Rear End Coming Together (and a Tank That Didn’t Make It)

It has been quieter here than I would like, but the build has kept moving. Two things happened since the last update: the frame finally got scanned, and the tank I had been working on turned out to be a dead end.

Frame Scan

Everything up to now had been designed against the physical bike or off measurements I took by hand, which works but leaves room for error once parts start needing to line up with each other. Having the frame scanned fixes that. I now have an accurate 3D reference to design against in Fusion 360 instead of guessing, which matters a lot for what came next.

Rear Section Meets Fender

With the electrical layout modelled out in the last post, the next job was designing something to actually house it all. Originally I planned this as two separate pieces, a tray for the electronics and a rear fender bolted on afterward. Once I had the scanned frame to work with, it made more sense to combine them into one part.

The upside is fewer seams, fewer fasteners, and a rear end that should read as one clean shape instead of a stack of components. The downside is it is a much harder part to design well. Everything, the CDI, regulator, starter relay, battery, connectors, wire routing, all needs to fit inside a shape that also has to work as a fender, and none of it can be visible from the outside. Still early days on this piece, but the layout is starting to make sense.

The Tank Didn’t Work Out

Less good news on the tank. The size and how it sits on the frame make it genuinely hard to get flowing with the rest of the lines. It was a bit of a gamble when I first ordered it, and this time the gamble did not pay off.

I already have an idea for what should replace it, but it needs more time in Fusion before I trust it enough to show. Sometimes a part just does not work, and rather than force it, it is better to go back and redesign it properly.

That is where things stand: an accurate scanned frame to build against, a rear section and fender coming together as one piece around the hidden electronics, and a tank going back to the drawing board. Slower than I would like, but every one of these details is the kind that is much harder to fix later than to get right now.