Rich i hope you are taking pictures of your current project? what kind of fairing is it? where did you find a damaged fairing at?
SDbrit68 bought a couple of old FLH batwings from a guy at a swap meet a few years ago. These are the kind that the shield mounts to the brackets, not the fairing, and had no "inners".
He got one fixed up pretty well, still needs to finish it. He gave me the other one. It's BAAAD. Whoever worked on it before should not be allowed to touch fiberglass. The left side had been repaired once, and it was done pretty well. The other side was what this guy tried to fix. He slapped a single layer of glass on the outside, soaked it with resin, and then in an attempt to "reinforce" the remaining stock glass, PAINTED resin over the whole freaking thing! Dummy... the strength is from the glass, not the resin... Anyways, the whole thing was covered with drips and runs.
To see how bad it really was, I shot it with black primer and started sanding with 80.
It took me nearly 2 weeks of evenings and about 15 sheets of 3M's new "green/white" 80 grit to get it smoothed out and reveal what the guy was trying to repair.
The right grip "pocket" had 3 spots that looked like they had been sanded with a belt sander... PERFECTLY flat, and all the way through in 2 places... plus of course the original break that the repair was an attempt to fix.
I bought a flat 9" tinted shield on eBay for $40, and welded up a mount for it... used thin sheet steel, drilled it and welded in 1/4-20 bolts, then welded on 6 hardware store corner braces... bent the braces to the right angle, and epoxied them to the inside of the top edge.
Today, I started glassing... I think I've got enough buildup now over the flattened areas to get it back to a reasonable shape, if not, I'll glass it again until it's good enough for a thin layer of Bondo. Also glassed the top edge of the inside, locking in the brackets that hold the windshield mount.
Next step is to continue to build that up on the inside to keep the shield mount from flexing and cracking the outer glass/paint, then comes the hard part... glassing what will show. I've got to build it up thick enough to cover the two exposed 1/4-20 bolt heads. Once that's done, the outer will be ready for paint.
Then comes the really fun part.... building my own inner to hold a stereo and 4 speakers. The Quadzilla and stock Harley parts won't work... combination of my apes and my tach, plus my desire to use the National Cycle Switchblade style quick release so I can pull the fairing and go naked or back to the shield.
So the brackets will be mounted to the inner, which will be clearanced over the headlight enough to tilt forward to release the brackets, then AFTER the inner is mounted to the bike, the outer will be bolted to the inner.
I'll make the inner from an aircraft ply frame, and use florists foam blocks to get the basic contours, then when ready to glass, I'll stretch thin fabric over it to smooth the surface.... couple of layers of fine-weave glass on the outside, then break the foam out of the inside and reinforce the whole thing on the inside with heavy glass matting.
Wow... what a hijack!
