After a couple days finish welding and sanding, the 1957 Triumph Freebird frame is mated up with the rear rack. Some of the brackets of the rear frame had been tacked together and needed finishing.
While some additional work was done on the seat frame since the last post, this picture is to show the muffler mount in need of some finishing.
There was a big ugly bracket cut off the front of the crossbar, the muffler mounts were shaped and then boxed in, welds were ground out and re-done, and then everything was blended together as much as possible.
A lot of time went into revising welds to get rid of any porosity. When dealing with box-like structures, the air pressure inside the heated box can blow a hole through your welds. There was more shaping done after these pictures to make the gussets less rounded in the middle section.
The rear sub frame is an unknown aftermarket piece that has been shortened on the bottom tubes, with the upper mount fabricated to be a bolt-on type opposed to how it was welded on when it came to the shop. A lot of time was spent restoring the front part of the frame where it mounts. The original mounts had been ground off and welded over (and rather badly, at that.)
Part of me wants to send this off for chrome plating, but with chrome shows every defect, powder coating and clear coating may be the way.
FXR seat version 3.0. On the 1993 Harley-Davidson FXR build, the seat mount was scrapped for a second time in favor of a wider unit that has room to hide a Motogadget m-Unit beneath it.
The seat bracket rests on the frame backbone and rear crossbar, locking in its location. Because of the way the backbone tube flares at the end, the center piece of the mount had to be curved not just side-to-side, but front-to-back. The edge of the battery can be seen though the wide slot that will allow the wiring to pass through. There is a second slot in the crossbar that allows wiring to pass into the backbone, up toward the tank, for a clean appearance.
Even though the center section was scrapped on the previous version, it was not a total loss. The outer shroud was cut off and used on the new mount.
In other FXR news, the rear of the primary cover was stripped and de-greased in preparation for paint. The new set of pulleys and belt have arrived and are waiting on this cover (and some good weather to paint it) before the front pulley can be installed.