Hi all
Purchased a Yamaha Tenere 700 last October, and being a new model there were very few choices regards accessories, and what was available weighted a ton ! I do a fair bit of off road and being an ageing weakling makes it important to keep weight to a minimum ! I needed a basic rear rack and pannier rails to take my luggage, and the Yamaha rear rack on it's own weighed 7.5kg, without any pannier rails !
I've only ever played around with a old Clarke arc welder but can stick two bits of metal together strongly, if not attractively ... so I thought what the heck "I'll build my own". I bought a cheap manual pipe bender, some 19mm x 2mm, and some 16mm x 1.5mm steel tube, and I'm pretty pleased with the outcome, it's very strong, and all in weighs only 2.75kg !!
The pipe bender took some figuring out to get the bends where i wanted them, and it takes some pinning down when bending the 19mm stuff, but forms really nice clean radius bends. I've only tough black painted it at the moment, but will powder coat it once after a couple of trips away. The pannier rails give a good handhold for moving the bike around, and extracting it from the mud as well, which is a bonus !
I've just set myself up with a Clarke 151 MIG, so hopefully this sort of project will be easier next time once I get the hang of it.
Purchased a Yamaha Tenere 700 last October, and being a new model there were very few choices regards accessories, and what was available weighted a ton ! I do a fair bit of off road and being an ageing weakling makes it important to keep weight to a minimum ! I needed a basic rear rack and pannier rails to take my luggage, and the Yamaha rear rack on it's own weighed 7.5kg, without any pannier rails !
I've only ever played around with a old Clarke arc welder but can stick two bits of metal together strongly, if not attractively ... so I thought what the heck "I'll build my own". I bought a cheap manual pipe bender, some 19mm x 2mm, and some 16mm x 1.5mm steel tube, and I'm pretty pleased with the outcome, it's very strong, and all in weighs only 2.75kg !!
The pipe bender took some figuring out to get the bends where i wanted them, and it takes some pinning down when bending the 19mm stuff, but forms really nice clean radius bends. I've only tough black painted it at the moment, but will powder coat it once after a couple of trips away. The pannier rails give a good handhold for moving the bike around, and extracting it from the mud as well, which is a bonus !
I've just set myself up with a Clarke 151 MIG, so hopefully this sort of project will be easier next time once I get the hang of it.