The Rack is a Mess XL600R Project

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:16]Hey guys, I hope you're all well.

[00:00:19]Bear with me still. I still got some weird throat thing going on. Um, slight change of plan to what I said in the last video. I think I said I was going to start sorting all this lot out, basically the electrical side of the bike. But I need to sort everything out for the rear indicators. I am hoping the indicators arrive today, but if they don't, I want to get all prepared for when they do arrive. Front ones are easy. They bolt to the handlebars. Rear ones go to this rack. by the look of it is remnants of the uh old indicators that were on the bike. So, I want to get that rack off this, get it all scrubbed up, tidied up, coat of paint, and get it all mounted to this mug guard and get this mounted to the bike. Well, whether that happens in this video, I don't know, but we're going to get this underway and get cracking. So, I'm still sorting things out on the van ready to clear off at the weekend. So, we'll see what we get done. We'll get it off that and yeah, sort the back light out. So, I got to do all the brackets and fixings for that. Got to make a little gasket for the back light as well. So, yeah, we'll just get on and see what we get done in this video. I think it's literally just one bolt holding this to this entire mud guard.

[00:01:55]Is it? Is it? I got that right.

[00:02:05]That one, snip all the back lights actually scrap as well. But as I've said previously, I I will be throwing everything in a box for the guy to have.

[00:02:25]That's the bit we want.

[00:02:32]Right, we'll get the remnants of the indicators off and then figure out how all this is going to fit and get it tidied up.

[00:02:45]Got everything off that. I just want to place it on. I think it goes there. That one with that one. That one. That one. I just want to try it all on so I know exactly what I'm doing.

[00:03:02]So, I don't quite know how it all goes.

[00:03:06]I want to make sure it's all going to work.

[00:03:10]It should do, but I'm just going to double check that it all works with the mug guard and the seat.

[00:03:22]I think that goes all that. Let me just grab the mug guard. The fender mug guard.

[00:03:33]So, that goes there like that.

[00:03:36]Yeah.

[00:03:42]That looks about right.

[00:03:52]Are the holes lining up? Yeah, I think so.

[00:04:00]That's going to work. Is it?

[00:04:03]I've got a little bit of the old paint off this rack. Uh, it looks like it's either had something removed or it may have had a repair at some point. I can't see this being original how it was the finish. If you look at this, there's a lot of terrible grinding gone on.

[00:04:30]I see this quite a lot on different things with round tube. It's a common mistake that people make.

[00:04:39]Uh it's it's very very very easy to do correctly.

[00:04:45]What people do, let me just get the grinder.

[00:04:49]The mistake people make is holding the grinder like that and going up and down the tube and then we end up with all these terrible grind marks and flats on the round piece of tube.

[00:05:02]All you need to do is simply do the grinding that way. Roll the grind around the tube and then you don't get all these terrible little grinding nicks in there sending it all out of shape. I'll just do a little bit how it should be done.

[00:05:40]That's starting to highlight all the uh damage that someone's caused by grinding it wrong.

[00:06:01]See, it's starting to come back now.

[00:06:04]Also, I prefer to use these discs and not them terrible flappy disc cuz that's very hard to control when you want a neat job round tube. Also, we can use our belt sander. And I've said many times before, this little void where the belt runs, that wraps around the tube nicely. Just enough to get it right. Let's have a go with this.

[00:06:56]There we go. We're starting to get starting to get a round tube back now.

[00:07:01]And we got this chunk here.

[00:07:04]We'll do a little bit with the grinder.

[00:07:37]You can see I'm using that part of about. So it follows the radius a little bit.

[00:07:54]And then we can skim over that with the DA.

[00:08:12]Okay, that is looking a lot better.

[00:08:17]Look at that. Now we have the radius back in the tube.

[00:08:21]Tube. Tube. Tube. Someone will be saying I can't talk properly again.

[00:08:28]Tube.

[00:08:29]Anyway, um again, this is one of them jobs where you think, "Oh, quick clean up, quick coat of paint, done."

[00:08:39]Soon as you start looking at it closely, you realize there's a lot more jobs to do on this. This is what adds the time to these sort of projects. If you want stuff, right, that is uh looking at this a bit closer, we have damage here. It looks like I can't see it, but it looks like that's snapped off there and obviously gone out of shape a little bit. You can see that.

[00:09:09]So, we'll get that repaired. And also, we have where the indicators mount.

[00:09:17]That's all out of shape. So, we got to sort that out. As you can see, that side's nice and flat and flattish.

[00:09:24]That side is a little bit beat up. So yeah, we got to sort all that out. I think this may have had a couple of repairs over the years, but it's not too bad, but it does add time to get it right. Yes, I could have probably just thrown this into Alex shop plastic powder coat it, but then it would have looked terrible. Saying that, Alex is normally very, very good at spotting things and he does call me, he does send me pictures, what you think to this before I powder coat it. He is very good like that, but then you're adding more time because then you got to go back to the powder coaters, pick it up, bring it back here, repair it, get it back to him. So, just for this, I'm doing it all here. And uh obviously doing it with a rattle can.

