Rough with the smooth
Mark Williams is making progress on his SWM Gran Milano project, thanks largely to brute force but absolutely no ignorance
Work on key aspects of customising the bike has begun, with Adam Dance (admoto.co.uk) using his metal-bashing and English Wheel skills, initially on the side panels that will hide the fuel injection and other plumbing and abet the desired design objectives. For those unfamiliar with the process, here you see the 2mm alloy sheet, measured, marked and snipped into the required shape but expertly extended to allow for shrinkage after it’s bashed and curved into a final profile that will fit precisely. Once Adam had used a hard resin mallet to create the basic curves and folds in the metal which is placed on a leather, shot-filled ‘pillow’, the English Wheel uses a large, revolving, erm, wheel to gradually shape and smoothen the metal over an interchangeable series of curved, solid steel dies. The final panel, which will eventually have louvres cut into it for ventilation purposes, took a couple of hours of judicious manipulation to get right.
Now that he’s done it once, Adam reckons the second one will take less time, but it will require welding on a couple more Q/D spigots on the frame to secure the front ends
of the panels and then we’ll move into the front nacelle-cumfairing which is the defining feature of the build.
As a first step to that end we removed the SWM oilcooler from beneath the headstock and placed it on the bench below the projector headlamps I’d bought, carefully measuring the overall outside dimensions and then figuring out how and where they might be fitted onto the bike. Bearing in mind suspension travel, the plumbing and wiring involved and the digital instrumentation I’ve planned, this required much investigation.
Less involved were the first elements of the electrics to be worked into the frame which I’m keen not to butcher around too much; cutting a channel in the chunky rear subframe allowed the insertion of a flexible digital tail/stop light strip which plugs directly into the stock loom – see right. Onwards then to the next, rather more complicated, stage.
‘Work on key aspects has begun, using metal-bashing and English Wheel skills’