1981 GS450E Rebuild

[Redneck]

John's idea will work perfectly fine. Find a pipe with an outside diameter of a 1" greater than the exhaust pipe. Use a dense rubber or leather mallet and bend her round. Couple of quick tack welds and whammo good to go.

Paul

[davidduarte]

Pete,

Can't see you making this heat shield out of anything thicker than 1.6mm (1/16) unless its some sort of bash plate too. ;-)

you will be able to work it round a steel pipe or such with clamps and hammers,. No doubt laser cut with chrome would be the ducks guts.

For something cheaper check out a postie, with an eye to trimin to suit...

john

"the ducks guts"

[pete]

Sold my daily chopper, and the guy that bought it wants the motor, frame, wheels, etc from the other project as well. Supposed to pick up an ironhead project soon.

Really? Wow ok! So no more 450 hey? Oh well... good luck with the ironhead...

Pete,

Can't see you making this heat shield out of anything thicker than 1.6mm (1/16) unless its some sort of bash plate too. ;-)

you will be able to work it round a steel pipe or such with clamps and hammers,. No doubt laser cut with chrome would be the ducks guts.

For something cheaper check out a postie, with an eye to trimin to suit...

john

Yeah that makes sense. The sheet I got from Bunnings to make my electrics tray out of was just over 1mm from memory, so another sheet like that should be ok, think it was a metre long. That's assuming they can chrome galvanised steel of course, otherwise I'll have to find something else.

A bash plate needs to be made too, but that's a different story! I was thinking thick aluminium stock like Mike's done.

If I can do the curving myself, then I should hopefully be able to afford to get the laser cutting and chroming done, otherwise yeah, there's a few other ready made alternatives out there including the postie ones and a few Harley ones on eBay as well...

I have a rubber mallet as well as several hammers...

Bash plate, haha, funny bugger i see :P

How would you be spacing the guard away from the exhaust anyway? get some custom studs tacked onto the muffler/header?

Haha yes indeed

The Tranzac guy mentioned on the phone he should be able to tack some nuts on the pipe for me.

The alternative is what the Harley ones do, have a bracket on the rear of the heat shield that a hose clamp feeds through to clamp around the pipe. I don't like that idea much though...

John's idea will work perfectly fine. Find a pipe with an outside diameter of a 1" greater than the exhaust pipe. Use a dense rubber or leather mallet and bend her round. Couple of quick tack welds and whammo good to go.

Paul

Yep, all makes sense to me. If I'm patient and take my time in theory I should be able to get it smooth. If he can do the nuts on the exhaust, even easier

[pete]

"the ducks guts"

See, you're learning to speak Aussie! Hahaha

[Redneck]

Personally if I was going to do it I would use Stainless steel over aluminum. Two reasons:
1. Stainless is much more durable than aluminum.
2. Other than cutting I believe it is easier to work and I believe it will dissipate heat faster.

I have worked with both over the years creating medieval armor and the stainless is much much easier to work with. Plus if you make some cuts to make a more rounded look at the ends or you just want to weld on some ends to give it a complete look... you can use that stick welder of yours. Aluminum on the other hand you will not be able to weld on. Also stainless can easily be polished to a mirror finish and maintains it much longer than aluminum. Anyway that is my $.02 okay more like $.15 but hey what can i say inflation sucks.

Paul

[pete]

Personally if I was going to do it I would use Stainless steel over aluminum. Two reasons:
1. Stainless is much more durable than aluminum.
2. Other than cutting I believe it is easier to work and I believe it will dissipate heat faster.

I have worked with both over the years creating medieval armor and the stainless is much much easier to work with. Plus if you make some cuts to make a more rounded look at the ends or you just want to weld on some ends to give it a complete look... you can use that stick welder of yours. Aluminum on the other hand you will not be able to weld on. Also stainless can easily be polished to a mirror finish and maintains it much longer than aluminum. Anyway that is my $.02 okay more like $.15 but hey what can i say inflation sucks.

Paul

Hahaha yeah the ol' $0.02 saying's a little behind the times now... haha

I was thinking aluminium for the bash plate, not the heat shield... definitely steel for the heat shield. If they can chrome galvanised steel, then that's by far the cheapest and easiest way for me to actually get some, I'd have to hunt around to find some stainless steel.

At this stage, in my mind anyway, I think rounding off the ends a little and curving to suit will be good, but I really need to see the exhaust first... come on Mr Tranzac! I'm getting impatient, but I must be patient...

[Redneck]

Well let me tell you that aluminum will be a bear to get good dish rounds into. I have tried. It can be done but it takes forever to make it look as good as a steel dish and that is if the aluminum does not crack. You can also use mild steel if you are going to chrome dip. should be cheaper than galvanized and you will have no chemical worries. Just remember if you use mild steel keep and ever so slight coat of oil on it if you are not using it and store it inside somewhere if you can. That way you get no rust. I can talk you through how to make some good dishing or plemmishing with some simple tools.

