Rayne's Pannier...

[Prof]

Rayne's done some good miles on his panhead, but has found his tool bag strapped to the frame a bit of a problem. It gets in the way of the passenger's foot and is wearing the frame. He wants a frame to hold it in place. At the same time he needs quick access to the rear axle and more so the left axle adjuster.

Here's where the tool bag needs to sit.


Takes half an hour or so of looking and thinking to come up with what seems to be a suitable, simple, good looking and effective solution. A bar will fit into a slot behind the footpeg and drop into a second fitting off the sissy bar mount. 100mm in front of the axle plate is a tab for a chain guard. A slotted piece will fit into this to stabilise the whole affair. One shoulder bolt at the sissy bar will retain the whole kit and kaboodle. We'll fabricate the whole assembly from 30x5 and 25x5 stainless...


Slotted spacer turned up on the lathe to fit behind the footpeg... the front mounting point...


Measuring and designing rear mounting. We'll use a longer sissy bar bolt with a threaded spacer. A shoulder bolt will screw into this and retain the frame...


Turning up the shoulder bolt out of 25mm stainless hex (same spanner size as axle nut). Shoulder is 14.5 mm and the thread is 3/8" UNF same as sissy bar bolt...


Spacer is turned up and put on the mill and slotted to fit a 5/8" AF spanner...


Measuring up for length of bolt; 10mm more than this to screw into the spacer...


Spacer and retaining assembly...


Lower bar in 30x5 stainless, front slot is made by drilling a 15mm hole and then cutting with a 1mm angle grinder blade. Rear slot here being marked out to fit shoulder bolt...


Ready to drill and cut. Frame will be pushed forwards into the front slot and then dropped over the shoulder bolt which is tightened and retains the frame...


Cut and fitted.


Rest of frame pieces have been cut and welded. Here top bar has been drilled and is being tapped to take the four bolts that will attach the bag. Two more holes are yet to be drilled and tapped to hold bottom of bag...


Frame mounted. Works perfectly and I think Rayne will be pleased. Tomorrow I will fab the third mount and then mount the bag. Rayne also wants to be able to mount a tool roll on top of the tool bag that can be quickly removed when opening the bag... Tomorrow...

[Ren]

Wow!!!

Great work Andrew. My favourite piece is the one off bolt and spacer setup. Always going above and beyond.

Can't wait to see it all done.

[Prof]

Frame is finished. Re shoulder bolt. I could have used a long bolt, spacer and a couple of nuts, but then if you are out on the road and need to remove it, nut would be easily lost. This way the shoulder bolt only needs to be loosened. Probably added 30 minutes to the job.

Still have to space out the caliper and then I'll put up the rest of the thread.

[Prof]

Finished the job today.

This bracket tucks behind an unused chainguard tab and prevents the pannier frame twisting out at the top when it is carrying a heavy load...


Bracket was bent up in this cool bender which fits in the vice... $80 off the net a few years back...


Pannier (tool bag) now needs to be fitted. I keep a bunch of bicycle spokes handy to make up scribers for specific purposes such as this. Needs a right angle to get between the chopper through the holes in the pannier frame to mark the leather...


Mudguard washers will prevent the bolt heads pulling through the leather. Two end ones need slicing to fit. Both cut and clamped together for cutting...


Holes are drilled in the leather and the bolts pushed through. Then measured for cutting. They need to be shortened to allow acorn nuts to be used as lock nuts. Without lock nuts or locktight the bolts will come loose as the leather compresses...


Handy instrument for marking multiple bolts... You'll find lots of tools like this at swap meets, though this one has been in the family since before I was born...


Mudguard washers...


Last job is to set frame up to take a tool roll on top of the pannier. Some 25 x5 flat bar is spaced out with 5mm pieces. This will allow a drop in frame to be made to carry the tool roll...


When cutting small pieces like this cut to within a mm so they don't get lost. Once all are cut, just twist them off...


Pannier and frame mounted on Rayn'es chopper...


The disc brake rotor has been rubbing on the caliper and Rayne has asked me to sort that out as well. On checking it out, two problems showed up. The distance bewtween the wheel and the caliper mount is 2mm too little. Simply solved with a 2mm longer spacer... 21.16mm to 23.16mm...


The outer edge of the rotor is also rubbing against the inside of the caliper and wearing away a small spring. I will have to remove the rotor from the wheel and trim it a couple of mm on the lathe. Looks like a job for tomorrow.

After removing and replacing the axle probably four times and pushing the wheel around still under the guard I finally noticed a loose spoke on the rotor side. Hmmm! broken. Gosh so is the next one! Ohho! so is the next one! Well blow me down... all the driving spokes on the rotor side are broken! And Rayne only cleaned the wheel last week... which goes to remind us to check our choppers regularly and carefully. The spokes as usual are broken at the bends by the hub, so not easily noticed with a whacking great disc rotor hiding them on one side and a large sprocket on the other... which reminds me that I hae been running with two broken spokes for a couple of months, better get mine sorted too!

More tomorrow night.

[Ren]

Looks Awesome Andrew. Thank you very much. Julie is happy about being able to put her foot on that peg properly now. Happy wife happy life they say.

Bugga about the spokes. Will be down tomorrow to pick up the wheel and take it to the wheel guys.

[Prof]

Rear rotor proved to be quite a patience testing exercise.

I removed the wheel and took off the rotor to machine a couple of mm off the diameter...


When I put it all back together and on the chopper the rotor rubbed on the caliper again. I figured I must have measured wrong and turned up another spacer. Put that on and did the opposite. What the heck!!? Finally looked closely and found the caliper mount twisted slightly depending on whether axle was forwards or back in the axle plate. Had a closer look at the mount and decided it needed some clearance as it must have been fouling the frame rail. The hollow (red arrow) wouldn't have helped either...


So I machined up a press-in spacer that protrudes 2mm. So now the caliper mount should pull up against the axle plate and stay aligned...


Alignment of the caliper and rotor was now different again, so as I had to make another spacer for between the hub bearing and caliper mount, I machined up a stepped one. The wider section will be against the caliper mount and should help with alighnment especially help prevent any wear on the aluminium caliper mount...


Assembled for the final time (hopefully) and it fits perfectly. I also trimmed a couple of mils off the left hand axle spacer (sprocket side) to make removal and replacement of the wheel easier. Now the axle plates pull in a the same number of mm as the axle is tightened, which is as it should be. Here the wheel finally back in the chopper. Red arrow shows stepped spacer, blue arrow the pressed in spacer and green arrow shows the clearance between rotor and caliper...


It was quite a bit of mucking around, but now all works well and the wheel is now much easier to remove and install.

As of this writing, Rayne has taken the wheel in to DC Motor cycles at Marion to get respoked. Will need to keep a check on it in the future.