Things always seem to go in fits and starts. In the span of 3 days, I've gone from "tacking it and getting someone else to tig weld it", to what the heck -- I'll see if I can do it myself.
By jove, I think I got it. #2 tip and lots of pre-heating and deft flame work (if I do say myself), has got me a SS swing arm for my SS.
Right hand side view -- welding forged steel is a bit tough -- the welds (with oxy, anyway) end up looking mig-ish. A good tig welder would've come up with some nice fillets.
The entire assembly is boxed, with 100 wall sheet trimmed to fit.
This view looks a bit cockeyed -- I'm standing to the right of the bike when I took it; trust me, its straight. I also built in some left/right adjust ability into the frame mount for fine tuning. I then hauled the entire swingarm to Cycleboyz and to the Welding teacher at the local college. Both said the welds looked excellent, and were as good as being professionally tig'd. Three cheers for me!
The next step is sorting an exhaust system -- the Hindle unfortunately will not work. I need something that will leave the single-sided swing arm exposed, so either another high mount system, or an under engine (eg Quat D) exhaust would be the best. I think any system is going to require some tweaking, as the idiosyncrasies of the MH swing arm might foul on most rear exhaust downpipes.
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