Driving Lights on an F650GS, Page 6

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Chapter the six, wherein our intreped hero doth make use of that majikal device, the Arc Welder:

So now I wanted to do some more test-fitting on the bike, and get the bar tacked on. My first challenge was the bolts, with integrated washers! Oh well, my bench grinder took care of them handily.

So I bolted the beak and brackets into place, hung the rod in the slots, and tack welded it. I'm sorry, but for some reason, I didn't take any pictures of the actual welding in progress. Maybe it had something to do with needing two hands and all my concentration to avoid burning my garage and house down?

Then I unmounted everything again, and finished up the welds. I am NOT a great welder, I am not a good welder, in fact, I'm sure I don't qualify to be called a welder at all. However, I don't think that these ugly things will fall apart. You can see that there are bends in the bracket ends, I did that with the bench vise and a hammer, because I liked the idea of having the mounting points at closer to a 90 degree angle to the rod. I also thought it looked better, not so splayed out.

As seen here, the rod was sticking out 12 inches on either side of the welded areas, for a total length of 29.25 inches. Later on (after 'finishing' the bracket for the first time) I decided to cut it down a bit.

The next installment will be about the last pieces of bracketry, the mounting pads, which have been welded to the ends of the rod in order to secure the lights. Those were fabbed up out of some more angle iron and attached inside the corner angle to allow two welds on the outside of the round bar. Then it's primer and painting, and the bar is done... One of these days I'll do a report on the electrical hookup as well.

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