Archive for the ‘How To’ Category

Mounted Cafe Seat

In today’s DIY wednesday, the wrench monkeys at Kickwrench will show you how to mount that cafe seat on your ride. This is the easiest, most cost effective way to mount a cafe seat we’ve ever seen. While we aren’t the origin of this mod, we thought it’d be great to document it for the masses.

Supplies:

Supplies for your Cafe Seat Mount

Supplies for your Cafe Seat Mount

  • 4 rubber stoppers from the hardware store
  • 4 bolts
  • 4 nuts
  • 4 hose clamps
  • Some paint you have lying around the garage

Process:
First, fit the hose clamps around your frame where the seat will mount. Mark the clamps with a sharpie on the portion that faces straight up from the frame. Pop the hose clamps off and drill a hole large enough to fit the bolt on your mark. While you have the drill out, drill a hole of the same diameter through the middle of the rubber stopper. Put the bolt through your hose clamp, facing outwards and slide the rubber stopper over the bolt. Fit the whole assembly back on the frame. Repeat 4x. It should look like this:

The assembled mount

The assembled mount

Now, grab your seat, some paint and something to apply it with. We used red spray paint and a Q-tip. Apply the paint to the top of the bolts and fit your seat to the bike. The goal is to mark where you’ll need to drill the seat for the bolts.

Marked seat bolt

Marked seat bolt

Once you have good, clear paint marks on the underside of the seat, grab your drill and punch a few holes. If you marked correctly, the seat will slide down over the bolts and you can tighten with a nut. Use your upholstery to cover the bolts/nuts. Wasn’t that easy?

Mounted Cafe Seat

Mounted Cafe Seat

Finished product

Finished product

Today’s DIY wednesday is all about seats. We’ll walk you through building a fiberglass base and carving up the foam. We decided to go with kind of a brat style seat because there are plenty of tutorials out there on how to make a traditional cafe seat. You could slim the foam down even more if you want some crazy bratitude.

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Rebuilding a vintage motorcycle involves cleaning a lot of extremely dirty parts with 30-40 years of grime on them. You’re never going to get them cleaned with elbow grease and dish rags. You need a heavy duty cleaning tool, something Tim Taylor would build, something with power. Today’s DIY Wednesday tip will help you go from old and dirty to new and sparkly, a DIY soda blaster cabinet for less than fifty bucks. Tip and photos courtesy of Robert Teegarden. (Note: this DIY assumes you have an air compressor and air gun).

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DIY Headlight Ears For Less Than $10

DIY Headlight Ears For Less Than $10

Looking for a custom piece for your ride on the cheap? Dotheton.com member tWistedWheelz offered up this helpful step by step on how to class your bike up a bit.

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