I'm worn out.

Completely knackered, finely lacquered, and entirely cream crackered.

The usual period of rushing around to get everything that needs writing, writ has been upon me. With that out of the way and assorted other things moved along to various degrees, I did manage to find the time to drill some holes in the BMW, ten of them to be precise.

Of those ten, eight were for mounting the seat hump to the subframe. I've agonised over this for some time, fretting over access to the battery and so on. But, at the end of the day, if it's going to be a problem, then I can always wire an Optimate plug in to the motorcycle. Which still left me needing to think about how the seat was going to attach to the seat hump, but I think I've figured that out too.

The two remaining holes were for switches. I wanted to keep the factory ignition lock with its folding key with the (albeit nearly worn away) BMW logo, and I'd planned on fitting it in the front left hand corner of the battery tray I made. I also wanted to put the lights ON/OFF switch in the same area, which meant I needed two holes in the battery tray.

Where you're using a key switch, the hole it goes in is usually quite important. These are almost inevitably circular holes with a couple of flats on either side. The temptation is to drill a round hole that the switch will fit in, and rely on the locking collar being tightened enough to prevent the switch from turning.

Ha. Ha. Bloody Ha-Ha.

This NEVER works. Inevitably the switch comes loose and rotates freely in the hole, at the least making it unpleasant to use, and at the worst shorting out the wiring and setting the entire plot aflame.Aside from the avoidance of conflagration, taking the time to file a hole that at least resembles the correct shape means that you end up with a motorcycle that is more pleasant to use than it might have been otherwise. I could elucidate on that point, but as I may have mentioned, I'm tired, and either you see what I mean, or you're the sort of person who drills a round hole and thinks that's good enough.

With the hole filed out for the key switch, I moved on to drilling the hole for the ON/OFF switch for the lights. Because I wanted this tucked up out of sight, but still reasonably accessible, it turned out the the hole needed to be drilled very close to the top edge of the front of the box. That can cause problems with the drill wandering off in the direction of least resistance and breaking out of the material. The difficulties imposed by the shape of the tray added their own portion or amusement to the entire episode.

So, while ten holes doesn't actually sound like a huge amount of progress, it can certainly be more work than it sounds.

The picture to the left, is the Acewell 1500 digital speedometer and rev counter. I'm rather enamoured of the whizzy bar rev counter display it possesses and so I think I shall be ordering one up in the not too distant future.

The other imminent purchase is the frame splices. I've got the tube on the rack to make the braces for the frame, but I really want to get hold of the splices before I start on that, and I ought to make the seat base and get that attached before I set out to deal with the frame.