The Mosquito!

I'll be using the plastic inner fender....part of it, anyway. I sawed off about a quarter of it overall. This will all be hidden under the seat and inside the frame and still provide a little protection to the battery and electrics, as well as giving us a place to mount the fuse box.

Here are some more shots showing how we mounted the tank. We plan on using a strip of velcro across the rear mount and maybe adding a couple of rubber snubbers to the frame at the front, just to keep any wobble to a minimum.
The nut at the front has a hole drilled and tapped all the way through the backbone, so it snugs up real nice.

We also had a change of plans on the rear set mounts. We made up some brackets using these templates, but they were just WAY too thin. Even doubled up, they flexed and bent.

So we made some plates out of MUCH thicker metal and welded them on.

Using this method, we were able to use the mounting plates that came with the rear sets.

Restored my handle bar controls this weekend.

That is going to be one wicked cool bike!!

scott s wrote: Restored my handle bar controls this weekend.

Those look great! I'd love to hear how you did this. Is it just rattle can spray paint? How'd you do the lettering?

Yes, it's just rattle can. Taped up everything very carefully, removed the switch covers that screw on, sanded the housings lightly and spray bombed them.

The lettering is leftover stuff from an XS650 project. There was a guy on ebay and some of the XS forums selling these sheets of stickers for the Yamaha controls. It just so happened that I had enough left over that matched the KZ250 controls.

I didn't realize they're stickers. They look really good. The letters on the controls for my KZ750 are stamped in and painted.

I've been trying to figure out how I'd refurbish them. I don't think I have a steady enough hand to repaint the letters with a brush.

That's how my CB500 controls are. I've had mixed results painting them in. One set turned out great, the other...well, I'm redoing that set.

One trick is to load up the depressions with a little more paint than you need. Give it just a couple of minutes and then smear it off. The paint in the depressions stays and you can wipe off the paint that smeared across the body of the controls. You only have a short window of working time, though. I also use a sharpened toothpick to dab it in the dots, etc.

scott s wrote: That's how my CB500 controls are. I've had mixed results painting them in. One set turned out great, the other...well, I'm redoing that set.

One trick is to load up the depressions with a little more paint than you need. Give it just a couple of minutes and then smear it off. The paint in the depressions stays and you can wipe off the paint that smeared across the body of the controls. You only have a short window of working time, though. I also use a sharpened toothpick to dab it in the dots, etc.

I'd love to see a tutorial on this somewhere. Ok, I'm done hijacking your thread. Sorry.