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Well, this is where I’ll talk about the process, and everything i’ve learned/did to create this custom fender.
This came up because the jackpot has such a wide wheel (stock is 250), and Joe wanted to show it off by shortening his rear fender to make it more revealing. Makes sense, and starting from scratch rather than decommissioning his bike for the entire time also makes sense. Initially what we did was get metal mesh and mold it around the fender rails with the fender off, obviously. Once we found a satisfactory shape, we draped a t shirt over, soaked it with resin, spread some fiberglass over, more resin, and then did the same to the inside.
What resulted was a ridiculously strong horribly shaped fender. After a long, long time of trial and error trying to make this fender work we both came to the same conclusion, it would be easier to start over from nothing, but we both had much better ideas about it.
Instead of making a skeleton from nothing, which was clearly way out of our ballgame, we’re going to stretch a shirt over the current fender, and basically make an exact copy of it, then start cutting away at that one instead. Ideally, we’ll be able to resin the T shirt, then lace it with some kind of metal mesh/grid/weave, and then fiberglass on top. I’m also toying with the idea of putting the metal mesh/grid/weave on the underside instead and then not covering it with anything except the resin, but we’ll see how that goes.
As for tail light, we decided not to skimp anywhere and that safety was just as important as style, if not moreso. The indicator lights will be what keeps this project from being completed, each individual luxeon LED costs about 1.27….assuming we use about 100, well that’s a decent amount of money and soldering to do. Aside from looking at LEDs themselves, I’ve been having a difficult time figuring out a safe way to mount them, wire them, and waterproof them. More updates on that much later.
We should be starting the fender 2.0 this weekend, so I’ll post up some development pictures then.
The first iteration is long over, and the process has been uploaded. The second iteration will be posted in phases as and when I get the time to write about them and upload the pictures.
here’s the blurbs about it:
Initial planning
Starting Production (Making the initial shell and shape)
Reinforcement (Making the shell and shape into a something usable)
Bondo!!
