Step 2: Building the Custom Mount

Designing and building the mount was, without question, the most difficult and time consuming part of the project. There were five goals:

• Create a mount that would hold the carrier very securely, with no possibility of accidental shift or anything.
• Create a mount that would be quick to mount/dismount.
• Create a mount that would hold the carrier roughly level, but as LOW as possible.
• Create a mount that would not endanger ANY part of the tank to scratches, dents, or abrasions.
• Create a mount that would distribute the weight evenly over the entire area so as to minimize pressure points that might result in long-term chrome or paint damage.

The result, shown below, is fabricated from 1/4" plywood, fiberglass, wood strips, glue, and padded vinyl shelf-liner.

To begin building my mount, I first used a carpenter's contour gauge to approximate the tank/dash width-contour every two inches or so. I began just forward of the widest point of the speedo, and continued down to the rear of the tank. Since my gauge was only 6" long, contours were only taken on the left side of the tank, and then reflected for the right side.

Each contour was scanned to my computer, and the results are shown below.

Note: The contours shown above will only fit a Yamaha Road Star with a stock tank. Feel free to copy them to your computer and use them, but please don't distribute them to others. Instead, just refer others to this article. Thanks.

Note: Depending on your computer and printer, you will need to resize the contours up or down to get them to precisely fit your tank.

I then printed to paper, cut the paper along the contours, and transferred the paper lines to 1/4" plywood. See photos below.

Tip: If you've got a 12" (or longer) contour gauge, you could create contour patterns that incorporate both left and right sides together, into a single, unbroken line. Otherwise, I'd suggest not even attempting to match the register of the two halves together into a line. It would be something of a miracle to get them easily matched so your patterns laid onto the tank properly. Instead, I cut the two sides separately, and trial fit each half to the tank. When I transferred my patterns to plywood, I also cut little sheet-metal tabs, and glued the tabs to both plywood halves to achieve a best fit. The plywood contour pieces weren't very pretty, but when the mount is completed they don't show anyway. They're just to strengthen and support the fiberglass pan and the mount's top. See photo below.

If you want your mount to be the same length and height as mine, the front contour piece must be 1.5" tall and the rear piece must be 5.5" tall (and the intermediate pieces are, of course, heights in between), so initially cut all the pieces a bit taller. That way, you can trim to fit after they are glassed into the pan.

Note: Our dog is 20" long, and my waist is 32"-34". I ride with a Corbin, Dual-Touring seat (and sometimes a Looney solo-seat), and the carrier fits very tightly to my belly. In fact, my gut pushes into the top half of the rear of the carrier an inch or two when I turn the handlbars far.

Adjust your dimensions to fit your pet and your belly. Just be sure to keep the carrier back and above your lap enough so that the front of the carrier does not obstruct or hinder your view of the road. The shorter you are, the more critical this factor becomes.

I experimented with a number of materials for the mount's bottom: rigid-expanding-modelling foam, non-expanding foam, and cut styro-foam. In the end, I made the base pan (bottom) of the mount from hand laid-up fiberglass using a kit I got from a nearby auto parts store. I had never worked with fiberglass before, and I quickly learned two things: (1.) The polyester resin has a working time of less than five minutes. (2.) It will eat through many types of plastic -- like styrofoam and plastic cups I used for mixing.

If I were to do this part over again, I would try to find epoxy resin, as it reportedly has a longer working time, and it is friendly with most types of plastic. Plus -- even though the fumes are definitely not good for you -- epoxy resin is low odor.

After doing a trial lay-up on a piece of scrap plywood, I draped a piece of medium weight plastic sheeting ('clear tarp', sometimes called visqueen) over my tank, engine and everywhere the fiberglass might ooze or drip. Then I set up a workstation nearby, consisting of a portable table with a piece of scrap plywood on top, covered with a piece of visqueen. See photos below.

I pre-cut two glass mat pieces an inch longer and and inch wider than my desired base pan size -- plus I cut two, one-inch wide strips for each contour. The length of each strip was equal to the width of the contour piece -- which should be around 10" or 11", if you use the same carrier as me.

I set the pre-cut mat pieces aside on my workstation. Then I mixed enough resin to create the pan and glass-in the contour pieces. I used multiple, plastic, Dixie picnic cups to organize the resin into 6-ounce portions -- the amount I needed for each layer of glass.

Next, I poured one cup of the mixed resin over my first mat piece, worked the resin quickly in to saturate the mat, peeled the wetted mat from the workstation visqueen, and draped the mat over the covered tank -- pushing air bubbles out with the squeegie supplied with the fiberglass kit. Then I quickly repeated this process with another, pre-cut mat and pre-mixed resin-cup.

The result was both encouraging and disappointing. The glass formed a strong, reasonably smooth piece. However, it lacked much definition of the dash area. The problem was the visqueen; It wasn't hugging the contours of the tank well at all.

