Stay a little longer

It would appear that my spill at Cadwell had caused more damage than I had first realised.

First the headrace bearings collapsed on me during practice which made the bike handle like the front tyre was flat (pretty scary on a race track). This was easily fixed with a spacer after some time spent with hammers and files.

Next, during race one, my rear fairing bracket fell apart letting the fairing drop. Luckily the top and nose brackets were strong enough to handle everything to the extent that I didn't even notice till I spotted the gap under my exhaust post race.

The main bar was still intact so some tie wraps did the job of picking the fairing up for the weekend but a fix would be needed.















I contemplated repairing the original bracket but decided that due to; it being a bit bent, could well fail again proving I am terrible at welding and it weight a bloody tonne; I would need to replace it.
I hunted in the garage and found some 12.5mm high temperature stainless tubing. This would be great but I'd need some stainless box section to make the same style bracket. I decided to try something a little different this time and dug out some 3mm aluminium plate. Rather than welding the parts together I chose to drill a longer bracket and simply post the tube through. This had the added bonus of shifting the fairing out of the way when it hit an obstacle, like the floor. Lets hope I don't test that too soon.
I cut the tube to length followed by two strips of ally.
These were shaped and profiled to look a little tidier and take paint better before drilling. I finaly bought some over size drill bits from Screwfix only to find they didn't have a 13mm in the box. Silly me, I should have paid more attention. Luckily it was only ally and a bit of time with a 10mm bit and I widened the holes out to be a fairly tight fit on the 12.5mm tube. the other end of the bracket was for an M8 bolt so was straight forward for once.
A bit of a rub down and paint later and I had my assembly done and looking nice.











Now I just needed a way to secure the fairing to the bracket.
This I would be doing with some aluminium bobbins and R clips the same as the forward fairing bracket I had made previously.
I ordered some 25mm aluminium bar and once it arrived I stuck it in a lathe.
The bobbins were formed with a 25mm deep, 13mm hole in one end and a 7mm hole in the other which was tapped out to take an M8 dome head bolt. Using a lathe kept everything square, nobody likes a wonky fairing after all.

Once finished and rough bits tidied up; the bobbins were bolted to the fairing with some large penny washers and threadlock.
The fairing stay bar popped into the bobbin holding the fairing in the right spot.
I could now drill a 2.5mm hole through the bobbin and bar to take an R clip. Once done I quickly figured out I didn't have any suitable R clips so stuck a split pin in instead.

Job done. Again.