1981 GS450E Rebuild

[pete]

Hey pete,

Great looking little windscreen project. Why not paint the brackets so they 'blend' a bit better with the black headlight and ears, and back of the gauges. If your dead opposed to this idea, then I would go for a brushed finish. Don't need anything shiny there.

It is looking awesome, kudos for the originality to make your own.

Cheers!

Cheers Tim! I thought about the black... but the thought just doesn't gel this time, not sure why. I think partly it's the fact that if the brackets are wrong, it's easy enough to make more, so painting could be a wasted effort.

I reckon brushed is right though, definitly agree with you there

I still also have every intention of running an Acewell gauge up the front to sort out the dodgy bouncy speedo/tacho needles once and for all (at least they're useable for the moment), and that will get rid of the big black box, and I will likely make a bracket for that out of some 2.5mm alu. as well, so hopefully it should all work together...

Only other thing I could think of was did you use a thin gasket material between the lexan and the brackets. Lots of vibration in that area, gaskets would help keep her snug and in place.

Paul

Yup, one step ahead of ya' Paul, that's what the rubber is for But good thinkin'!

Only other thing I could think of was did you use a thin gasket material between the lexan and the brackets. Lots of vibration in that area, gaskets would help keep her snug and in place.

Paul

Hey pete,

Great looking little windscreen project. Why not paint the brackets so they 'blend' a bit better with the black headlight and ears, and back of the gauges. If your dead opposed to this idea, then I would go for a brushed finish. Don't need anything shiny there.

It is looking awesome, kudos for the originality to make your own.

Cheers!

[pete]

Rightio, as promised, pic's from last night, cutting out the brackets, drilling, rounding the edges off:



Tonight, I got them bent and a test fit done:





The brackets are potentially a little wobbly/wonky, but I think that will be vastly improved once I actually tighten things up. I won't really know how they'll go until I give it a test run. It also may be too vertical, but once again will have to wait and see.

The final thing tonight was I cut out, drilled, and rounded two mounting plates for the front to sit under the bolts. I forgot to get pic's of them individually, but here they are on the front with the hardware lightly bolted together:



So, three things left to do...

- Get some trim for the edge of the perspex.
- Get some thin rubber glued to the brackets and the mounting plates to buffer the perspex from the alu.
- Decide on a finish for the hardware... brushed or polished.

[pete]

clark rubber for the molding pete.

Good call John! Should've thought of them straight away...

You can buy plasticoate paint at bunnings or anywhere mate, think i got some in the shed?

Geez I'm a knob sometimes... thanks for the reminder Tim, I actually bought some from Bunnings to do my lower triple clamp cover and the chain guard...

Oh, and I did cut the brackets out last night but haven't got the photos off the camera yet, hope to finish them up tonight if I get the time.

You can buy plasticoate paint at bunnings or anywhere mate, think i got some in the shed?

clark rubber for the molding pete.

that molding is just car edge door trim, you should be able to get it at any automotive store...




any plastic paint will do, as long as it stay pliable, see if you can find bumper paint, if your after the non see through look

.

[pete]

Nice, I like that! I wonder if I can score some moulding like it has around the edges too? That would be a nice touch.

That paint definitely does a good job though, will see how it goes as is and keep that in the back of my mind. Getting it over here will be the tricky bit though...

hey Pete, here are a few pics of the screens on the sled








.

[pete]

Hey Pete, what do you do for a living again? Your ingenuity floors me some times and makes me wish I either knew more about the other side or was willing to take more chances of screwing up and burning money if I failed.

That'd be IT Geek Scott

Let's just say you can look really successful if you only show people successful ideas right?

But seriously, the price of the perspex was so cheap it was worth a gamble, and I have heaps of alu. sheet here from other things. Something I learnt during all this is that places that cut and sell raw materials always end up with offcuts of some sort. Those offcuts are verging on worthless to them so if you know where to find them, they can be had at very cost effective prices...

Well Pete, now you have smoke coming out of my ears. I always thought you had to make a form to lay the plexy over, while it was in a oven. Your free hand process has me looking for the scraps I had stored away somewhere.Cheers.

cg

It would be better if I could've done that Charlie, and a lot easier.

However, between said dodgy oven and only having another sheet of perspex type material to use as the form, this was the only method available.

When I did this sort of thing during wood work at high school (many many moons ago), we did this method also. A wooden form was used so wasn't safe to stick in the oven. The trick was to know when to pull the perspex out.

Hey Pete, nice work....just a note, if you don't need to see through the screen, just get some flexible spray paint (something like bumper paint or paint for plastics) and spray he inside of the screen, it will black it out, your gauges won't be seen, the outer side will make it look nice and shiny, and the inner side will be protected. We did this on our snowmobile screens, and they have held up for more than 10 years with out a scratch, or peel or anything. I will see if I can get a picture of the screens for you....now if you want it smokey and still see through it, there are paints available that smoke out the plastic but are still see through, I know we here in Canada have this, so it might be available in your neck of the woods as well, something like this

http://www.vhtpaint.com/products/niteshades/

Thanks GK! I'm hoping the mounts turn out ok and it mounts up nice and straight, but we'll see.

Thanks for the paint tip! I'll keep that in mind.

Painting the rear is a good idea too, stones and things won't chip the paint, and it's definitely worth while thinking about...

Hey Pete, nice work....just a note, if you don't need to see through the screen, just get some flexible spray paint (something like bumper paint or paint for plastics) and spray he inside of the screen, it will black it out, your gauges won't be seen, the outer side will make it look nice and shiny, and the inner side will be protected. We did this on our snowmobile screens, and they have held up for more than 10 years with out a scratch, or peel or anything. I will see if I can get a picture of the screens for you....now if you want it smokey and still see through it, there are paints available that smoke out the plastic but are still see through, I know we here in Canada have this, so it might be available in your neck of the woods as well, something like this

http://www.vhtpaint.com/products/niteshades/

[Charlie G]

Well Pete, now you have smoke coming out of my ears. I always thought you had to make a form to lay the plexy over, while it was in a oven. Your free hand process has me looking for the scraps I had stored away somewhere.Cheers.

cg

[cowboyup3371]

Hey Pete, what do you do for a living again? Your ingenuity floors me some times and makes me wish I either knew more about the other side or was willing to take more chances of screwing up and burning money if I failed.

[pete]

Whacked the cardboard template on and used some masking tape to work out where the perspex needs to sit to try to get it at least close to symmetrical:



I used a reasonably fine file to get the curves fairly smooth then ripped the protective paper off so I could heat and bend it:



Got the welding gloves and heat gun ready and started getting it nice and hot:



Ideally, an oven is the most efficient way to do this, but our oven is incredibly dodgy and it was just easier and simpler to use the heat gun, although it took forever on the high heat setting and I kept moving it over the surface to try and heat it evenly.

Anyway, once it was hot enough to flex easily, I whacked it over the T shirt and held it down until it seemed to be a reasonable shape:



I'd prefer if the top curved over a little as well but I don't think it'll do it so I'll leave it as is for now and see how it goes. Seems to sit well though:



Next up is some mounts, drew them up on the whiteboard and got the first marked out on some alu. ready to cut out:



And that's where I'm up to now. Hopefully I can get it finished and fitted this week and see how it goes.

I bought the perspex as it was listed as "smoked" but it's not as dark as I thought it would be. I was hoping it would do more to hide the ugly gauge cluster, but as it turns out I'm probably going the Acewell path so that should be a bit neater anyway.