VT250F "Silver" part 04: Mounting the front fairing!

Its time! Time to do something I have never done before! Time to mount the new front fairing... This is going to be fun "gulps".


"this motorcycle needs a face ASAP"

So as you know I have decided to replace the stock front fairing with a new aftermarket one that I saw on eBay. I decided to do this for a couple of reasons, but the main being I don't like square headlamps and I was looking for something a little bit more modern, or at least interesting.


"old"

"new"

Holding the new fairing up against the forks I was pretty sure it would work with very minimal modification to the gauge housing, though I was prepared to fork out cash for new gauges if needed. Luckily this didn't need to happen. New brackets however would have to be made, as the ones that came pre packaged were not suited for my bike and how I wanted the finished product to look.


"someone, somewhere would have a use for this... not me"

I have never made brackets before, in fact I have no metalwork experience except for that one term of metal shop class in Year 10 about 6 or more years ago. So I was given an incredibly quick crash course on how to use the tools by my father and left to my own devices. The results I think are rather excellent, considering its my first time doing this. So what I'm going to do is outline the steps I took to make the brackets, post the steps as pictures and then you can feel free to laugh at my craftsmanship. Sound good? well it does to me so lets go.

1. Firstly I marked out the length of steel I was going to need. Luckily the shed had just the right thing laying around in the corner.

2. The pieces were then ground down a little so that they're rounded and don't have any sharp edges. Then a center punch was used for the pilot hole.

3. I stacked both pieces of steel on top of each other and placed them in a vice. Then drilled a pilot hole through both pieces at the same time to guarantee the holes will be an equal distance apart when finished.

4. Next step was to drill through the pilot hole and make the opening big enough for the bolt I was going to use.

5. After that I tidied up the pieces on a grinder and sander to remove it of any barbs.

6. They were then put back into the vice and I used a hammer to bend them to the required angle. My perfectly calibrated eye was the first tool used but this was then double checked with a tape measure to make sure it was going to work.

7. The completed brackets where then put on the motorcycle and I admired my work... while at the same time completely surprised I managed to pull it off.

I had to create four brackets in total. The ones I showed steps for were for the bottom of the fairing, The top brackets are essentially a giant "L" shape but I followed the same steps.

Im really pleased with how it turned out. The gauge dust cover blends into the new fairing in an interseting way. Probably not to everyones taste but when its all painted no one will care. Their is a gap on the sides though, but this will be filled in with the new indicators and some Silver automotive mesh.


"not bad, not bad at all'