ideas for airbox/radiator covers - Motorcycle-Journal Forums

Trigger1985 · 07-20-2008, 11:08 PM

So I've been working a lot of doubles lately, giving me lots of time to think of ideas (V-twin magazine has been dangerous thing to read..)

Heres what I have so far. The left is the radiator cover. The plan is to grab a sheet of aluminum that is the same size as the stock cover, as this will be the backing or frame. I'm going to cut the design out with a jig saw, as its the best tool i gave for the job, don't worry i have blades for fine metal work. The dark grey in the image below will be the aluminum, now you say, well thats a lot of empty space, fear not I got an idea from the tuner car market. I plan to get some of that mesh they use for grills, going to use the same stuff to back the design, thats the lighter gray. I'll then cut the plastic mesh off the stock cover and put this over it, or if theres enough room, I'll mount this behind it, using the stock frame as a nice frame. If I can make it work, I'll get some blue or red LEDs to back light it, so the design pops out, for parking lot/bike night use, not on the road as thats illegal in this state and I got stopped for it in my truck...

So for the airbox, I had originally wanted to replace the bulbous cover that gets in my way with a flat sheet of aluminum, however thats not going to work due to the filter sticking out so far. On the image on the right is the cover, the gray is the plastic stuff, the black is areas that I will be cutting out and then backing with finer aluminum mesh to keep out the bugs and for looks. I'll respray it with chrome spray paint before adding the mesh, since its peeling off from the holes I drilled in the box.

The goal is to figure out the area of the hole on the back, and cut out approximatively that much from the front, maybe a little more to make up for the airflow cut of the mesh. I will then cover the hole with a washer to stop pulling in hot air. I want to see about pulling the airbox off and the back part that faces with engine with that heat shield tape used for the area around the exhausts. The airbox currently gets hot enough that I can't touch it so I want to start sucking in cooler air, and try to keep the box from getting so hot and heating up the intake air so much robbing my power, the ECU should be able to handle it. I'll then put an LED or two to match the one behind the radiator cover, and other areas on the bike.

Thoughts? Ideas? Concerns? I'll be posting pictures as I go.