Engineering hardware?

[jdw03n]

Had a question, thought I'd reach out to you guys. I don't want this thing to come off the bike at speed!

Bought this chin fairing without hardware.  Thinking of ways to mount it on my '93 without spending 50 bucks a bracket.

I had two ideas.  I'm curious to see if anyone had any other ideas, or had experience with DIY brackets.

My first idea was to go to Lowe's and get a metal strip about 1" wide and a strip of rubber about 1 1/2" wide.  Wrap the rubber around the subframe, metal around the rubber, leaving a tab off the side.  Use my dremel to drill a hole through the tab, then get a 2" bolt and washers to run through the fairing and through the hole, bolt and washer on both sides on the tab, some good loctite.  Here's a diagram of what I'm talking about.  The grey is the subframe, the black is the rubber, the green is the metal, the red is the fairing:



My second idea was to get a threaded tube and have it tacked to the subframe, then run a bolt through directly into the tube. Sort of like this:



What do yall think? I think the first option may be more stable, and with the rubber cushioning may absorb some of the road shock a little better.  Anyone had experience with this?

[utgunslinger13]

Your first idea is sorta similar to the "kimble bolt" that holds most lower chin spoilers on.  How much of a space will be between the fairing and the subframe (ie: how long would the threaded rod need to be?)?  When I made the brackets for my lower spoiler, I just welded a U-shaped bit of metal with a nut welded on the inside to the frame.  Then the spoiler would bolt directly to the U-shaped bracket, but there was only about an inch of space needed.



Grey: Frame
Red: U-Shaped Bracket with grey nut welded to inside
Blue: Fairing

Maybe that could work?

[jdw03n]

Its possible.  There's only about an inch of space there, I think this was an OEM chin fairing. 

The upside of doing it your way is it isn't going to go anywhere.  The downside is also that it isn't going to go anywhere...if I wanted to pull the fairing down the line, I"d have these brackets sticking off the subframe.  With my #1 option, I could pull it off and it would essentially be stock again. I'm worried about having the mounts migrate in my #1 option, though. 

[utgunslinger13]

I would think that by eliminating them touching where it comes together for the bolt should pinch them on the frame enought to minimize or negate the walking brackets?

[jdw03n]

That was part of the idea of using the rubber spacer also...first, to provide some shock absorbence, and second to secure it into place.

[DoD#i]

Sensitive to bolt length (extra chunk of rubber between strap and fairing helps a little bit with that), compact, removable.

Weld nut to strap. Bend strap around, nut to inside. Hole in end of strap over nut. Might want a metal "shoe" under the end of the bolt, as the bolt will press against the rubber-wrapped frame to tighten the clamp in place. Sensitive to bolt length because once the clamp is tightened, the head of the bolt is where it is - but if you used a stud with a slot for a screwdriver or an allen socket in the outer end, you could tighten the stud into the clamp as tight as you like, then tighten a nut to hold the fairing on onto the far end of the stud. Loctite might be a good idea.

Drawing has way too much whitespace, but I'm too crispy to spend time making it tighter. Color code same as original. Nut is the thick spot on the green, I have not drawn a shoe.

[jiggersplat]

I just ordered the mounting hardware for a targa chin fairing from them for like $12.

[jdw03n]

I finally did something like #1:

Here's the hardware pre-tightening:


Here's the final product: