Rear Brake Bracket

Mulitple views of the rear brake bracket I made. Looks like a complicated piece. I spent a lot of time laying it out such that it would wrap the frame as much as possible and be somewhat hidden underneath the right rear frame point. The radius angle matches the same angle as the right rear frame tube that comes off the axle block. The offest required to get the caliper centered over the brake rotor is built into the brake bracket.

Slight adjustments that need to made will be accomplished with stainless steel brake calipers shims. Completely common when dealing with one off parts and paint stackups.

I will machine a brake tab out of stainless that will use the front most brake caliper bolt for a sanitary design. I will later weld it to the frame. I am using stainless so that I can grind the powdercoat off it and then be able to slide the caliper fore and aft with the rear wheel for chain adjustment. It just looks like shit when you see rings in the paint or powdercoat from the brake bracket being slid around.

I machined this on a 2-D CNC Bridgeport. I designed it such that I could use common ball mills, end mill and bull nose end mills, but making it function as a 3-D sculpted part when it fits in the bike. Spending 8 hours to design this bracket and 4 hours to machine it are worth it too me. NO ONE ELSE in the entire world has this same bracket to mount a sport bike caliper on their chopper. That's good enough for me.

Front Brake Bracket

I don't know that these pictures do the front brakes justice. Or maybe they do. H-D lower fork legs, Tokico Brake Calipers off a Suzuki GSX-R 750 Crotch Rocket and the brake bracket that I designed and machined to bolt it all together. I will post some Solidworks images of the bracket to help show the bosses and 'furniture foot' reliefs that I machined around the edges of it. The Socket head bolts are strictly for mock up. I am going to run hex dimple flange head bolts that are used on Moto GP bikes. Pro-Bolt of out of England is the place for these bad ass bolts.

I chose the Tokico calipers becuase they are proven, race quality piece. No worries about function or finding replacement pads down the road. The are cheap too. Fabricator Kevin hooked me up with these. He makes some pretty slick, shaped steel brackets, but the machined aluminum ones will match better with all of the parts that I am going to make.

11.5" dia Performance Machine brake rotors front and back. Blanchard ground 410 stainless outers, 6061 Aluminum centers.

Frame Shaving

Oil tank mounts removed. This frame, like most aftermarket ones came set up with the common brackets and mounts. This frame had ulgy tabs for a horeshoe oil tank. I am not running one of those, so they got the grinder.

Rear axle blocks. These came with ugly step ridges machined into them. I guess to add some style to them and to help reduce surfacing machining time by hogging out steps with an end mill. Well the 80's style machining isn't going to fly in my hood. I should have saved a before pic. I used a 2" angle die grinder to smooth the axle blocks out. The resulting shape is somewhat boring, but at least it not ugly.

This the junction area at the front of the seat. It was set up to use a stock style seat that hooks in the front and is screwed down in the rear. There was a big triangle bracket welded over the top of this area, with a hook reciever for the seat on top of that. They both looked like hell. The triangle made from 10ga plate added strength and a certain safety factor for the stresses occuring in this area. I will add a gusset back to the frame, but in line with the center line of the tubes rather than plopped on top. I am going to run a 'pringle' chip looking seat so this area will be exposed and needs to look good.

New Fender

I started the project with a Chica Custom Cycles ribbed fender. It was thinner gage steel than I liked, and it was set up for the old school 16" tires from the panhead days. The OD was wack for my set up. So i ditched it into the garage rafters with the rest of the parts that didn't make the 'cut'. I absolutely will not sacrifice when it comes to fender to rear tire fitment. This is the one area that is most commonly fucked on custom bikes and can throw the whole lines of the bike off.

This fender is from Bare Knuckle Choppers and is spun in 2 halves out of 13 ga steel. This thing will be able to handle railing down the highway at 100+mph over the shitbrickle Michigan roads. The 2 spun halves look big steel frisbees. The 'frisbees' are cut in half and welded up to make the fender you see here. The quality of the spun frisbee dictates the tangent, or non tangent nature of the intersection of the 2 halves. Ideally on this style of fender you would like the cross section to look like 1 continuous radius. The stickers look random on there, that is because it was shipped as is from St Louis to me. Dude, Paul, put these things in a box for customers.

Metal Pounding Practice 3

More pics of the same abused piece of 16ga cold rolled. It shaped good, considering that it was not annealed and that the whole plansihing hammer (stand included) only cost me $130. Which means that it came from desolate hell of manufacturing...FUCKING CHINA!!!!!

Enougn ranting, check out Dad's 67 Olds Cutlass in the one pic. Gold paint with black interior. A bitchin bench seat and a steering the same dia as a garbage can lid. It is chill car for cruising and they definitely don't make them like this anymore. The only thing that I would do is bag it, with some fatter tires. He got it for cheap, it is a really solid car, and he had the same model back when he a teenageer, which adds to the cool factor.

More Metal Pounding Practice

I guess what makes these pics worthy of being posted is that they are unremarkable. That the exterior faces of the depressions are pretty damn smooth. That is the planishing hammer doing it's job. That is what I am looking for. I need to add 'shape' the top side of my gas tank. Both left to right and front to back. It's gotta look fast just standing there...

Metal Pounding Practice

I bought a new planishing hammer and I set it up over at T-Funks (Terry Friar) house. We pounded random dished shapes with the teardrop hammer and shot bag. Then tried to see what we could do to smooth them out and add shape with the planishing hammer. Adjustments of air pressure, height and anvil radii where in order. But the results make me happy.