Kawasaki Z400 - Kozin

[AlanG]

Now the exhaust pipes. As drawn by Pepakura, the separate segments are twelve-faceted, and joined together for a single facet width. It is much easier, and probably of better appearance, to roll them as cylinders (or cones for the silencers). Of course, there is no way I could do this and fail to tear the pieces apart, so I cut them apart anyway. Unfortunately the pieces lie on alternate sides of the joined-up spine, so the seams don't line up, making alignment difficult. More editing was needed, to shift the facets about to make the seams match.



I used separate joining strips for the silencers, but the pipes are just butt-glued.



Amazingly, they fitted with almost no adjustment.

Alan

[AlanG]

We now move on to the front end.

The main challenge here was the yokes which hold the fork columns and the pivot together. For some reason the holes for them are not modelled. They are marked on the unfolded parts by meaningless text, which I suppose comes from the lack of special Japanese fonts on my system. It wasn't difficult to place holes by eye on one part, but getting the two sets to line up was a problem, as the bottom yoke is flat whereas the top one is cranked upwards in the middle. This took some crafty manipulation of the top yoke to narrow down the angled facets according to their final slope, and to move and rotate the outer arms to match. Then I could transfer the resulting hole positions to the lower yoke. Rather to my surprise, this worked, and once assembled it took very little brute force to get the forks parallel to each other.



With the front end attached, I could finally fit the fuel tank, saddle and rear and side boxes.



It really does start to look like a motorcycle.

Alan

[Gixergs]

very nice,I rode one of these round Cornwall many years ago on my first honeymoon,turned out to be a lot more reliable than my now ex wife,more fun too.

[peter taft]

She's sure looking good Alan - mind you, this is to be expected from our resident Bike man

[Stev0]

Looks better than the model shown on the website. =)

[AlanG]

Gentlemen, you are too kind. (But keep it up - I love it)

The remaining bits and pieces:



Many of these are too fragile and vulnerable to fit before all the major handling is done, so they await ... THE WHEELS (cue sinister music).

Alan

[AlanG]

I have made "wire" wheels before, using silver thread for the spokes, and I have recently switched to making tyres with radial "petals", to give a smooth curved cross-section. This is my first try at combining the two.

My technique for the spokes is a little different from those suggested by others, as I like to see the spokes emerging from the hub flange on alternate sides, so I can't just run the spoke material across from one side of the wheel to the other and then add the flange to the outside. Instead I make three-layer flanges, thread spokes through and then assemble the layers with a twist. The centre layer has slots in it, to accommodate the spoke as it runs from one hole to its offset partner. Then the two flanges go together with the centre hub drum, again with a slight offset between the two sides. The result is this mess:



Then the spoke threads are run through holes in the rim, taking care not to get them tangled.




Now comes a little piece of magic. The wheel goes in the middle of a frame and the threads are carefully tensioned and run through slots in the outside. Suddenly the mess of tangled threads becomes a symmetric pattern, and the whole thing is rigid.



A ring goes on the rim to make it a true circle, and then the spokes are fixed to the rim with epoxy. Then the rings to support the tyre can go on permanently.



The spokes would undeniably look better made from untwisted silk or monofilament, but the twisted thread is what I have available, and it is much less obtrusive in the flesh than in the photographs. I also have worries about gluing monofilament reliably - does anyone have experience?

Alan

[Zathros]

Originally Posted by Stev0

Looks better than the model shown on the website. =)

I have to second that opinion. The wheels are to die for!

[peter taft]

Originally Posted by Zathros

I have to second that opinion. The wheels are to die for!

I sooooo second that - terrific work Alan

[opalmox]

I have to admit that this twist on spoked wheels is awesome.

Unfortunately I don't have any experience in using monofiliment yet, but I have future projects that I probably will... Speaking on, I seem to recall something about using it for rigging bi-planes... You may want to take a peak over there.