There's a deal of work still to do: I need to fabricate a mounting plate for the license plate, the handlebars are being swapped to a set with more pullback, and I have some cute turn signals to modify. Once these had been removed and sanded, the seat goes like this: At the same time, I had to modify the back of the GRP seat moulding, but I took the opportunity to use a couple of mastic tubes to form recesses for the springs: This one wouldn't work with the stock seat, as it doesn't extend far enough back, though you could get around that, I'm sure. #SUZUKI INTRUDER 800 BOBBER KIT FULL#Now, at this point, I installed the rear fender for a test fit, and it was obvious that at full deflection the fender was going to hit the bottom of the seat mount, so it had to come off and get modified. The form was then removed and the whole thing covered in a thick layer of Plastic Padding before being sanded back. I put down four or five layers of CSM and let it set before offering up the seat: Some of the 'missing' areas were simply covered over with multiple layers of duct tape. Now, don't get me wrong, if I could have got away with polished aluminium or stainless like that, I would have, but me welding skills aren't up to that, so this was just a form for the next bit, which was to lay a load of glass fibre over it. The various bits were clamped in place and taped together: I cut several pieces of thin (0.8mm) aluminium sheet and forming it with a soft mallet around a 32mm (1¼") broom handle! That works perfectly because the frame tubes are 30mm. The kits all seem to use flat steel plates put together to give quite an angular look, but I decided to take a different approach. Incidentally, if you remove the mounting tab from the back of the stock seat and turn it around so it faces forwards (under the seat), and add some spacers, this will support the stock seat, but there is a caveat (see later): So, I measured, notched and bent a length of 30 x 30 x 3mm angle iron and drilled two 10mm holes to create a seat support. At this point, I had already received the front and rear fenders from Blue Collar, a separate lay down side-mount bracket for the license plate, some lights and a seat (under £25 from China on Ebay). So, the starting point is to strip the back of the bike. The only option, then was a bit of fabrication. That was a no-no for me, because I wanted the option of returning to stock. Black Ops seem to be (temporarily) out of production, and the other issue with the Blue Collar setup was that it requires you to saw off the inner rear fender mounts (the 'horns' that stick up and lean inwards from the top of the frame tube). It rains a lot here, and I worked out some while ago that electrics and rain don't often play nicely. Specifically, both the kits use a sort of 'stepped' tray to cover the battery box which I didn't like, and the Blue Collar one has holes in the top that let you see the battery posts. Blue Collar and Black Ops seem to have solved those, but there were some things I wasn't happy with. #SUZUKI INTRUDER 800 BOBBER KIT HOW TO#When I looked at this 10 years ago, there were two major issue to solve: how to attach the rear fender at the front end, and how to support the seat. Then I found some links to places like Blue Collar Bobbers and Black Ops Bobbers, and it all got me thinking. I did try way back, but there weren't the parts around over here, and I didn't have the fabrication skills, so it all got shelved. It does take a little getting used to with nothing behind your back when that passenger seat is gone though.So I have wanted to build a bobber for a good 10 years. As for comfort, it's really not as bad as I thought it was going to be. I can take curves a little faster, although I did drag my pipes a little today. Since lower the rear, the bike feels a lot more stable and stiff. When I took my front fender off, the front felt a little loose with the stock shocks on and I have had to slow a little more in curves due to not feeling as stable. I really like the handling and the stance the bike has taken on since installing the struts. Here is my bike with the unimportant stuff stripped off and before I relocated the PCM. Here are a couple pics of the struts on the bike. Other than that they fit like a glove and look great. I figured it would be safer and easier to grind the little bit of metal off the width of the eyes than to try to bend the bracket flanges out. The only thing I had to do was grind the sides of one end of the eyes a little to get them to fit in the swing arm bracket. Exact match for the eye holes on the mounts.
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