More Weight Loss and Mechanical Simplification

As part of removing the wiring harness for inspection, I had to pull the fuse box and starter relay. Seeing the open gap where they used to reside got me to thinking of how I can shed more unneeded weight from the bike and simplify some of the wiring and mechanical aspects to make things easier while at the track and in the pits. Two ideas spring to mind: 1) remove the large, bulky, two-piece plastic under fender and replace it with a custom one piece aluminum under-seat one and 2) delete all the unnecessary electrical components and reroute the wiring to have the major parts of the harness mount to the new under-seat under fender. 

I started by removing the plastic bracket that mounts the fuse box and starter relay. This ended up leaving the rear brake master cylinder hanging out by itself. I checked my junk box and found the perfect piece of metal stock to make a custom bracket that would take advantage of some pre-existing mounting tabs on the frame and master cylinder.

I measured the piece of metal for length and as luck would have it, the already existing holes in the metal lined up perfectly. All I had to do was drill one out by a 32nd of an inch and tap both holes for an M6 bolt from my spare bolt kit. The piece of metal stock came from an old crib we had lying around. It was one that you could drop one side to make it easier to pick up the baby. Since I got it for my daughter as a hand-me-down from my brother, I figured it was time for it to go as my daughter is now five years old and these types of cribs are no longer sold. It left me with a few pounds of scrap metal to use for things like this.

It really was a 30 minute job to complete this minor project. Here are the results. The rear brake master cylinder is solidly mounted. The whole area where the fuse box exists is now clean and open which will make getting to other parts of the bike easy.

On the backside of the bracket you can see how the angles line up. The master cylinder hose is taunt, but not stretched tight. I might put some lock nuts on the bolts as an added insurance measure, but that will be easy to do later.

Stick around for another update soon as I tackle the handle bar controls. I'm planning to do some interesting changes that are common on track only bikes. Once those are done I was thinking of ways to make the wiring harness easier to work on since I may have to re-route some things and I still need to go through it all to ensure it is good to go for race day. I will also be calling up go kart track in the area that has days for supermoto bikes to run. I want to plan a test and tune before I jump into the race series. I also need to contact the race org and make sure I'm set for race participation. See ya!

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