Victory cycle footboard-Finished B4 & After

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august 2007---Victory mc rear footboard mounts B4 & After                                 BEFORE-below--stock Rivco mountshttp://www.weldingweb.com/attachment...1&d=1198292769AFTER-below---extended, cambered, toed-out and reinforced rear mountshttp://www.weldingweb.com/attachment...1&d=1198292835(The lighting in the above pic, really doesn’t do justice to the finish.)http://www.weldingweb.com/attachment...1&d=1198292873The above, down-sized, pic DOES justice to the finish, even as small as it is. Talk about specular depth! It reflects the glistening white of the foam and smudges on the cardboard. http://www.weldingweb.com/attachment...1&d=1198292915This a series of posts detailing what took place to get from point A to point Z on this project. The specific items discussed are presented in the hope that it may help others to better handle projects that may come their way. These are excerpted from Blackbird product letters, written as the job trudged along, including some specific notes and comments to the customer.                     Background--(Trying to ‘duck’ the job)A customer-who’s friend as well as my dentist—prodded me to severely modify a set of Rivco aftermarket, rear foot plate mounts for his Victory cycle. Both the peg style and footboard style of mounts for the rear passenger (pax), were positioned to be extremely uncomfortable for an adult to use. I took pic’s, basic measurements and studied just how to do this....a bunch. This couldn’t and wouldn’t be a cut/fit/guess/redo/re-cut/re-fit job----any way I looked at doing it:-The mount castings only had one flat reference surface-where the 2     mounting screws fastened the casting to the mount. I needed X, Y, and Z reference datums.    -The modification meant tying in a new aluminum plate to an aluminum sand castingof questionable strength, subjecting this casting and the cap screw mounting in the bike’s frame to a good 3 times more shock, stress and vibration—than the original. This implied really big, deep, beveled, faired, multiple pass welds; with as much stiffening/load distribution gusseting as could be done.-The 2 mounts needed to be as symmetrical to each other as possible-for the pax comfort and appearance-The finished mounts (originally buffed and chrome-plated), needed to LOOK GOOD. This implied a bunch of time and planning as to finishing, plus having to deal with whatever kind of casting porosity would be exposed. We agreed to have the finished aluminum mounts powdercoated—as opposed to having them chrome plated, again.I hemmed and hawed about this, for a month, citing all the reasons above (and more), as to ‘why’, this wasn’t a good idea and would involve con$iderable effort on my part. I waffled in the end--(but I would not have done this job for anybody else), we came to term$, including a rather all-encompassing ‘Best Effort Repair’ agreement (which is a standard form I use, to help absolve myself of future liability claims); and gave this job the Old College Try.    This was a ‘challenging’ job—that I learned from and am satisfied with……as is---the customer.As this job progressed, I updated the customer with emails and pics, showing just ‘what-all’, was occurring.He told me that he had no idea, just what this would entail for ‘yours truly’...... I did, prior to the start! Attached ImagesBlackbird
Reply:Nice write up Dave.  And absolutely, it is and was a big effort.For all that time and effort, you almost could have made new casting patterns and re-cast whole new parts!  You probably still would have had to polish them though.
Reply:Originally Posted by MoonRiseNice write up Dave.  And absolutely, it is and was a big effort.For all that time and effort, you almost could have made new casting patterns and re-cast whole new parts!  You probably still would have had to polish them though.