First One For The New Year

Put the jig I made this past year to good use the other day. I'm working on the VW and needed a way to keep the safety harness from slipping off the top of the seats and the shoulders of the occupants. I already had a roll hoop bent up that fits right behind the seat. It has a tube running from side to side near the bottom already. I'm not planning on putting the back seat back in, so I was going to use the that bar to support a platform to make the area behind the front seats a cargo area. I decided to add another tube about 16" above that one. It will have some clips to keep the shoulder straps in place and will be easily removable if I need to put something large back there.

In the top photo are a couple of bushings I made up to go through the tube. I'll pick up a couple of quick pins to hold the tube in place rather than bolting in. The bottom photo shows the clips to hold the belts in place. I bent one end of them after the photo was taken. They'll run parallel with the tube but the bend will bring them up about 3/16" in order for the belts to slide under them. When I get a little further along, I'll post another photo of the completed assembly.

I bought a muffler for another of the bike projects I'm working on sporadically. This was on sale from Dime City Cycles - figured it was a good time to buy it. It came with adapters to fit from 1-1/4" - 1-3/4" head pipes. I actually don't have a lot left on this one to finish it up. If I'd work on just one of these projects at a time I might have gotten one of them finished by now. However, I'm still operating under the premise I need to gather most everything of the parts and tools I'm going to need after I retire, the school money stops flowing and I have to live off my Social Security check. With that in mind, I've been looking at getting a few things from Strong Hand Tools. They sell a line of clamps and magnetic alignment tools that would make life much easier for a guy who works solo all the time, especially when TIG welding.

I managed to finish off 2016 strong and I've got a good start on 2017. Here's hoping 2017 will be a good one for all of us.