Quote:
Originally Posted by photographicsafaris
I'm in the process of making my own and I am not handy with a welding torch, in fact the last one I used was underwater 10 years ago.
Metal tube, 8m = £32, Welding rods, 5kg, £10, friend has welder...
How hard can it be?
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I went through the same process about 18 months ago making up pannier frames and a rack for a CCM. I've got a load of workshop equipment - mig welder, spray equipment etc and can weld fairly well. I'd made up a couple of sets for my XR600 before so I had a reasonable idea of what I was doing and what was likely to work.
Material costs were much the same - about £40 for various bits of tubing, strip steel for brackets, nuts / bolts etc - not too bad. However, the steel supplier was a fair distance away so I spent about £20 in fuel driving there.
Making the framework involved a few false starts (no commercial products to copy with CCM) and took around 20 hours work. That got me a bare steel construction which needed painting. Buying the 2K paint and other necessary items - £30. Sundries added about another £10 and actually painting it took another 5 hrs. Total - around £100 and about 25hrs work.
How hard can it be? Well, hard enough to think that if I could have bought something for under about £250 and if I put any value on my time that would have been a better bet. I didn't have any option - nobody makes anything for CCMs but it's not something that you can knock up in an afternoon and expect to set off across Africa with.
Picture of (almost) finished system : http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r.../_DSC7844a.jpg
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