Well, I was moving along with my project to restore this K75S. Finished painting the scratched pieces and was remounting all the freshly painted parts when i went to look at the seat. Now the seat that came with the bike is a Corbin, after market for those of you who might not know the name. The vinyl of course is ripped. And then I have two BMW seats also with ripped vinyl. And I was looking to see what I could put together until I had time to either refurbish or obtain another. And so I put the original Corbin on and Damn, where is the front pin that the seat mounts to. Uh Oh, its been broken off. Hey, in the several pieces of junk that came with the bike didn't I see something that looks like... Oh, found it. The broken pin.
Here is what a pin should look like:

And I seem to have messed up showing the broken pin. It broke right at the weld. Now I am NOT a welder but damn I do try when forced to.  And I tried to  weld the broken piece back. Yech, yes it welded but I couldn't get the correct orientation, distance from the frame, front back. And when I tried brute force to move it  around the new weld, of course, broke. Did I mention I'm not a welder? And I don't have the means to take the whole project to a welder to get it done properly and they would have the same problem I'm facing which is not having a jig to set the proper orientation.

So here is my question, anyone else ever faced this problem. How did you solve it? Suggestions? Any rethinking?

Here are the options I'm weighing: 1.) get a 6mm steel rod and replicate the piece, grind off the existing welded piece and try to weld on the new piece. But that still leaves the orientation issue.
2.) replace the frame with my spare. The spare has been sitting for several years and came to me as part of a junker and may have issues I've not observed or stumbled upon.
3.) I don't know. Put it on the back burner until something happens.

In the meantime I need to replace the alternator in Silver as Alt light was blinking off and on the last time I took Silver out.

Make a jig to fit on the pin using your spare frame. Then transfer the jig to your frame to hold the pin in place so you can weld it.
Regards Martin.

May I suggest that instead of starting a new thread for each step in your 'resto', that you simply start a resto thread  (look under Forum for Your Own Renovation / Customisation) and it'll all be tidy and in one place?

Two Wheels Better wrote:May I suggest that instead of starting a new thread for each step in your 'resto', that you simply start a resto thread  (look under Forum for Your Own Renovation / Customisation) and it'll all be tidy and in one place?

But each problem/issue is separate. If they were all in one thread then the thread would have to be indexed which would be a problem unto itself. And how many of us are setup to search through an indexed thread? Not to mention who would be wanting to handle the indexing and assigning to the appropriate heading/groupings? Nah, the current way is admittedly crude but has the advantage that we can do relatively easy searches on key words without any fancy indexing.

Thanks for the suggestion though.

MartinW wrote:Make a jig to fit on the pin using your spare frame. Then transfer the jig to your frame to hold the pin in place so you can weld it.
Regards Martin.

Been giving some thought on how to do that. Initial consideration was that I couldn't be the first person to have encountered this problem. So why be stupid and try to re-invent the wheel when others have already done all the heavy lifting. First checked the size of the pin, 6mm, but I don't have a bolt quite long enough to make the piece from. So went over to my favorite hardware store and found they didn't have any metric bolts even as long as what I already have. But they did have a 3 foot length of 6.3 mm piano steel rod. It was the .3mm that was the problem. So I chucked it into an electric drill, and on one end for 10cm spun it against a bench grinder and wore away that pesky .3mm of the diameter. Then came the need to shape the piece into a shallow S like on all your bikes. Allow me to say that took both my bench vises, torch and some made up tools.  But it's done. Now what is needed is the "jig" and was thinking about converting the Corbin saddle using some of its parts.  So I'm still thinking about it.

In the meantime I swapped out the Alternator from Silver to one I had on the shelf since 2011 or there about. Silver fires up and is now ready for a multi-hour ride to double check that the problem is gone. (Silver's Alternator light was blinking on/off.)

I'm not an expert on CA titles but is the old frame title non-op'd?

Another option to consider:

Fix that last. Get the bike rideable and then you can ride it to a welder or machine shop to get that rod welded on correctly.

I've also found magnets come in handy to hold things in place when I'm welding. I have quite a collection.
Regards Martin.

duck wrote:I'm not an expert on CA titles but is the old frame title non-op'd?
Another option to consider:
Fix that last. Get the bike rideable and then you can ride it to a welder or machine shop to get that rod welded on correctly.

I have titles to the bikes with the exception of the spare frame. The Orange K75S is non-operational title which needs to be reviewed as it comes up for renewal in October.  I think I paid Greg $100 for the spare frame and a motor. It had already been largely parted out as it came without a transmission or rear end or instruments. But if I take the project bike to a welder I think they will have the same problem of how to orient the "S Pin".


P.S. Think I can get the title info on the spare pieces. Apparently the remains of a '95 K75RT. So that would make it a more realistic backup if I can't get the S pin welded. At the moment I'm looking a a jig of sorts.

Let's say I've got a partial completion on this one. After all the good advice I chose to go it alone. Frankly getting the bike to someone else was a serious pain. Use of the spare frame would require some serious friend abuse to get my bud Greg to sort through his papers to find the ownership papers. So I chose to get a piece of 6.3mm piano wire (honestly that's what the wrapper said). And measure off enough and bend it into a semi-S shape and then weld the sucker on. Ok, so I screwed it up a bit. Gave up using that piece of electric welder from Harbor Freight (US sellor of cheap Chinese equipment) and fell back to my ox-acetylene rig and just melted it all together. Seriously I could weld, back in my youth I was a welder's helper, but with years between attempts and having to relearn the basic each time. No wonder that last time I refilled my tanks was over 10 years ago. Anyway I did get it mounted. Just one minor screw up. I forgot the tail light cable was behind where that pintel mounts. Meaning I melted the cable of 5 wires. Yeah so I had to splice 5 wires for a jump of about 1 foot. Still a bunch of minor adjustments needed. The seat doesn't quite clear the side panel when I lift it up. Might be placement of the pintel/welded on piece, or the seat (I had to find a new one to replace the scrapped out Corbin) or a bunch of other things. So that's got to be worked. But there is so much more that needs to be dealt with. I'm just moving on.

Thanks for the advice and suggestions.
J.