Now that the bike was in itty bitty pieces I decided to start small with the rebuild. First the Tourtech GPS holder had been seriously crushed as the bike at sometime landed directly on it. This little bugger had to be completely dismantled and each piece straightened out separately. Hey it was at least one piece I felt I could save and after loosing a set of Staintune pipes and Happy trails bags with racks (for starters) I just wanted a success. I managed to save this item and was very pleased.
By this time I the bike pretty much looked like this:






I went on to planning the rear end of the motorcycle which would receive a significant overhaul. I started by using the spare frame I had obtained and the new rear subframe I had purchased to mock up my ideas. I went through several iterations befor finally settling on a workable Idea and having some metal stamped out: You can see in this picture that I had already chopped the seat in 1/2 and trimmed the rear frame cover to allow for the insertion of the flat platform to which I would attach the auxilliary fuel. This was probably the most difficult part of the rebuild as it required cutting on the parts and metal work which I was not accustomed too. This had to be done precisely since I was going to mount 30 lbs of volatile liquid behind me and did not want it to follow me off the bike in an unscheduled departure. As you can see in the mockup I was also working on the side racks for mounting drybag soft luggage. This of course was part of the objective to keep the motorcycle lighter than before and easier to manage when on day 8 of a long rally (when you are tired and putting a #600 on a centerstand becomes very difficult).