• 4 Stroke Husqvarna Motorcycles Made In Italy - About 1989 to 2014
     TE = 4st Enduro & TC = 4st Cross

  • Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

Carbon Fiber SMR511 Gas Tank Build

This project is exactly what I had in mind. This issue was the only thing concerning me about buying a TE511. Look forward to seeing your results. Very sell-able item JR
 
Jimmers said:
This project is exactly what I had in mind. This issue was the only thing concerning me about buying a TE511. Look forward to seeing your results. Very sell-able item JR
Click to expand...

Good news. I did a rough volume measurements last night and this is just shy of 3 gallons. Now, the other subject of selling them, we shall see. I may do a limited run, but unless I find someone to do the labor, I will not be building these much. Also, keep in mind, these will not be that cheap. Carbon is $30+/yard and resin of $80/gallon
 
What about building a tank on the tail section , like a solo seat on a GXer 750 of the late 90's ...

Sick doggy !
 
Jimmers said:
Anymore updates ?
Click to expand...

There is some progress, but nothing worth posting. I am done with the main fabrication. Now comes the tedious parts of filler and sanding and filler and sanding and filler and sanding...then a high-build primer and polishing. I will post an update when the plug is ready to be molded.

(it does encourage me since I have (an albeit small) following.
 
Nice. Used to do body and paint for a living a long time ago and can appreciate the hand sanding time it takes to get that done. I like where it goes over the frame. Nice work. You are going to make this an exterior mold for the CF right? Should be reusable?
 
Motosportz said:
Nice. Used to do body and paint for a living a long time ago and can appreciate the hand sanding time it takes to get that done. I like where it goes over the frame. Nice work. You are going to make this an exterior mold for the CF right? Should be reusable?
Click to expand...

You are correct. I should be able to pull at least 10 times from the mold, if not more. It will be your standard gel coat fiberglass 2-piece mold.
 
Final fitment done and bottom of gas tank complete to match the 511 frame exactly. I will finish off the list glass work and continue with bondo+sanding. The time for laying down some high build primer is rapidly approaching!

The red marker is where the tank will be cut.

(this is about 35 hours into the project)

2013-04-26 22.54.22.jpg2013-04-26 22.55.07.jpg2013-04-26 22.55.15.jpg
 
Finally back in the country and on this again.
 

Attachments

  • obhUnSRRGmwzFbtn7gYFNhDbnnB5sHHDzU6zl1ma36M.jpg
    obhUnSRRGmwzFbtn7gYFNhDbnnB5sHHDzU6zl1ma36M.jpg
    138.4 KB · Views: 38
It is still a work in progress. Still have some final finishing to do before I make a mold.

I have switched focus to making a few smaller carbon fiber items to work out any flaws I have in my processes. I made a carbon shock mud guard a few weeks ago. This weekend, I am making a mold of the OEM exhaust cover to make it out of carbon. I then need to get my vacuum setup completed and I can move to vacuum infusion for these parts. I want to practice the infusion process on these easier parts before I move to infusing a gas tank. I am also working on finding a heating solution for the garage (even though I am in Texas, 40 degree weather is no conducive to the curing of the epoxy resins I use).

I am still working on this though, I am planning to post updates only after I have completed the tank though.
 
Glad to see you're back on this. I was wondering about what happened to it.

Maybe, when you get everything worked out, you can work with me on a big tank for the current WR250 /300. :D
 
MOTORHEAD said:
Glad to see you're back on this. I was wondering about what happened to it.

Maybe, when you get everything worked out, you can work with me on a big tank for the current WR250 /300. :D
Click to expand...


I did go to Thailand for 2 months (Aug & Sept) as well, so spending money on equipment was put on hold too. And wife is about to start college, so this gets the back burner, especially since it is a hobby.

Since you are asking, I will post some picture of progress. I tried to pawn this off on a body shop for which I do some web site work, but they did nothing.
 
That would be great. I'm very interested in this process, so it's like "Carbon Fiber Molding 101" to me.
 
I am not sure how thorough my write up with be. Unless my wife is out there taking pictures during the process, it is not going to happen and I like to work in the garage alone most of the time.

Check out this site for more in depth details
http://www.compositescentral.com/
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top