I needed something that would 'cling' to the tank's every contour, so I decided to try kitchen, food, plastic wrap. I laid down two thicknesses as smoothly as I could, working the wrap to tightly hug every contour, yet not wrinkle up too badly.

When I repeated my fiberglass lay-up with two layers, the fit looked good enough that I continued this lay-up to include my plywood contour pieces. To do this, I used my little pre-cut, 1-inch wide strips of mat to overlap and glass-in the base of each of the little plywood contour pieces. I deemed it unimportant to position each piece precisely where I had measured it. Rather, I just found a best-fit resting place and quickly glassed them in place.

I did, however, attempt to keep each piece roughly vertical, and also to maintain a very straight edge line -- left-sides and right-sides. Then I used masking tape to hold them in place while the fiberglass set up. The first photo below shows a moch-up of how I did this. When I actually laid up the glass, I did not use the scrap, brown shelf liner shown. The other photos show the results.

Important Note: I wish I would have used three, or even four thickness of cling-wrap. I ended up with two little spots where I had stretched the wrap a little too much. The resin leaked or ate through and attacked my custom paint-job :-( .

When cured, the plywood pieces were secure at their base, but still rather delicate. I used caution separating the newly made base-pan from the tank -- peeling it up, little by little.

To begin creating the wedge shaped box portion of the carrier-mount, I trimmed the fiberglass pan to slightly larger than final dimensions. Then I trimmed or 'stretched' the plywood contour pieces to be more precisely aligned -- left-sides and right-sides.

Note/Tip: 'Stretched' means, I cut little extra pieces of plywood, clamped them to the appropriate glassed-in contour piece with tiny clamps, aligned them to my left or right side alignment, marked an alignment-register line on the plywood, and then glued the 'stretch' pieces in place... Not pretty, but plenty strong.

Next, I made side pieces. To do this, you could hold a piece of 1/2"W x 15"L x 12"H wood, length-wise, on the tank's left-side, and mark and cut the pan's contour, then transfer the dimensions to another, identical piece (for the right side). However, instead of using a single piece of wood, I decided to use wood strips, glued and edge nailed together -- built up in place. This allowed me to compensate for imperfections in my contour-piece alignments and such. Also, since the wood strips were about 3/8" thick, the sides were thick enough to allow plenty of belt-sanding to square-up the outside dimensions.

After fitting and trimming each side piece, I glued on the side pieces using polyurethane (Gorilla or equivalent) glue. See photos below.

Then I reinforced the base pan by saturating small strips of fiberglass mat with polyurethane glue, and pressing them into weak or thin looking areas and gaps. Note: I didn't want the base pan to crack or puncture if I accidentally dropped the box one day. Once dry, everything was sturdy enough to trim the top edges of the plywood contour pieces and sides. Then I trimmed the fiberglass base pan flush to the sides of the mount. See photos below.

Next, I fit my 1/4" plywood top piece, which I had pre-cut to about 13" X 19". The fit I wanted was to be flush with the sides, but at least 1.5" longer than the wedge at the front, and at least the total length of the store-bought carrier. Furthermore, I wanted the top to be barely above the speedo at the front, and above my lap at the rear. The top was cut about 1/2" larger than this, on all sides. Once I was satisfied with my fit, I glued my top to the top edges of all the contour pieces and the sides using polyurethane glue. See photo below.

After the glue dried, the mount was very sturdy, and began to look like a real product. See photo below.

I trimmed the top to final dimensions. Then I sanded the top, sides, front, and back using a palm sander, but you could use a hand-sanding block instead. Then I thoroughly blew all the dust off. See photo below.

Tip: Be careful of hand sanding plywood surfaces. A little is OK, but plywood tends to show high/low spots in response to hard/soft wood-grain patterns. It doesn't hurt anything, but it might be enough to show through, and look more homemade.

Next, I brushed on two coats of fiberglass resin (with catalyst) on every surface except the bottom. This was used as wood sealer and waterproofer.

The only steps remaining involved applying the padded, vinyl, shelf liner material.

To do this, I first cut an oversize piece for the bottom. Then I used all-purpose spray-glue on the base pan and the material. Then I worked the material into the contours of the base pan. The two, unavoidable wrinkles were sliced and trimmed. See photo below.

Tip: Do not use any kind of tape (for masking) directly on the vinyl. I found out the hard way that even blue painters tape will stick harder to the vinyl than its strength. In other words, you will tear the shelf liner apart (ruining all your hard work), trying to remove the tape.

After the glue dried over night, I trimmed the vinyl material to fit.

Then I used the same gluing process to wrap a single material piece over the top, down the sides, and around the front and back. It takes a little planning, but it can be done. Tip: The spray glue allows you to reposition your work, as needed. This is a great feature in helping you get the smoothest fit. See photos below.

I used clear, silicone caulking to pin down any stubborn vinyl 'flaps' that refused to stay glued down.