Subtle Lift

With the new petcock installed and all the fuel lines in place it came time to screw the tank down so that I can finally position and mount the seat brackets. But there was a problem with this deceptively simple task: the new location of the battery and electrical lines made it near impossible to screw in the tank mounting bolt. Try as I could, my fingers and any tools I tried to use, just couldn't get a thread to catch. Even if I did get it part of the way started there isn't a tool on earth that could navigate past all the obstructions and tighten that bolt down securely.

So the solution was to raise the mounting bracket up about 3/4" (20mm). I cut out a 16 gauge flat steel plate and welded an 8mm nut to the back. Then cut a small section of the bike frame away to mount that plate at the appropriate height. With a couple of carefully placed welds to hold it securely in place, and then cleaned up and painted, it's now at a position where the tank mounting bolt can be screwed in/out easily. And a side benefit is that changing the angle of the tank actually makes the bike look a bit better. It's subtle, but it does look sleeker now.

Current hours on build: 192.0