The tail needs some width so I made some side panels to emulate the tank keeping the angle between the top and sides the same as the tank

It has warmed up a little in my garage so I removed the ugliness that is the seat, rear fender, tail light, licence plate and turn signals. I'm going to make a new tail section so I'm trying to determine the basic proportions. With a piece of cardboard, a silhouette can be created once the position of the butt stop is locked down and the seat height is set. This involves much trial and error with me on and off the bike multiple times figuring out my riding position. Now I know it just looks like a piece of cardboard tossed onto the frame but now I have determined that the seat will be as low as it can be over the tank and go up over the back of the faux tank, be supported on the 3 cross members that the stock seat sits on, the position of the butt stop and the length of the tail

I haven't done much bike wise over the winter but I did get the tail lights for the 1100 started

Two LED stop/tail lights are going to be used as stop/tail lights and turn signals

They will be mounted to the back of the shocks

The lights have a large plug on the back which is in the way since I want to mount the lights flat against the shocks. I ground the plug off down to the circuit board and soldered 3 wires on. This was all covered with Bondo Glass flush with the back of the light, with the wires exiting to the side

The lights will be faired into the shocks with Bondo Glass so they don't look like the ghetto Princess Auto lights that they are.

It has warmed up a little today and is dry so I pulled two bikes out to run some Seafoam through them before they hibernate for the winter. As they were running in the driveway I decided I may as well take them for a ride. This is definitely the last ride of the season. It wasn't the temperature, it was the wind chill

It has been unseasonably warm this week and this might be the last time I get to ride before I put the bikes to bed for the winter so I took the '78 out for some exercise.

When the rear brake locked on the last ride, everything got cooked. The disc warped and the caliper was toast (literally). John Bennett, the Goldwing guru, in Welland fixed me up by rebuilding the master and replacing the rotor and caliper. The last time the master was rebuilt it must not have been cleaned properly for the caliper to lock on again. Today there were no issues with the rear brake (yea)

The sun was setting and my rear brake locked on again. I just got it off the highway at an off ramp. The rear disk was red hot and I had to wait about half an hour for it to cool down so I could limp home.