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Minor bit of progress, but an important step made this weekend: got rear brake bracket welded for 848 wheel/caliper conversion. The 848 brake torque arm is a cast & forged aluminium piece fixed with a 12mm lug in the swingarm. The 5th gen equivalent uses a bracket and a dogbone fixed with a 10mm bolt that’s about 47mm too far for the 848 bracket to reach (depending on how the eccentric is situated). I tried making various brackets and bolts but there isn’t enough clearance. So I extended the 848 bracket with a piece from another 848 bracket. Traced it on paper and drew out the design crudely in pencil. Then cut out the piece to add as a stencil and traced it on the donor part. After that, a tiresome couple hours of cutting, grinding, filing and shaping to make it match the profile of the other part for welding. It’s a thin piece of aluminium with lots of complex angles so had to make sure the welding gap was minimal. Then bevel the edges and get welding. Came out quite nice in the end with minimal distortion. Hope you like my plait welds! Not the prettiest job but it’ll hold. Maybe some paint to smarten it up... Few notes: the internet is so full of sh1t and misinformation it gets me every time. Every source I’ve read (including dedicated welding sites) say cast aluminium wants 4043 filler rod because of its ductility to avoid stress cracking as it cools. They also say 5356 is unsuitable for cast because it’s prone to cracking and difficult to work with. They also say to never mix the two rod types: if you apply one and then decide to apply another the first should be completely ground off first. Well, that’s all horse sh1t. I started with 4043 and it cracked before my eyes. So I tried the 5356 over the cracks and that went on a dream. So I went over the whole thing again with 5356 (no grinding) and used the side-to-side method to cover more area and deposit more rod volume. That’s why it looks like a plait. In short, it was EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what the welding forums were saying. So don’t believe what you read on the internet. Don’t even believe me! Get proper professional opinions and make up your own mind.