Okay, now this is where I go overboard.
I was in my art studio today, working on some drawings for class, when I saw my friend Jake who is going to be an automotive designer and he's a motorcycle fanatic. We started talking about our projects (he works on his motorcycle) and we started discussing a custom build tank for my schwinn.
We brainstormed and as of right now, this is what we came up with. The basic idea is to get a good profile of the section of the cruiser frame where a tank could be fitted. Once we have the profile, we'd cut it out of sheet aluminum twice. Those would act as the sides of the tank. The rest would be like, 5 or so inch wide strips that would have perpendicular bends on both sides, probably about a half inch or so, maybe a bit less. Once we cut these strips to fit, they would slide over the profile side pieces and be pop riveted in place using stainless steel pop rivets. Where the corner's overlap, the pop rivets would go through both pieces (see the diagram).
When looking at the tank from the top, where those corners meet we'd fasten a piece of aluminum over those to prevent any gaps. Once this is all taken care of, all of the gaps would be epoxied shut and we would coat the inside with Kreem or something similar.
I came up with a concept of a cheap and dirty cap. Once we finish the tank, a hole will be drilled in the top (the tank would be wide enough to allow a cap to be fitted on the left or right side of the crossbar. This hole will have a vulcanized rubber grommet covering the sharp edge, and glued in place. This would allow us to use a test plug, which is a plumbing device, for a cap. The way a test plug works is, it's essentially 2 washers, one with a square center hole, seperated by a rubber donut. A carriage bolt head fits into the square hole in the bottom washer, and the threads would go through the donut and washer, and would have a wing nut and cap not on the top. When you tighten the wing nut, it would compress the donut between the two washers, cashing the rubber squish and expand outward. This would create a rubber on rubber seal with the edge of the tank, hopefully making it splashproof. In order to keep the cap from falling in, I can replace the top washer with a larger one. The cap nut will be loctited on, to ensure I don't lose the wing nut. And later down the road I can get a decorative looking knob, drill it through and retap it to the same threads as the carriage bolt to make a nifty looking cap.
I've included a rough and quick illustrator rendering of my idea, including the plug. The scale and everything isn't entirely correct.
Tell me what you think.
