When I’m working on things like this, custom requests come in sometimes.
Basically, we don’t accept custom or fabrication work from new customers right off the bat.
I think you’ll get more efficient and higher-quality work if you have a custom shop do it.
It’s like they say—the right person for the right job. We don’t have many machine tools, they’re small, we don’t have much material, and there are all sorts of other constraints.
For customers who’ve been coming to us, we judge each request on its merits and decide whether to take it on.
Please understand.
The caliper support has arrived, so I want to push ahead with the work steadily.
There’s welding involved, so I need to stay focused and not make any mistakes.
Let me go back to the measurements from the other day.
The current caliper support is one of those old-school bare floating types, and it’s gotten pretty sloppy.
Time passes, and the caliper support has arrived from the master craftsman in Gifu, so I’ll push ahead steadily.
I’ve fabricated the torque rod. It’s A7075 aluminum.
First, I don’t have the material on hand, so I have to go buy it.
Do I have an M10 tap on the left? (I did.)
↓ Pick out a spherical bearing
↓ Choose nuts for the right and left
↓ Turns out there are surface finish options, but I can’t choose (due to availability).
↓ Make some extra spacers in various colors, fit them, and figure out the torque rod length that way.
Let me remove the swingarm and clean up the back too.
I have no idea what this structure is supposed to be. I cleaned it up, oiled it, and put it back carefully.
Custom bikes have way too many mysteries.
I set the axle width to minimize distortion and locked it in place. I warmed up the whole swingarm and then went for it all at once.
At my place, we rarely exceed 150 amps, so it gets really hot.
I’m always amazed that people out there can do this with work gloves.
I’ve adjusted the torque rod alignment and got it to the temporary fixing stage.
It ended up taking a whole day (ΦωΦ). To be continued.
