side panels fitted

OK, well while I was waiting for some electrical stuff to show up in the mail, continued work on the side panels. They were kind of a fuss but I like 'em well enough now that they're in place.

Here I'm making the splash molds from those plugs I did earlier


Then I did a quick layup of the parts that you see demolded here, you can see the boogers along the edges. I'm not too particular about this...sidepanels get scuffed up pretty well no matter what. I think I need to put a sticker or two on them. Probably a SIDEBURN logo :)



To mount them up, I made hollow "pegs" from a tubular layup around some foam. When the tube dried, I chopped the sections up and then glued to another fiberglass layup, placing some washers so that there would be something for the mounting bolts to interface with. On the touching side, I'll apply some bicycle inner tube rubber so that there's some vibration dampening


Here, I'm gluing up the pegs to the back of the panels


After the tacking glue set, I removed the panels and applied a bit more reinforcement. The black tips are a few layers of bicycle inner tube that were glued together and then onto the pegs using barge contact cement. It all cleans up well with a bit of hot Dremel action:


Here's how they are mounted up to the bike. I got some adhesive insulating stuff from Pegasus Auto Racing that I'll apply to the right side eventually.


P.S.I used an angle grinder to clean up neoprene of the saddle foam; it looks a bit smoother now on the edges. Peter lent me the angle grinder. It's a great tool, he has six of them because his father in law is insane and keeps giving him spares. I think I'll do well if I have one for each hand, Pete!