[00:10:13]Okay, let's try and put this right. We got to get that a bit straighter than what it is. So, with this, cuz we've got a return lip on this, we don't want to just have at it with the hammer cuz we could end up causing more damage than what we've already got.

[00:10:34]So, yeah, we don't want to just crack it with the hammer like that cuz we'll end up flattening that return lip out. I just This can get awkward with just one person because I got to try and hold it all and get it flat.

[00:10:51]So, I've got just a piece of metal that I'm going to try and drift into there and get that uh ding out of it. And that way, we're not smashing that return lip in.

[00:11:07]I always try and do stuff cold first because with the even temperature throughout everything, it will all sort of act the same as you're putting it back into shape. if that makes any sense. As you heat it up, the hot part will go more than the cold part. And again, you can end up getting into a bigger mess.

[00:11:38]It's going.

[00:11:40]It's going nicely, actually.

[00:11:53]That's flatter definitely.

[00:11:58]If that return lip spllays out a bit, we can just knock that back over a little bit.

[00:12:12]That's going That's sorted.

[00:12:21]Right, we have a few more bits on this now. We got that nick out of there. I'll just fill that in with weld and dress that up. All these things when you paint it will stick out like a sore thumb. So, we we want them sorted. We got some more terrible grinding down this back piece, which I'll sort out. It's basically the same as what I've done here. And we have got where were they? We've got some cracks starting to form here. So, we need to stop them cuz they'll end up just continuing and then we'll end up in a a full break of that bracket. So, we'll get that uh dressed back, get all the paint off, get that welded in. As you can see that I don't know how well you'll see that with this GoPro. That's starting on both sides.

[00:13:12]Someone's obviously repaired that one.

[00:13:15]Well, they've tried to repair both actually, but that's gone and cracked straight through the weld again.

[00:13:21]So, we'll dress them back and sort them out a bit. Uh, I think that's about it.

[00:13:27]It's obviously had repairs over the years. It's old. Someone's brazed that bit. Look.

[00:13:34]Yeah, it's not doing too bad. We'll soon have it all looking right. Oh, yeah. And we got uh that to tidy up a bit. That's obviously a repair that's been done.

[00:13:46]It's obviously worked. It's just Yeah, it's just a bit rough. And then that side that has definitely snapped off. So, we'll get all that sorted as well.

[00:14:00]We got some of the other damaged parts dressed back.

[00:14:04]That's where that dodgy weld was. So that is now, as you can see, broken. I got to sort that out.

[00:14:15]This side where we got that total misalignment is actually been brazed like that. And honestly, you'll just see the little bit of brazing in there, the different color.

[00:14:29]So, we got to basically cut that back off and get rid of all the brazing because the welding will not like that. It'll all fizz up and it Yeah, it all go wrong and messy. So, we got to get all that out. Uh, I've just cleared all the paint out of this bit of damage on that crossbar. We'll fill that in with weld and dress it all back. I've got this back piece a little bit better.

[00:14:56]So, oh, these cuts cuts these cracks here. I've got them dressed back. I need to dig them out a little bit to lay some weld in there.

[00:15:08]Yeah, that side is starting to crack again after clearing that weld off. So, all I'll do with that is actually just cut it with this. Then that'll give me something to layer the weld in and bond it all up properly.

[00:15:41]Okay, that'll weld up better doing that.

[00:15:46]Right, I got to get rid of that brass.

[00:15:54]Are you grinder keeps doing that when you turn it off sometimes undoes itself.

[00:16:30]Get back on there. That's it.

[00:16:34]Right, let's have a go at realigning that. There's a big lump on the back. I ain't sure if that's brass either. Let's just dab that. Dab that with this. See if it is. If it is, it's got to come off.

[00:16:52]Ah, it is.

[00:16:54]See the different color? So, we got to get that off.

[00:17:15]Right, I've more or less got rid of all the brazing off this side. It's in a bit of a mess.

[00:17:25]I'm going to try and uh get it back into some sort of shape and then pull it all together.

[00:17:48]And the only thing is I'm pretty sure that hole should be round.

[00:17:56]It's far from round.

[00:18:00]I think I may be able to build that back up and get that round again this side.

[00:18:08]is a bit out of shape as well.

[00:18:11]Obviously, we'll get that brake done as well.

[00:18:17]In fact, let's put that back together a minute.

[00:18:21]We need to scoot through that with a cutter as well.

[00:18:43]That gives us uh a bit to weld. Now the welder will lay in that and then we'll grind it back. You should be invisible then. This side's going to take a little bit more saving.

[00:19:00]Right, I'm going to get the welder set up and see if we can start reattaching some of this.

[00:19:07]Okay, I'm just trying to very carefully sort of reattach it first.

[00:19:16]That is out of line a little bit. that one.

[00:19:34]That's better.

[00:19:36]It's It's very delicate.

[00:19:50]It will probably look a bit of a mess to start with till we start filling it in and give us an give us a bit of material to dress back.

[00:20:10]All right, that's going to give me something to work with.

[00:20:25]I say it won't look the best to start with, but we should get there.

[00:20:31]There a minute.

[00:20:37]I think what I'm going to do is carefully build that up with weld.

