TOPIC:

i posted that video a couple weeks ago here.

I must have missed it.
Steve

No worries, I probably should study it some more anyway, that guy is a master.

The mounts on the headlight bucket weren't parallel, and for some reason this bugged the crap out of me so I jb welded some washers in, and used some all-thread as a jig. I coated the all-thread and nuts in grease so I could go nuts (pun intended) with the jb weld and still remove the rod and nuts.

I got on to finally finishing the fork ears after turning all the parts months ago.

I was using a Miller Syncro wave and found it hard to dial the machine and the tungsten/air combo in to weld aluminum. My Chinese inverter welder zaps aluminum so easily with bright shiny welds, I always wondered why people said aluminum was hard to weld until I used the syncro wave. It was a great learning experience though. Eric showed me a bunch of tricks or welding aluminum and feel much more confidant even though most of the welds arent very cosmetically appealing.

It took me a solid 4 hours to grind and polish the welds down but I am pleased with the result. I decided to rubber mount the headlight since I have an expensive tach riding in it and don't want it to rattle itself to death. The turn-signal stems are too short now and I will need to turn some longer ones. it never ends.

those turned out very nice.

leon

thanks Leon.

Inspired work there!

I'm wondering if need to face reality and just give up with the sand bending. Ive gotten better, but the small radius still crushes. It is thinning down to 1.37" diameter from 1.5". I doubt this would have much of an impact on the exhaust performance, but I just don't like the way a crushed tube looks.

Thing I have learned;
>Thinner tube does not crush easier than heavier tube
>set the torch to a high reducing flame (more fuel than O2) to get a nice even heat on the tube.(use A LOT of gas)
>use as little as heat as possible, heat till red NOT orange.
>use dry sand (duh)
>taping the tube on the ground and welding on sheets to cap the ends is just as good as welding a nut and rods on to the ends to "pack" the tube
>heat the area you want to bend and extra 4" on either side.

This is something I could chase for a long time and spend a lot of money on materials. I think it may be time to cut my losses and buy some mandrel bends. At the very least buy the small radius curve and sand bend the rest. This is the best result i had. I also found that because of the frame clearance i had to use studs and acorn nuts to secure the flanges.
Thoughts?

do you think one of these
www.harborfreight.com/tubing-roller-99736.html
could pull it off ?

the studs and nuts will be just fine and look great also.

leon

Looks good. My friend Jeff has a bender he has to use different attachments with, The system cost a small fortune.
Steve

my buddy has a tube roller like that. might give it a shot.

I ordered some bends from Cone Engineering and was kinda disappointed in the quality. Not much better than my crushed sand bent radius. and they had creases on the outside of the bend. The first bend of the header is very visible so I bought some bends from Colombia Mandrel and the quality was much nicer.

My buddy Eric thought 2" would be too big for the collector so I dropped that down to 1.875". This meant there were no cheap collectors to be bought so i had a go at making my own.

I hammered open the ends of the primaries and then faced them on the disk sander before welding them together to try and keep stress out of the welds. It still took a good amount of bashing after to get it to fit up.I also ovaled the big tube slightly to help out the transition. I was super shaky welding this up for some reason so the welds arent my best, I probably should have done some practice beads first to get in the groove but you will never see these welds when the pipe is on the bike, so whatever. I also compressed the fork to make sure there would be plenty of clearance. next up is sand bending the second bends.