Scooter update
The scooter project is coming along at a pretty nice pace. As you can see the general look is pretty much established with the exception of the floor panel (diamond plate aluminum coming right up!) and the ugly vinyl seat. Much behind the scenes work still remains however.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
A good deal of time was spent working out the “head” of the beast. I was very pleased to resolve this area earlier this week which will allow me to start designing the instrument panel. I had hoped to find an old windshield from another bike, but finally realized it was easier to just make one out of stock acrylic.
The rear side cowling covers were one of the first decisions that were made in the design. Unfortunately they posed a real problem when it came to connecting them together around the front. This was finally achieved with yet another scrap from a street lamp cover, and a standard porch light fixture cut in half.
The tail light now has proper mounting hardware, and directional lights have been fashioned out of parts left over from the vacuums that made the head piece.
It is only prudent to give props here to Rich Humphrey who will ultimately be responsible if this thing ever works at all. He is much more familiar with the actual working elements of scooters and more importantly will be designing the electrical system to support all of my random decisions regarding lights and instruments.
We have decided to use some of my antique volt meter bodies to house some of the scooters original hardware. Rich has bold plans to re-invent the speedometer using beautiful archaic nixie tubes. I recently came across some walnut veneer that may give the panel a sort of luxury speed boat look, but it is too soon to say if that will be appropriate.
One of the few mechanical problems that we faced with the scooter carcass so far was the start switch. Bike hacker virtuoso Wendel Jones provided me with some replacement parts that were a much better fit stylistically and have little mirror mounts built right in, thus allowing me to chop out one of the scooters more annoying design elements.
Stay tuned....
