what cowl can i use...

[bubblehead]

What cowl can cut up and mutilate to try and and build myself a seat cowl for my 06 Katana? I'm looking at a hayabusa seat cowl as a starter. Seems like it would be a good, almost fit.

and i have no idea how darrels stuff is attached to my thread

[steves]

The easiest thing to do is to learn to lay fiberglass over your seat.

The "darrel" stuff was left over from an error, and I thought I had fixed everything already.

[eviilil0ne]

unless you get an awesome deal on a busa cowl .. i.e. free .. i gotta go with steve on this .. those things cant be cheap and you will still have to heavily modify and fiberglass it

[grumpyoldgit]

Just so happens that is one of my winter projects, bought a second seat off Ebay (99pence ), got the fibreglass kit.

Made some cardboard 'sides' around the rear seat area and sprayed expanding foam into it, currently waiting for it to harden so I can cut and shape it prior to fibreglassing over.

One thing holding me up atm is the fixing solution, i.e. what to use as tabs to bend under the seat to retaing the cowl in place, anyone have any ideas?

[jsmallillin]

sounds like you got a good plan going. i have no experience working with foam or fiberglass. this is going to be fun. got any suggestions on how to build a frame for a cowl? i was thinking about the cardboard way also.

[Black_peter]

Grumpy, I have heard of using foam. Do yourself a favor (favour? lol) and test the foam for resistance to the epoxy. I covered a styrofoam form with plastic and the epoxy still leeched through the bag and "ate" away the foam making for an odd final shape.

For the tabs I would glass in strips of metal banding. What I have in mind is the type they use to hang pipes and duct work..

[grumpyoldgit]

This is as far as I have got:

[IMG] http://uk.msnusers.com/GSX600F/shoeb...hoto&PhotoID=2 [/IMG]
[img] http://uk.msnusers.com/GSX600F/shoeb...hoto&PhotoID=1 [/img]
[img] http://uk.msnusers.com/GSX600F/shoeb...hoto&PhotoID=5 [/img]

As far as the banding/tabs, I just need to find somewhere that sells the stuff, needs to be malleable enough to bend and not distort the fibreglass, but strong enough to retain the cowl in position.

I'll try the epoxy at the weekend probably, don't think the missus will approve of it in the house (smell) and the garage is too cold for it to set correctly in the evenings.

[teddy]

Well, here is what I did to make the cowl seen here:



First, get a second seat, cheap on ebay, don't ruin the one you use everyday. Basically I used plaster to shape the mold. Durabond 90 to be exact. I used the powder bag mix so I could control the amount of moisture in the mix, and the great thing about db90 is that you can make it super thick without it cracking. Mix it up, slap it on the seat and start shaping away. I let mine set up overnight, then came back the next day with 80 grit sandpaper and smoothed out the rough edges. Wrap it several times with saran wrap or similar plastic wrap. Here is the fun part. Get an old sweatshirt you don't wear anymore and cut it so you have one large chunk of material. Place it smooth side down on the mold, pull it tight and staple it to the seat underneath. This will make the best shape for the cowl. You can use the fiberglass matte or cloth if you want, but this way is sooooo much easier to work with without having wrinkles and folds or messing with several pieces of material. Mix and apply resin as normal for fiberglass applications. The sweatshirt will soak a lot of it up, be ready to use the better part of a quart of resin. Once it is hardened, knock down the rough surface with coarse sandpaper, then fill, sand, prime and paint. Sounds easy doesn't it?

[IndyGunner]

howd you attach it

[teddy]

when you wrap the sweatshirt under the seat you can leave yourself some material under there to screw into the underside of the seat with....

[jsmallillin]

A lot of you guys have some pretty decent fabricating skills! Yeah...i'll pick up a used seat on ebay before i get into the serious stuff. Very nice cowl Teddy, and an awesome looking Kat!

[grumpyoldgit]

Very nice cowl Teddy, and an awesome looking Kat!

Well he did win KOTM this month

[Black_peter]

Wait.. Teddy you made your cowl out of a sweatshirt?? That is thinking out of the box.

Wow

[grumpyoldgit]

Wait.. Teddy you made your cowl out of a sweatshirt?? That is thinking out of the box.

Wow

Yeah I was like 'OMG I just paid £35 for a fibreglass kit and i could have used an old sweatshirt?????????' doh. Ofc I would still have needed to buy the resin but .......

[teddy]

Yeah I was like 'OMG I just paid £35 for a fibreglass kit and i could have used an old sweatshirt?????????' doh. Ofc I would still have needed to buy the resin but .......

Yeah, it's an old trick I learned from a buddy who built custom subwoofer enclosures for cars that went to the SEMA show in Vegas. Have you ever seen those sub boxes that are all flowed and molded into the trunk all fancy? Same basic concept, just adapted for what I needed