White House K10 - a story of regeneration

[Ninemeister_imp]

And so, back to the grab rail...

It's always satisfying to make a part that does two jobs, so after playing around making the trial brackets for the grab rail I had the idea to make a "Z" bracket to also hang the indicators from. I also worked out that I wanted to use thicker material than the 3mm stainless steel, so hunting around at work I found some 20mm x 4mm black mild steel bar. Just the job.

* Stage one - how to fold a Z in the bar?
Since I didn't have a press brake, I made one from a piece of 6mm mild steel offcut, a small Vee-block and our workshop press. With a little grease on the vee-block to allow the bar to slide into the corner it was surprising how well this worked with remarkably little pressure.

* Hacksaw, grinder & pillar drill, plus less than an hour and we had a couple of prototype brackets to play with.

* The indicators have a M10 threaded stem, so I drilled out the lower holes to suit, the upper holes to the frame being 8.5mm for M8 screws.

* The brackets fit to the standard rear frame mounts, the chrome rail sitting on top (will be welded when finished)

So far, so good.
The next problem to solve was the shape of the grab rail. If you recall, the grab rail came on to the bike but was useless as it had the rear mounts cut off. It also had an unsightly bend down on the sides which made it look kind of odd in my opinion.

So the question was, now I'm at home in the garage, how do I straighten the rails without using my press? The answer came in the shape of two G-clamps, some home made wooden saddles and a cast iron table. Where there is a will, there's a way...

After pressing near straight, I used the saddles to hold the rail in the vice and gave the end of the tube a gentle tap with a lump hammer to tweek the final few mm of bend out.

Final photos show the now straight rails fitted and as desired, parallel with the bottom of the fuel tank. Finally it's starting to look like it's meant to be there.