soundboi
Race Dog
Okay first off I am not the best fabricator in the world.
Hell for that matter I will not even consider myself as a bad fabricator. What I am trying to say is my fabricating suck’s… Big time.
Buuut, I am a glutton for punishment and I love working with my hands and dig doing things myself, except for fabricating. I am seldomly satisfied with something I build from scratch first time round usually by no 2 or 3 I am happy with the result. So here is my build for no 1.
No 2 is definitely on the cards as there are a few things I want to change, this one was always meant to be the test unit to check what works for me, what does not and what breaks.
Time is not on my side, hence why it took 3 months to do this writeup, work work work.
Oh that and the fact that I suck at writing stuff. So there will be many prentjies and a small discussion on what the prentjie is about.
This build has been almost a year in the making after finding a fairing that I loved it got ordered from Lithuania.
Then the search began for lights etc etc. Over a period of months I slowly gathered all the stuff I need to build the bike I want and the plan was to start the build in my Dec holiday.
The reason for the delay in the build was to buffer the cost of the thing as toys are expensive, and bling even more so. What helped with the cost was to spend a little every month Instead of blowing a huge load on one groooot shopping spree.
I went to my friendly Touratech and SW-Motech dealer and grabbed the order book and filled it with all kinds of mooi dingetjies and practical goette that I wanted, and one by one the stuff started to arrive some took much longer than others. In fact I still have a thing or two on back order for almost a year now.
The build.
I started of by mock fitting the fairing and makeing the clamps that fix the fairing to the bike as to hold it in place.
Then when that was done I was perplexed by how to move forward so what I did was to stare at the cavity where lights, wiring and instruments all have to fit in and try and visualise how to make a fitting that will house all of that and hold the fairing up and hide the wires and look acceptable and and and…
After looking at the space I decided to fly the OEM speedo and instrument cluster. (as ek baie eerlik moet wees, my gat het gejeuk) So made a decision on fitting a Trailtech Voyager in its place.
more can be found on the voyager here. ↓
https://www.trailtech.net/digital-gauges/voyager-moto-gps
Thanks to some nice detailed pictures from your very own SteveD I had an Idea on how to fabricate a collar on which the tower frame will mount and that was the first thing that got built.
then I had to mock fit the collar and start fitting the sensors for the Voyager unit. Which meant pulling of the air box and taking out the battery. Draining the radiator and stripping the ABS system out of the bike.
I left the pump of the ABS system in but the rest got pulled out and sealed off.
I replaced all the brake hoses in the process of stripping out the ABS and had to replace the banjo bolts for the brake system as there was only one hose running directly to the calliper now and not to the ABS pump as well.
When I pulled the air box off I realised that the breather hose from the gearbox that goes to the air box has broken of somehow and I fixed that by placing some silicone tubing into the fitting of the breather and the delicately placing it back in position with a rater large goop of epoxy to keep it in place, that ensured that it still breaths and that it did not get blocked by the epoxy. It also helped to keep the fitting in place while the epoxy dried.
Now for the Voyager. The installation is pretty straight forward.
It has a speed sensor for the front wheel, a temp sensor that goes in the radiator line, a sensor that picks up the revs, and a power line that connects to the battery.
Ah a note on the radiator line on the X-Challenge. It is not 19mm like most bikes but 22mm so make sure the sensor you get is 22mm. This little fact puled the brakes on finishing the cooling system by a week as I had to exchange the part and had to deal with the fact that it is Dec and no one wants to work then.
Okay back to work more to follow…
Hell for that matter I will not even consider myself as a bad fabricator. What I am trying to say is my fabricating suck’s… Big time.
Buuut, I am a glutton for punishment and I love working with my hands and dig doing things myself, except for fabricating. I am seldomly satisfied with something I build from scratch first time round usually by no 2 or 3 I am happy with the result. So here is my build for no 1.
No 2 is definitely on the cards as there are a few things I want to change, this one was always meant to be the test unit to check what works for me, what does not and what breaks.
Time is not on my side, hence why it took 3 months to do this writeup, work work work.
Oh that and the fact that I suck at writing stuff. So there will be many prentjies and a small discussion on what the prentjie is about.
This build has been almost a year in the making after finding a fairing that I loved it got ordered from Lithuania.
Then the search began for lights etc etc. Over a period of months I slowly gathered all the stuff I need to build the bike I want and the plan was to start the build in my Dec holiday.
The reason for the delay in the build was to buffer the cost of the thing as toys are expensive, and bling even more so. What helped with the cost was to spend a little every month Instead of blowing a huge load on one groooot shopping spree.
I went to my friendly Touratech and SW-Motech dealer and grabbed the order book and filled it with all kinds of mooi dingetjies and practical goette that I wanted, and one by one the stuff started to arrive some took much longer than others. In fact I still have a thing or two on back order for almost a year now.
The build.
I started of by mock fitting the fairing and makeing the clamps that fix the fairing to the bike as to hold it in place.
Then when that was done I was perplexed by how to move forward so what I did was to stare at the cavity where lights, wiring and instruments all have to fit in and try and visualise how to make a fitting that will house all of that and hold the fairing up and hide the wires and look acceptable and and and…
After looking at the space I decided to fly the OEM speedo and instrument cluster. (as ek baie eerlik moet wees, my gat het gejeuk) So made a decision on fitting a Trailtech Voyager in its place.
more can be found on the voyager here. ↓
https://www.trailtech.net/digital-gauges/voyager-moto-gps
Thanks to some nice detailed pictures from your very own SteveD I had an Idea on how to fabricate a collar on which the tower frame will mount and that was the first thing that got built.
then I had to mock fit the collar and start fitting the sensors for the Voyager unit. Which meant pulling of the air box and taking out the battery. Draining the radiator and stripping the ABS system out of the bike.
I left the pump of the ABS system in but the rest got pulled out and sealed off.
I replaced all the brake hoses in the process of stripping out the ABS and had to replace the banjo bolts for the brake system as there was only one hose running directly to the calliper now and not to the ABS pump as well.
When I pulled the air box off I realised that the breather hose from the gearbox that goes to the air box has broken of somehow and I fixed that by placing some silicone tubing into the fitting of the breather and the delicately placing it back in position with a rater large goop of epoxy to keep it in place, that ensured that it still breaths and that it did not get blocked by the epoxy. It also helped to keep the fitting in place while the epoxy dried.
Now for the Voyager. The installation is pretty straight forward.
It has a speed sensor for the front wheel, a temp sensor that goes in the radiator line, a sensor that picks up the revs, and a power line that connects to the battery.
Ah a note on the radiator line on the X-Challenge. It is not 19mm like most bikes but 22mm so make sure the sensor you get is 22mm. This little fact puled the brakes on finishing the cooling system by a week as I had to exchange the part and had to deal with the fact that it is Dec and no one wants to work then.
Okay back to work more to follow…
