One of significant parts which my Honda Cb750 Seven Fifty cafe-racer project hadn’t got until today was the rear fender, or call it the license plate holder. In fact in addition to license plate holding this unit also is a place for tail/brake light and turn winkers.
Comparing to license plate holders I designed for Zephyr 750 cafe-racer kits this one turned out to be more complicated. I also decided to make it of aluminum, so this work promised to be interesting. I designed the part, calculated all angles and bends, sketched the blueprints of all components and meticulously drawn them on the metal surface. Then was time for me to put pencil aside and to take angle grinder and file tools. May be my work was not so fast as laser cutting machine could do, but at least it was as precise.
Bending of aluminum may be done well without special bending tools too, if you know what you have to do, of course. After I bent side parts of rear fender I modified them a bit to make mating with central part more accurate.
Parts were welded together from both sides:
And I grinded and sandpapered face side of fender to make it look solid. Right before I began to make fender, I ordered new license plate of size smaller than original one was. So when I finished first stage of sandpapering I was able to fit tail light and license plate to fender initially.
I drilled all holes for tail light, license plate and turn lights holder. I cut turn-lights holder from 10mm tube, added 6mm thread inserts on both sides, drilled the hole for wires in the center and then it was welded to the fender. I also made decorative 12mm covers for both sides to make the tube look a bit thicker.
After that I had a lot of sandpapering/polishing work again, but ready fender/license plate holder looked magnificent.
So it was time to install all components onto fender. Traditional pre-assembling photo:
And a lot of ready-unit photos from all sides:
I hid the license plate light in the tail light leg.
Backside view.
Turn light.
And additional views in “working” position.
My next technical post has to be about electrical system of Honda CB750 Seven Fifty cafe-racer (in fact it is CBX750 modified wiring with some components of CB750 and other additions ) so how this tail looks on the bike I’ll show later. Sorry for keeping you waiting:-)
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