Had some time to work on the rear suspension this morning. Made a jig for 30" links and made two links: 1" x .120" wall DOM steel. Rod ends have 1/2" ID
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Next will be the brackets for the rear end. Elbow clearance to the links doesn't look too bad. I'll make some kind of cover later on if it's too close. I don't think the lower link will interfere with the exhaust if the muffler is a few inches away from the frame.
Cheapracer: Definitely no need for any apology. I'm thrilled to get all this excellent [and free] advice from folks who know what's up. The short links thing was something I really should have noticed.
I'm glad to be enlightened sooner rather than later.
Also, I'd say that the main reason people (like me) blindly copy what someone else did is to keep the design aspect from becoming too overwhelming and ruining the fun of the build. Building just the 442E frame from plans was easy and quite fun. But figuring out how to fit a 3-link in the frame was boring and tedious. I'll be very glad to move on to the front suspension after using up several months on the rear suspension.
Along those lines, I figure that a lot of my build time is spent just staring at the build guessing what will work well, fit in the frame, and won't interfere with other things later down the line. It's definitely challenging, but it's getting easier. Before starting the build, I figured things would just fall into place (spend 250£, build it, race it... profit). Now I understand that there's a pretty good learning curve for how to think and build in this way. After finishing the build, I wonder if kit builds would seem very easy
Anyway, It took me maybe 6 hours total to grind and cut the old brackets off the rear end. But cutting off the frameside brackets and a couple tubes didn't take very long at all, maybe an hour.
horchoha: I haven't thought much yet about the fenders, but yes I was thinking of cutting large-ish slots in the fenders. Then, perhaps stick-on or bolt-on rock guards with smaller slots could sit on top of the fenders and make the slots look better