thank you Jon for posting this, which I could not do myself.
many people have posted threads about attaching a top-box at the rear seat position on the CB1000R. in the 'early days', folk just drilled straight thru the rear seat and bolted on a Givi plate, or whatever. this is simple and effective, but not 'elegant'. the availability of the Shad Sport Rack ( their part nr H0CB11CL) provided the 'cool' solution, but there remained a problem: the OEM Honda rear seat latch plate is quite thin and has narrow 'spans' of metal from internal holes to outside edges, and there have been reports of breakage. it seems the 'dead' load of the luggage is more stressful on the latch plate than carrying a passenger.
quickly, people realized you should reinforce the latch plate, and postings appeared. these all relied on 'simple' construction, and since both the OEM seat and the Shad rack have 'bumpers' and/or 'lobes' on the bottom, these needed to be filed off. I hate modifying OEM parts if I can avoid it, so I attempted to build a plate which did the necessary reinforcing but which also accommodated the seat and rack without modification. this necessitated a number of interior holes to give clearance for the 'bumpers' and 'lobes'. the lesson of the breakage also was that narrow sections of metal are weak points, so my objective was to maximize the width of the metal external to any interior holes. but this is limited by ribs on the bottom of the seat, 'bumpers' on the Shad plate, an upturn on the latch assembly, and the bodywork of the bike. so it took me 3 attempts to get to the 'right' solution. I posted details here:
http://www.hondacb1000r.com/forums/modification/12029-latch-plate-reinforcement-mk3.html
since then, I've had a few PMs about the plate. I sent an 'early' version to one member, and some 'advice' to others. however, I work in a land survey office and use AutoCAD, so when I recently got a PM about the plate from phillyboy, I thought " why am I being so frikkin lazy? use the skills, and DO a template!" so I did...
a couple words of advice/ context:
one PDF is strictly dimensional; the second includes the scan of the part itself X-Ref’d in back. I wasn’t sure which I liked better, and/or which was easiest to use, so I did ‘em both ways.
both are designed to be printed on an 8 1/2” x 11” Nor Am letter sheet. for Euro sheets, some sort of scaling will be necessary. if you’re using the PDF as a direct template, the scale bar will tell you if you’re at correct sizing. if your print does not measure 100mm, adjust the scale of the print job from Adobe to get it correct.
the various radii on the small corners don’t really matter. actually, neither do the bigger external ones, not much – they’re mostly just there to make smooth transitions. but the main bolt holes and major longitudinal elements all have a purpose, with some tight clearances involved (ribs on the bottom of the seat, the flange on the latch itself, rubber bumpers on the Shad Plate, etc). when installing, you might find tight fits here and there; if so, just attack them with your file! (it’s actually better to make the piece a touch oversized and to file it down, so as to preserve as much metal as possible external to the interior holes for maximum strength...)
it’s an easy job with just a hacksaw, a drill, and a file. a vise eases the job but isn’t strictly necessary. and the beauty of this piece is that no mods are necessary to either the Shad Sport Plate or the seat.
yours for better luggage capacity...
cheers, Don