[00:20:46]I say it will look a mess, but then I'm just adding material to work with to get that hole back there. Right. It uh it all looks like the pigeons have been roosting on there at the minute, but all I wanted to do is add some material.

[00:21:05]That'll give me something to mess about with now. I'm just going to knock it back with a grinder first.

[00:21:22]It's getting there. Still looks bad, but it's getting there.

[00:21:27]Oh, let's uh concentrate on that radius at the back there a little bit.

[00:21:34]Let's get in there bit by bit.

[00:21:48]See if I can get into there.

[00:21:57]I'm just uh getting that return a bit straighter now.

[00:22:11]That's looking better.

[00:22:20]Right, it's starting to take shape.

[00:22:26]Right, moving forward a little bit. I'll carry on with the rack in a minute. I've just had a visitor and Ted's done my dinner.

[00:22:35]Nice meat and vegetables. My favorite dinner.

[00:22:39]So, I'm going to talk into that, have a cup of tea, and then we'll carry on. The way today's going, I think it's only the rack that I'm going to get done. This is the way it goes sometimes.

[00:22:52]Obviously, I didn't see all that damage on the rack, so this is taking a little bit longer than what I thought it would.

[00:22:58]So, we'll get that done anyway. Then I've got to go and drop onto the van and sort continue to sort that out ready for the weekend.

[00:23:05]Can't you tell food's in here? Yeah, I thought let's get blue a little bit of meat. What's that? There we go. Mate any good.

[00:23:17]Ted does some marvelous dinners.

[00:23:21]Right, I'll talk to this while it's still warm. Okay, I've had meat and vegetables.

[00:23:29]So, back to this. Then all we want to do now is sort the hole out and then we'll do a bit of final dressing up on the surface there.

[00:23:48]So, all we're going to do with that is carefully go in with this.

[00:23:56]It's going to try and rattle like it just did.

[00:24:38]Okay, I think we've rescued the appearance of that side.

[00:24:43]I think that's looking about how it should look compared to what we had.

[00:24:50]That's an improvement, I think. Anyway, right then, um, what we got? We got these splits here, that chunk missing there, and dressing up uh, the pigeon mess.

[00:25:07]This side. I say I've had to just do the TS cuz it would just blow this away. My I think I've mentioned before, you turn my welder down too much, it just stops working.

[00:25:20]And I still haven't had a look at it to try and fix it. Anyhow, that, that, that, and that. And then we can uh clean this up a bit more and get it painted.

[00:25:38]I'll do the same as I've done this side.

[00:25:40]Put a bit more of a bigger notch in there. And that will get the weld right in then. Give us a better chance of it surviving and the cracking not continuing.

[00:25:58]We go.

[00:26:23]That's it.

[00:26:27]That should do us. What else was it?

[00:26:29]That was it, wasn't it? That, that, that that, that. Yeah, I think that's it.

[00:26:34]Then we can get everything else tidied up on there, ready for paint.

[00:26:43]Heat Right, we are nearly there. So, like we're done with that side with the hole. We've also got to do that this side. It's all very much out of shape as you can see. We can't leave it like that. So again, we just got to basically build up a bit of material in there and then dress it all back.

[00:27:45]Come on.

[00:28:10]Heat.

[00:28:15]Heat.

[00:28:36]Okay, then that uh that's the metal work side of that about done. Well, it is done.

[00:28:43]It's not perfect, but it's certainly a little bit better than what it was. We got the uh holes sort of in shape now.

[00:28:53]Everything's attached.

[00:28:55]I think that's good to go. I'm going to give that a coat of primer and then several coats of black and it should look all right. And then I'll have to call it a video of that cuz I got to go and car carry on sorting me van out and getting it ready for the weekend.

[00:29:12]Getting loads of junk out of there and wondering where I'm going to put it all.

[00:29:16]And then I've got to get the bike in the back. Anyway, let's get some paint on that.

[00:29:22]Okay, pressed forward with that. I've been and done loads of me other jobs with the van and preparing for the weekend coming, going away and all that.

[00:29:31]Up to Matthew. Um, that's all sorted.

[00:29:35]I think that's a lot better than what it was. Like I say, it's not absolutely perfect, but I think we've uh going to get a bit more life out of that now.

[00:29:45]Definitely more presentable. Obviously that uh m guard will sit up like so somewhere around there. So I got to pop a hole in it in the back there.

[00:29:59]I think that's all the holes that I needed. Just that one there.

[00:30:05]Yeah, that'll be a lot better.

[00:30:08]Doesn't seem like a great deal done, but that uh that took me quite a while actually to save that. At least it's done now. indicators didn't turn up today. So maybe tomorrow they will be here and we can pop them on. Uh I think when there is no reason why I can't start building the back end up completely. We'll get the rear light thing done and then at least that's some plastic starting to go back on the bike.

[00:30:36]That'll be a nice step forward. Right, that'll do. It's quite late. Like I say, I've been doing all my other jobs. Uh, next video. In fact, next video it might be a little bit on the under or it might be a bit of filming over the weekend with Matthew because we plan to go and do something on the bikes. We'll see. See what happens. Cheers for watching, guys. Take care.