The Bride’s bodywork is coming along nicely. I now have the fuel tank, muffler, and seat solidly mounted to the bike.
The seat is one of the many generic, Asian cafe seats on Ebay. I bought it brand-new for less than $30 a few years ago, but ended up not using it for my CL125S restomod project. Fortunately, it works very well here.
I added a post and rubber donut just behind the tank that engages the forked bracket under the nose of the seat. The rubber pad under the center of the seat was just slightly too far back to sit on the frame crossmember, so I had to add an extension. Two outboard rubber pads at the front of the seat have somehow disappeared over the years, and wouldn’t contact the frame anyway. As a result, the only contact points toward the front of the seat are along the center-line, so the plastic seat pan can twist torsionally a bit. It’s not horrible, but I still might feel compelled to do something about it. ...later on.
At the rear, the sheet metal brackets that came with the seat worked nicely, once I put them in the brake and bent them outwards. Further forward, you can see the rubber block sitting on my makeshift frame extension. Yes, I have proper, matching, 6mm fender washers on order.
As a side note, note how the bolt on the left does double duty as the muffler bracket mount. You can also see the hose clamps behind the heat shield on the exhaust pipe. I tack-welded a 1/4″ square tube to the shield’s mounting brackets. That spaces it out from the pipe a bit more, which improves the looks of the exhaust dramatically.
With the seat and exhaust in place, I can move on to fitting the rear fender. At the front, there’s an existing fender bracket (visible in the under-seat photo above). Unfortunately, it’s too far forward and some sort of intermediate bracket or extension will be required. I ordered some rubberized P-clips that I may use to attach the fender to the frame loop, or I can also simply use longer bolts for the seat/muffler mounts, so that they will pass through the sides of the fender. I have not worked out taillight selection or placement yet.
I want to match the appearance of the steel front fender and plastic rear fender as closely as I (affordably) can, so I plan to spray-paint the front fender with a semi-gloss white enamel. I also plan on painting the white front wheel and brake housing Kawasaki Gentry Gray, to match the rear wheel. To see how that all might look, I gave the bike a quick virtual makeover in Photoshop:
