I've been kinda tired the last couple a days when I've gotten home, so I haven't really haven't felt like getting online, but here goes, so get comfy. Started working on a Victory on monday, actually started on it about two months ago, but the guy wanted to go to Daytona, so I put his original sheetmetal back on the bike so he could make the run. I got back to it finally, it's just a sheetmetal job on it, replace the front and rear fenders, reworked the sissy bar mounting, and installing flush mounted leds in the fender and bags. The front fender I did two months ago when I first started working on it, He wants an Indian Chief fender on it, defently wasn't a quickie job either. It took four days to mount that fender, now while that may sound crazy, you have to realize one thing - an Indian Chief fender is designed for a 18 inch rim with a standard profile tire, a Victory runs a 17 inch rim with a low profile tire, this makes for about a 4 inch difference in radius. So it was more of a job than normal. First I had to carefully cut out the fender skirts, so that they could be reworked later, then I cut about twenty slices down each side of the fender so that I could collapse the overall radius down to an acceptiable level. Once each of the slices was tacked, I started on the skirts. After examing the right side skirt, I decided to just pitch it and recut a new one because of the cutout it had for the Indian style brakes. Next up was more fitting and tacking until they fit correctly, then finally doing cutouts for the Victory brakes. It took one whole day just to do all the finish welding and grinding but it defentaly made the front end look a lot better. While he had the bike in Daytona, we had Eric make up a frenched license plate box and mount that in his new rear fender. Jump to this last monday and now I get to work on the rear end. I got started on monday reassembling the bike back together with the pieces we had mocked up so far and I layed out the new lighting. The design for the led's is based on a "V" shaped chevron, he had originally picked out a set from Hi Tech, but after looking at the specs on them, decided that they were too small for the look he wanted, so I layed out a larger chevron pattern on paper and transfered it to the lens material, fender and both bags. a few hours of work with various power tools and files and I had four lenses made and four big holes cut in bodywork. That pretty much sums up monday and tuesday. Wednesday, being my day off, and a beautiful day to boot, I spent the morning working on my truck (oil change and monthly cleaning) and Mom's truck (distributor problems). The afternoon was spent cleaning the garage, still have about three or four more days work there, picture having a 30 x 40 ft garage 90% full and having somewhat trained chimps shoving all that into a two and half car garage, need I go further? Anyway, back at it today at the shop. The day started out with a break, and not a good one, to mold the lens into shape you have to heat them, I use an old electric roasting pan, the same type as your see at the church socials usually full of beans or sliced beef. Well, I pulled the first lens out a bit too soon and when I pressed it into the cutout, it decided to snap in half, after cussing about it for a minute, I tossed it aside and put the next one in the oven, didn't have any problems with the other three lenses, spent a few minutes cutting out a new lens and gluing it up, it'll be ready in the morning to fit. I finished up the day working on the sissy bar, he didn't like the way the stock attached, it bolts in between the saddle bags and the fender. He wanted to be able to remove it easier, since his wife doesn't always ride with him, so I took an underseat HD version and sliced it up and reworked it to fit. He stopped by this afternoon to check out where things stood, and was pretty happy with progress so far, he's going to bring his wife by either tommorow or saturday to see how she likes the new sissy bar before I finish it up completely and send it out for powder-coating. That about sums up today, I'll finish up fitting the last lens tommorow and roll it off my rack until him and the wife show up. Hopefully they show tommorow, so I can finish the sissy bar on saturday. I get to spend the rest of tommorow doing odd jobs, got a couple a bikes that need new tires and checkups for the season. Well, that's enough for tonight, LOL, time for a head run.
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