up or down they do move a bit and I don't want them to vibrate and break loose later. If I can't have a front lower mount for each to the frame, maybe just a mount at the bottom to each other will help. That should keep them from twisting separately.
I was also afraid that when I was finished with the boxing in of the battery that I might not have enough volume for oil in the tank. Before I finished the pin hole plugging, I took the oil tank into the kitchen and filled it up with a pint measruing cup. With the water level just below the main filler cap neck, it holds 6 quarts. At that amount of available oil space, I think that I'll probably run with 5 quarts in the tank. That along with the large long oil filter, I should have more than enough oil to help keep things cool enough without running an oil cooler.
One other thing that I hadn't thought about seriously early on, but on Saturday I thought WTF did I do this for? I'm talking about hiding the battery inside the oil tank.
I got to thinking that with the oil tank probably running in the range of low 200 degrees, I might give the battery some issues. I have at least 1/2" on front, top, end and rear. The bottom side of the battery is wide open down to the heads, about 4" away. So air circulation should be really good. Then I got to thinking about all the oil bags with the battery mounting inside them and stuffed under a seat without much air flow at all. At that point the battery heat issue just went away for me. Any thoughts on this from any of you guys?
So now I have to still work on what I'm going to do for the main harness block. I was going to put it between the two tanks mounted to the main frame back bone, but I think I need to keep that area open for battery terminal access and maybe even dropping the speedo into the tank gap.
So as life goes on in Dan's garage, I should have more again next week.
If anyone has any thoughts about what or how I'm going to do something, by all means, let me know. I'm not professing to be an expert on this project, in fact this is my first one,
so I'm engineering and building as I go. If someone has been there done that before and can stop me from making a mistake, I would greatly appreciate it. I already have left over parts that I'm not going to use because I've changed my mind on the looks and function of some of the parts I bought. One comes to mind, I have the new EVO style oil filter adapter HD-Dude, Jim, helped me out with and that's going to be used on the bike. But I had purchased an early style remote oil filter with the cartridge style and through bolt. Then I was at a swap meet and found a better looking one with a spin on filter, but still didn't want to muddy up the looks of the bike with a remote filter. So the EVO style really made the difference for me; thanks again Jim... I have a headlight now, but I'm not going to use it as it and the turn signals won't match each other. After I made up the tail light with the bullet turn signals mounted to it, the short British style headlight just doesn't look right. But a too long bullet headlight will not go with the theme of the bike, so I have to be someone choosy on what I get. So today I think I'm going to order another headlight. And while I was writing the above verbiage about finding a new place to put my main wiring module, I just thought that I might be able to hide it inside the new longer bullet headlight. This would only leave wiring harnesses to deal with.
Like I said, I'm doing this by the seat of my pants. If something doesn't look just right, I change it and start over. If I have bought a
KIT with all the parts assembly proven, it would have been a lot easier. But if it were that easy, it would take all the fun out of it.
Okay, enough for today.
Later dudes and dudettes...