So let’s return to front fender for Kawasaki KZ650 cafe-racer. It was quite the task to design lightweight looking mount for mudguard, especially if it takes in to account the following :
- front fork has asymmetrically positioned mounting points for fender;
- I already use one pair of them (front ones) as additional mounting points for front brake brackets.
To get symmetrical look of mounts I worked out quite complicated design of fender mounting plates. Here they are:
I didn’t order them to be cut on laser, as they would to be bent before drilling and cutting. However, to get two parts of identical dimensions I used old method: after I bent plates, I drilled mount holes, then screwed them together and only after that shaped them and grinded edges.
I prefer leaving behind the scenes of how I adjusted and welded together all eight parts of fender mount. After parts were welded together I had a lot of grinding work. And sure, some additional decorative welding was done were it was necessary (to make welding seam zones smooth).
Work took a lot of man-hours as it had to be done very accurately. When the finish of grinding and sandpapering became quite visible, mudguard mount already began to look really nice:
I smoothed perfectly welding seams on outer sides of mounting plates, however I wasn’t so picky with inner sides: one have to know the edge between perfection and madness…
My next task is to make final sandpapering and polish the mount.
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