Paul

[Woodsy]

stainless would look good, i think it all comes down to the font you want to use getting it cut out, i think a scrambler needs a really edgy font to suit it

[landshark]

I think i can get them to cut and bend the heat shield for you at a reasonable price, but the postiebike idea is good!
I am pretty sure it would be more difficult to chrome with a piece of Gal, as opposed to a piece of mild steel. Price wise, i have no idea, since they have to prep it anyway.

[pete]

Well let me tell you that aluminum will be a bear to get good dish rounds into. I have tried. It can be done but it takes forever to make it look as good as a steel dish and that is if the aluminum does not crack. You can also use mild steel if you are going to chrome dip. should be cheaper than galvanized and you will have no chemical worries. Just remember if you use mild steel keep and ever so slight coat of oil on it if you are not using it and store it inside somewhere if you can. That way you get no rust. I can talk you through how to make some good dishing or plemmishing with some simple tools.

Paul

Ok... dishing, plemmishing... you got me there! Can you enlighten me?

If I'm gonna do an aluminium bash plate, all I would do is bend it to shape and cut some holes in it to allow air flow over the sump and cases to be uninhibited...

I'm definitely thinking steel for a heat shield, and plain mild steel would probably be best for cutting and chroming I would think.

As to preserving it until it's coated, I was thinking I could do what the cylinder head guys did for my cylinders and put a light coat of oil on it and then glad wrap it.

stainless would look good, i think it all comes down to the font you want to use getting it cut out, i think a scrambler needs a really edgy font to suit it

Not sure on stainless at all actually, that would take more upkeep to stay shiny than chrome I think, and my personal opinion is that chrome is better for that shiny look finish for heat shields.

As to the font comment... yeah definitely important! I'm thinking it would need to be a little "squashed" so it spreads out lengthwise and isn't lost around the curve if that makes sense.

I think i can get them to cut and bend the heat shield for you at a reasonable price, but the postiebike idea is good!
I am pretty sure it would be more difficult to chrome with a piece of Gal, as opposed to a piece of mild steel. Price wise, i have no idea, since they have to prep it anyway.

Hmmmm... cool! You're really talking me into this aren't you?

The postie bike idea is definitely a cool thought (thanks again John!), but no idea what size pipe they run or how easy/hard it would be to locate one. I'm sure eBay will help there...

I think at the moment I just have to be patient and wait and see how it looks when it comes back...

And for the US guys on here, if you don't know what a postie bike is, it's a Honda CT110, I have attached a pic...

[pete]

Well, I haven't quite completed shaping the duck tail. I got it trimmed down a lot today, but I was being quite conservative with the cutting, so I may have been able to finish it but would've been rushing a bit so I left it not quite done...

I got coats of paint on the other bits and pieces while I worked on it too.

So, to start with, here's the cured item:



Definitely needs some trimming and sanding! Not to mention a lot of putty to smooth out the finish...

Anyway, went to get the bits ready to paint and figured I'd need an extra line of rope to hang them off as I thought two wouldn't be enough:



Glad I did! After masking and hanging:



I definitely would've had problems with just two runs of rope to hang them from...

And first coat of the caliper paint on:



Then I marked out where I was going to trim the excess off the duck tail, and if you look at the shadow of the frame work underneath you can see clearly how conservative I was being with the cutting:



Then I got the second coat on the parts:

[pete]

Close up of the caliper and bracket after the second coat:



Then I remembered I need to paint the CL360 tail light bracket as well, so dismantled that and stuck it in the marine clean tub to start prep'ing:



Of course I worked out later there was no chance of me getting that done today as I'm hoping to use the POR 15 Blackcote for that one, and no way was I getting time for that. At least it's clean now!

During all that I got a couple more coats of the caliper paint on too. Every time I went to check I found another little nook or cranny I'd missed, so I just kept rotating them around and respraying every 10 or 15 minutes until everything looked to be covered well:



I had a peek later on this avo and it looks to be a nice satin finish on there, so all is looking good so far. Hopefully when I bring them down I won't see any bits I've missed and it will all be good ready to BBQ either this Sunday or next weekend.

Then I got into the trimming properly, and I also gave it a reasonably good overall sanding to get most of the sharp little pokey bits of fibreglass off:



You'll see I also drilled the start of the hole for the seat lock and started cutting out the grab rail holes as well.

Then I compared it to the original duck tail to make sure I was on track to replicate the front of it where it sits against the seat and the seat trim:



So far so good. Needs a lot more trimming as I already knew, but at least it seems to have enough material there so I can trim it back to be neat but still have it conforming to the right shape. The left side of the fibreglass was the side I was worried about, but in the second pic above you can see it lines up pretty well and isn't too short.

All in all a pretty successful week, except I don't know when I'm getting the bike back yet and I don't know when I'll get to finish off the shaping of the duck tail. However, I can't complain as the bulk of the work is done!

Now to go contemplate heat shields and Suzuki fonts and things...

[pete]

Haven't found a font yet, but I wonder what the chances are of finding an emblem like the attached or even a decal replica?

[pete]

This would be sweet, but may get lost in translation with chrome over ceramic coating...

[john82q]

another idea

Pete,

Your emblem pic gives another heat sheild Idea, build it up out of rod
and flat welded together. chromed of course..

John