Yamaha TX750 Restoration: Engine Stand Bracket Fabrication.

Last week I was out in the garage playing machinist to some minor degree of success. I managed to finish up the brackets to go with the engine stand from the previous post. They turned out alright, but not great. I'll consider them a prototype until I can get some better material and more quality time in the shop. I made these over the course of a week, usually in 30 minute chunks. Read through to see how it was done.

First thing to do was to gather raw material and to dig out the engine mount bolts from the engine parts bin. I have some small angle iron from an old crib frame I got rid of a few months ago. I chopped up the mattress support to give me four pieces of angle in two sets of lengths. I didn't have a plan for it, but it didn't take up much shop space and I figured it would come in handy one day.

I punched a couple of marks in the angle and chucked up a 31/64th bit into the drill press. In short order I had two holes in the angle 90° apart. The holes will match the engine stand bolts to the perpendicular bike engine mounting bosses at the back of the TX's motor.

The metal chipped up nicely as can be seen in the pic above. I had to drill the holes in two stages. The first stage was to mark and punch the drill location with a spring loaded center punch. Then I drilled a small 1/8th pilot hole before moving up to the bigger size. I used some oil to lubricate the large bit as it would occasionally snag the metal without it. I held the angle by hand as I don't have any parallels to mount it in my drill press vice. A vice would be better with such a large bit to keep the bar from whipping around if the bit catches when doing aggressive drilling.

After the two holes were drilled in the test piece. I slapped it onto the engine stand head to check to see if I understood the concept. I appears that I did so I went ahead and marked, drilled and cut the rest of the adapters from the 18" or so long piece of angle. I searched through my junk bolt bin for some bolts long enough to reach only to come up short by three. After a quick trip to the local hardware store I had the remaining fasteners.

And this is what it looks like. While I did understand the concept I didn't quite catch the need to do two sets of brackets with mirror imaged holes. I made them with the holes in the same orientation for all eight holes in the four brackets. Ideally I'd like to have the angles with a flat side facing into the center of the engine stand head. The motor mount bosses from the TX engine may interfere with the angle brackets as I have it now. Oh well, as I said previously I'll consider these a test set. I'd like some more substantial angle brackets. The ones I have currently don't have much meat left on them after drilling the large size holes. A one inch angle leg length will work just fine.

Next up is to lug the engine around to the other end of the shop and attach it to the stand. I'll need to enlist the help of a friend most likely if I want to avoid blowing out my back. The next update should complete the series for the engine stand.After that comes engine disassembly and spec checking. Drop by in a few weeks for the next update.

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