BCB Bike Shed: Brackets, Prototypes, and Perseverance
- Buck City Biker
- Dec 27, 2025
- 3 min read
If you’re following our Bike Shed project, you’ll know we’re building a highway-capable electric chopper — UK and EU roads first, then hopefully further.
A month ago, we tore into our donor frame, an M1Ps with a stout steel-tube chassis that’s perfect for big batteries and plenty of customisation.
But we’re not rushing — first up, we tackled what we thought would be the easier bit: positioning the display. The plan was to slot it behind the bars, just above the tank. It should cut drag, sharpen the lines, and let us iron out smaller problems before diving into the deep end.
Turns out, our assumptions couldn’t have been more wrong. We quickly learned there’s nothing easy about making custom parts.
Display Wars: The Relocation Chronicles
The plan was simple — design a new bracket to attach the display to the bar mount, get the positioning right, and cut down on glare from sunlight. Easy, right? Not even close.
We started with a T-bracket and spent three weeks just nailing the geometry of the mounting holes. Our display comes from China — it’s got everything we need and nothing we don’t — but the rear fastening pins might as well have been designed by a street artist. No rhyme, no reason. Circular metrics, straight-line measurements, nothing worked. The manufacturer sent a printable template, but that’s useless when you’re trying to turn it into a 3D model for CNC or 3D printing.
Eventually, we resorted to old-school hand measuring and plotting directly onto the design. Bear in mind we're not engineers, just a couple of guys who like to build stuff. The first bracket fit… sort of. But it wasn’t even close to strong enough.
What followed were seven updated designs, each stronger than the last. None of them hit the mark fully. We also had to deal with water ingress, covering exposed terminals, and, let’s be honest, making it look like a proper part and not a piece of bent duct tape wrapped around the handlebars.
Enter the 3D Printing specialist
3D printing had been on our radar for a while — it promised a way to crank out prototypes without bleeding cash or time. After asking around the village, a friendly neighbour, Nigel, came over to see what we had and talk all things 3D printing.
Nigel reckoned he could print something strong and stiff enough, waterproof, and tight-fitting to keep moisture out. At last, a real solution.
What followed? Five weeks of back-and-forth, 26 prototype designs, endless tweaks, adjustments, and material tests — all just to get our “quick and easy” display bracket off the production line.
Mission Accomplished: The Display Lives
At last, the display is where it should be — snug, solid, waterproof, and doing exactly what it’s meant to do. No gaps, no wobble, just perfect.
All thanks to Nigel’s design skills. He completely reimagined what we’d started with. It was a tense period, handing over development into someone else’s hands — all we could do was wait and give feedback on each new prototype. But Nigel is a legend. He tackled the challenge head-on and absolutely crushed it.
Next up on our list, the headlight, nose, and front end styling.
Ride safe, folks.
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