Thought I had better make a start on the rear brake, I learned a lesson when I fitted brakes to my last bike, fit good ones if you want to stop, it’s fun to ride without brakes but I don’t think I’d get away with it for long, I’ve had a few near misses already….      So with my new wisdom I bought off eBay a rear Brembo off a couple of year old BMW with good pads for £50 delivered and it seems to fit quite well.

So, I thought I’d show you how I’ll make the bracket, it needs to have a dog leg to get around the disc bolts so I’ll make it from something chunky and remove excess material on my mill, here’s the mock up in cardboard, I would have started making the real one tonight but instead I’m going to watch Bear Grylls……

So, the plan was to make the bracket out of a large chunk of ali and remove material to leave a dog legged bracket, I searched through my extensive stock of s#1te and found nothing usable so I decided to join a couple of thinner bits together out of desperation….  I drew around my cardboard template to get a rought idea of size and to keep the distance from the axle to the caliper right, out came my faithful angle grinder and start roughing!

I joined the two halves together with a few stainless bolts and although it’s pretty rough you should be able to see where I’m going with this.

I’ve left a big lug to the right to accept a mount for a stay bar, I’ll nail this to the frame with something that allows movement so the wheel can be adjusted back and forth.

I’m back!! After a hectic few weeks with work (need to be able to pay for beer to fuel this build) I found a little time tonight to continue so as I planned I started the brake stay bar, it’s on show so I have tried to make it pretty, made it from a length of stainless bar I had in stock, turned down the centre to add some shape and drilled some holes in it to make it look ‘tough’, I don’t know why drilling holes in things makes them look tough but it just does.

And a quick shot of it roughly in place (some imagination needed), need to make something to mount it to the frame, it doesn’t line up quite square but should be fine to weld a bracket to one side.

OK, so it lined up better than I thought, it’s in the middle……more luck than judgement but I’m claiming it as skill. I made up a small bracket from some 10mm steel and reamed an 8mm hole, tacked it on the tube, made a couple of pins from some stainless bar I had in stock, drilled to accept R clips.

That will do for now, it all seems to work, the wheel spins freely. I’ll come back to this later in the build and tart it up as the main bracket does look somewhat ‘rough & ready’.

Not decided what to attack next, maybe the handle bars or maybe the steering stops as I’m getting sick of the yokes trying to bash my sexy new tank.