This is a frame job!

It's been over a year since I parked the Cub. When we last saw her, I'd taken her for one last ride for the season and nearly lost the swingarm bolt in the process... Then a year of nearly continuous business travel intervened, my flight time, some other totally legitimate excuses... I've replaced the nut to the swingarm bolt since then, and I've decided to take care of a little frame repair that I've been trying to ignore for a while now.

In a nutshell: The engine is designed with two bosses that function as mounts- run a long bolt through each boss and two lugs per mounting point and you've got your engine solidly connected to the frame. My engine bosses are in good shape, and the top mount lugs on my frame are still solid. The rear mount lugs are... less so. See below, for example:

Fig. 1 - Oh great

Fig. 2 - Ugh, that one too

See where the frame makes a C shape? It should make an O shape. In fact, that engine mount boss should be totally concealed. 

I've known about this for a while, and just put off doing it because 

1. The loads are low
2. The engine's not rocking around when it's installed
3. I've been impatient to ride

Low loads or not, I do eventually need to fix the frame. It can't be good to ride around on half an engine mounting setup.

My plan is to make some little steel lugs that fit into the existing formed section of the frame back there- basically tiny "D" shapes out of 1/8" flat stock. I'll line them up and shape them in-situ on the engine, clamp everything in place, then tack them on with the engine in place. Once they're tacked, I'll drop the engine off and finish the welds. These are pretty concealed areas, so just a shot of primer to protect the metal would be fine- no need to spend the money on matching the color until I want to redo the whole frame. Goal? Next weekend. Until then, it'll be lunch breaks and sneaking off on the weekend.

Since my last post (which was quite a while ago, granted) I talked to an electrical engineer friend of mine about the engine and electrical system, and he suggested that before I spend the money on a whole new powerplant, I should try replacing the battery with a capacitor... I think perhaps there might be some electrical system experiiments in my future. Not like I don't have experience with that recently...

The Proprietor