Well, yesterday I removed the tank from the SS and had a go at seeing if the new shape was going to fit. Obviously not in its present form!
After a great deal of pondering, I bit the bullet and hacked the moulding in half. Well, I cut a side off to be more accurate, so as to preserve the flute in the top and the filler recess.
It looks almost credible with a bit of fairing removed and more trimming to let the moulding down on the frame. But many problems have manifested.
There is so little clearance between the frame and fork legs on full lock, that the tank cannot be within the arc of the legs, so with the front parts outside of the forks, it makes the front very wide indeed and not anything like the nice slim original! I don't like any of the contemporary "retro" styled Ducati tanks because of this and really wanted to do better, but the frame is the master here!
At the rear the tank extends too far back and will overlap the side panel that I intent to fit. I intended that to cover the upright frame tube behind the rear pot, but the tank is much further back than that. I think this will also put the knee cut-outs too far back to sit in the right place as well. I am loath to cut the moulding vertically in front of the knee cut-outs, to shorten it in that way as it will detract from the nice long silhouette that I desire.
It's got to fit and look right in order to make the whole project worthwhile. If this doesn't work, I will knock it on the head and restore the SS to original or better and sell it on, so at this stage I can afford to mess up quite a bit of fibreglass.
Hopefully I will get a few minutes tonight, to hack and ponder some more, but it's not looking good at the moment!