Over the winter Paul purchased an existing, off-the-shelf piece from Team JorNik Motorsports (also land speed racers). I'm unsure of the maker but the application was for the Hyabusa model. It had the bubble and downward shape we were looking for. As an added bonus it was going to fit the already established contours of the body halves with only minor modifications to the form.
Test-fitting and connecting the shapes.
Trim away the excess.
Forming the seat pan to fit the roll-welded seam along the rear edge of the tank.
Everything's ready to laminate. The seat pan is formed out of soft aluminum and riveted to the subframe. The rivet heads you see in the pan are also the locators/pilot holes for the mounting points. Many contours were molded in place on the bike to insure fit.
Seat pan laminated. Waiting for full cure.
Seat pan shaped and back on the bike for test-fitting and molding of the skirts.
Soft aluminum skin being fitted to the form. Tabs are folded over the wire form to stretch the metal and hold it in place.
Ready for fiberglass.
Skirts laminated. After full cure the tail section is removed from the form and shaped.
To get the seat pan as close to the subframe as possible the original seat hooks were removed. The voltage regulator was relocated to the striker mount for the stock rear seat. All of the stock seat latches and release cable were removed. 6.6 mm Nut-Zerts were installed where the seat pan would be screwed to the subframe. Unprotected metal at Bonneville is a no-no.
So I masked the repair area and spotted it in...
... with self-etching satin black frame paint.
Fabricating the mounts where the kick panel area attaches to the peg mounts. Left side.
Right side.
Laminating reinforcement layers into the underside of the seat pan. Every piece of the bodywork had additional layers added to the inside of the part to create the rigidity need to keep the bike stable at terminal velocity.
Laminating the kick panel area of the tail section.
The last contour of the tail section was done after the halves were finished and the pieces could be mounted to the bike. This offset was molded on the bike to keep the bodywork centered and in place while it cured.