My DIY GS500F rear rack.

[lilwoody]

i

[img]http://i know this is going to ramble and it may sound confusing but it the best discripyion I can give. I never was good at transposing precise measurments onto anything and have it line up so alot of the work wasdone by eye and fitting. I sure I'll get flamed by someone but have at it. I'm  very pleased with how it came out.
Well I decided to give making a back rack for my 05 500F. I had looked at some of the links on here and some of the rack projects on here and decided tro give it a try myself. Mine didn't follow any of the general ways racks were made for these bikes.
I started by taking the rear faring off and seeing just how I could get it to mount and decided to replace the rear grab bar with the rack frame. I made the frame out of a 4 foot piece of 1/2" sch. 40 stainless steel pipe. I bent the pipe in a vice with a acetalene tourch and a 2 foot piece of 2" pipe. I bent it  into a 11 1/2 x 11 inch rectangle and did all the bends by eye witht the help of a square and believe it or not it came out very near perfect. I trimmed the excess off when iI got it about 10 degrees from completing the rectangle. I then finished off the rectangle and heated the side where the ends net up with a 3 pound hand sledge.
Then it was time for the supports and I had decided to come out of the small tubes that run along the rear of the frame (see pic, I'm not sure how to properly describe them) with 12 ga, 1/4" steel ridged tube. I turned down 1 i/4" of the tube about 1/2 a mm to get it to fit and it made a stop the will keep the steel tube from slipping down the frame tube.
After fitting the tubes I took the rear faring off and bolted the rack frame in and measured where I wanted the bend to meet up with the rack frame. I bent it the same way I did the frame but with a smaller pipe for the bending tool. After I got one to mate upto the rack frame and cut to fit I put it in the vice and used it as a visual templet for the other.
I then drilled 1/4" holes through the bottom side of the rack frame rack frame and scored the top side to give the dowels a good seat whe inserted. Then I cut cut 2" peices of aluminium dowl and fit it all together to make sure it all lined up. I did and was very sturdy. I was pleased.
I then started with the platform. I was just going to use unistrut and mount a hard case but nixed that in favor of of a aluminimum sheet mounted with rubber gromets. I figured a flat rack would be more useful than one with just a hard case on it. I cut a peice of 8 or 10 gauge (not sure because it was scrap in the bone pile at the plant). I decided on 14"x14" and drilled the 8 1/4" mounting holes a little fat from 2 3/4" apart in the frome and ten used the frame as a templet for the holes in the plate.
I then got 8, 1"stoppers  and drilled 3/8"holes through then and used 5x 1/4" carrage bolts to mount the plate. To make the plate match the contour of the seat I cut the ones in the back in half and cut 1/4 of the ones in the middle off. T then used a fender washer and a nut to draw the carrage bolts into the plate. This was a mistake as they didn't want to go through all the holes so to mount the plate I had to tap the out and mate them upone at a time but it was no big deal.
Once every thing lined up I took it apart and painted it with black hammered Rustolem. I them re assemblem everyt thing on the biketrimmed the bolts dowm and touched everything up with paint.
All the parts before paint
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y299/liloody/DSCN0775.jpg
Second fitting of frsme and supports
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y299/liloody/DSCN0782.jpg
Done and on bike....
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y299/liloody/DSCN0782.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y299/liloody/DSCN0788.jpg
The site doesn't seem to want to accept pictures now from phoyobucket. The links from Photobucket works fine on other sites so I just posted links.



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[ohgood]

if you press 'reply', you'll see "Add BBC" and "tags" just above the input box.

The second one will give the proper html code for inserting images (hosted by photobucket or whoever) into your tutorial/thread.

[GeeP]

i know this is going to ramble and it may sound confusing but it the best discripyion I can give. I never was good at transposing precise measurments onto anything and have it line up so alot of the work wasdone by eye and fitting. I sure I'll get flamed by someone but have at it. I'm  very pleased with how it came out.

Well I decided to give making a back rack for my 05 500F. I had looked at some of the links on here and some of the rack projects on here and decided tro give it a try myself. Mine didn't follow any of the general ways racks were made for these bikes.
I started by taking the rear faring off and seeing just how I could get it to mount and decided to replace the rear grab bar with the rack frame. I made the frame out of a 4 foot piece of 1/2" sch. 40 stainless steel pipe. I bent the pipe in a vice with a acetalene tourch and a 2 foot piece of 2" pipe. I bent it  into a 11 1/2 x 11 inch rectangle and did all the bends by eye witht the help of a square and believe it or not it came out very near perfect. I trimmed the excess off when iI got it about 10 degrees from completing the rectangle. I then finished off the rectangle and heated the side where the ends net up with a 3 pound hand sledge.

Then it was time for the supports and I had decided to come out of the small tubes that run along the rear of the frame (see pic, I'm not sure how to properly describe them) with 12 ga, 1/4" steel ridged tube. I turned down 1 i/4" of the tube about 1/2 a mm to get it to fit and it made a stop the will keep the steel tube from slipping down the frame tube.
After fitting the tubes I took the rear faring off and bolted the rack frame in and measured where I wanted the bend to meet up with the rack frame. I bent it the same way I did the frame but with a smaller pipe for the bending tool. After I got one to mate upto the rack frame and cut to fit I put it in the vice and used it as a visual templet for the other.

I then drilled 1/4" holes through the bottom side of the rack frame rack frame and scored the top side to give the dowels a good seat whe inserted. Then I cut cut 2" peices of aluminium dowl and fit it all together to make sure it all lined up. I did and was very sturdy. I was pleased.

I then started with the platform. I was just going to use unistrut and mount a hard case but nixed that in favor of of a aluminimum sheet mounted with rubber gromets. I figured a flat rack would be more useful than one with just a hard case on it. I cut a peice of 8 or 10 gauge (not sure because it was scrap in the bone pile at the plant). I decided on 14"x14" and drilled the 8 1/4" mounting holes a little fat from 2 3/4" apart in the frome and ten used the frame as a templet for the holes in the plate.

I then got 8, 1"stoppers  and drilled 3/8"holes through then and used 5x 1/4" carrage bolts to mount the plate. To make the plate match the contour of the seat I cut the ones in the back in half and cut 1/4 of the ones in the middle off. T then used a fender washer and a nut to draw the carrage bolts into the plate. This was a mistake as they didn't want to go through all the holes so to mount the plate I had to tap the out and mate them upone at a time but it was no big deal.
Once every thing lined up I took it apart and painted it with black hammered Rustolem. I them re assemblem everyt thing on the biketrimmed the bolts dowm and touched everything up with paint.

All the parts before paint





Second fitting of frsme and supports





Done and on bike....









The site doesn't seem to want to accept pictures now from phoyobucket. The links from Photobucket works fine on other sites so I just posted links.

Fixed!

Nice work!

[airnuts]

Nice Job.....