Armed with a full bottle of Argon I set about making the pannier frame brackets to hang off the carrier. These are cut from a bit of 25 x 3 mm flat bar, actually an Ikea towel rail that I took off a scrap door.
The rear bracket is a bit tricky to bend. I used heat and a bit of scaffold pole to put the curve in, then made the 90° bend before drilling the hole last. It took a bit of adjusting to make the curved part land on the carrier properly:
As you see here, it's not quite there yet. The front bracket is much easier.
Here are the two tacked in place, with the pannier frame. Of course I used the holes in the pannier frame to locate the brackets - the bit of copper wire was holding the frame with the brackets bolted to it while I tacked the brackets on the carrier.
Fully welding the bars at 90A. I'm amazed at what the little TIG machine will do, even if the battery voltage drops quite low - the inverter low voltage alarm was beeping away when I let the arc get too long, but then it was dark outside when I did this:
More brackets for the offside:
These were a lot more difficult. Eventually I realised that the holes in the second pannier frame were not in the same place as the first one and needed a bit of adjustment.
With a bit more welding it was soon finished:
No apologies here - I wanted to keep the red finish to maintain some part of the Italian influence this bike had - and is steadily losing as I bring it back to standard.
I won't be painting it khaki though!
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