Making Homemade Foot Pegs for My KLR 650
Not to long ago I fell while riding my motorcycle and while I was not terribly hurt (mostly my pride) the motorcycle did suffer some damage. One of the things that needed attention was one of the foot pegs. The rubber from the stock peg was ripped off. Not wanting to shell out the bucks for new pegs and wanting to start building things for myself I thought this would be a nice project.
So, I went out to take a look at what was on the bike (a KLR 650) and look to see what was available online as well as what other people have built.
The first link I saw was a post on KL650.net by a guy that milled some pegs out of aluminum. They look pretty sharp and he said something about making some more to sell if there was enough interest in them.
interest thread for klr650 foot pegs
That looked good and I recently got a little CNC machine but I did not have any aluminum around and the CNC I have is small. It uses a dremel tool for the spindle and it might take all year to cut that much aluminum. So, I looked some more.
Next I saw these.
Homemade Steel Foot pegs for the KLR
This is a little more along the lines of what I was thinking. So I went out and started looking for some steel. There is plenty of stuff laying around my parents place but I could not find anything square tubing that was the right size so decided to cut the ends off the stock pegs. I cut up the other bits of steel that I had collected together and got to welding.
Except for the square pieces I found all of it just laying around. I used flat bar for the outside body of the peg and a piece for a middle bar. There is a little piece of angle iron for a cross bar and to attach the square tubing to the rest of the peg. The square piece from the stock peg already had a hole in it and I figured that would make things easer as I would not have to drill holes in the correct spot to fix the bike.
The older gentleman in the picture is my father. There is an arc welder in the shop but the acetylene torch was pretty easy. He started welding a few years back in Flores ville High School at the ag shop building things for farmers down there. I got in on the welding also. It wasn't to hard, in fact it was sort of fun.
Some of my welds were not really pretty but I think they will hold. It might even give them a little character. Things need to be really hot to start emitting light.
Don't want to much character. I also wanted to cut notches on the top of the pegs to help my shoes stay on the pegs. So, I got out the grinder and got to grinding.
After the pieces were stuck together I cleaned them up some and sprayed some paint on them and put them on the bike. They fit, mostly. They don't fold back like they should so I will do a little more grinding (and a little more painting). They are a little rough but seem to work fine. So, now I have built something for the motorcycle and am looking forward to doing more. There is still a matter of a broken taillight and the fall also ripped some of the plastic off the bike and I suppose state safety inspection (Texas) needs to be done. It will be nice to get back on the road.
