Hawk trunk project.....

[closedquestion]

So I bought my Hawk for 2 reasons, cruising the 10 minutes to work and back during the spring/summer/fall, and backwoods forest service road, high cascade lake visiting, camping/fishing trips during my off days in the summer. I also plan to buy a nice portable telescope for some in a dark forest meadow star gazing.

So, I am looking for luggage options and what not, so I can take the right gear on these trips. I have been looking at all sorts of options mostly on amazon. In order to keep gas in my Hawk and my super thirsty Tundra, I go to work everyday as a supervisor at a big orange home improvement store. Which never fails to lead me wandering about the store thinking of all sorts of projects. A bad thing for someone with an ADD wired brain. Sooooo many projects in my head. Haha! Well, while looking at tool boxes and such, because one can never have too many tool boxes, I saw a Rigid tool box that I already owned. Light bulbs and bells started going off in my head, this could be my trunk. 22"x13". and its part of a modular system that employs latches to join boxes, there is a "milk crate" type of basket, with same dimensions I could stack on if I really wanted to get crazy.

Got home tonight and set to work cutting some 7/16 OSB to the size of the box. Using parchment paper I went out and copied the bolt pattern for the 4 bolts holding the rear seat plastic to the back grab bars. I bought longer M6x1.00 bolts to replace the short stock one. I did discover that the replacements I bought were too long, must get shorter tomorrow. any way, I then bolted the plywood platform to the back of the hawk. In between the Hawk and the plywood I used rubber grommets around each bolt to cut down on vibration hopefully. I then added a few washers to make the longer bolts work temporary, and it was nice and it became a very sturdy platform. Next I placed the box on the platform. At this point I took the platform back off, so I could drill mounting points through plywood and into box, then painted plywood black to weatherize bit. Tomorrow I'll do final assembly and test ride, once paint is dry and shorter bolts implemented.

Here are some pics. One of these days I need to dissemble the back end plastics and hopefully I can straighten it. The wheel is straight and true, but the plastic with license plate bracket is all cock-eyed to one side. Anyone else have this issue? I'm thinking it may be related to my right side plastic fitting funny as well.

Ok, sorry for rambling on,now pictures.

[BlackBike]

Well done sir, it will serve its purpose well.

[Weldangrind]

I like that box!

[paulesmann]

That's a fat box!!

[zingshoen]

nice box! how much weight do you plan to carry? my zong says 5 kg max on the luggage rack. if one wanted to fill that box with, say, books or some tools, bringing it closer to the rider with some straps would be better. that part of the frame should be fine, but the tail may be a bit light to begin with.

[Sport Rider]

good idea and would work well for me too. consider putting the plywood inside the base and that will eliminate the waterproof need.

[SpudRider]

Nice job.

[Entropy]

To answer your last question, yes, both Hawks I bought have the center of the rear fender off to the right of the center of the tire. If you figure out how to fix out let us know.

[mallison]

The back of my hawk is crooked too. I was wondering if it happened in shipment. Now I'm thinking it happened at the factory.

[kohburn]

the TT250 is the same. think they are all working off the same plans.

[pcspecialist]

Here's mine.... also Oregon plates. I live near PDX. You'll notice I ditched the license plate bracket and bolted the plate directly to where the bracket used to attach after drilling new holes.

[pcspecialist]

A lot of us chinariders live in Oregon, we should meet up some day. Several chinariders on the other side of the Columbia too.

[Weldangrind]

And some of us who love Oregon from afar.