Okay, here's the first wave of what I hope will be a lot of pics this weekend
Frame after rust inhibiting primer and black paint. This pic is after the first coat. I can't find a pic of it after the second coat, but it turned out like the swingarm in the next pic.
Miscellaneous parts being primed:
Gas tank after paint. Since my tank was missing the metal "Honda" tags, I cut off the mounting plate and then used bondo to fill in the indentation:
Masked off with tape and paper towels, white stripe added:
Frame with tank...kinda looks like a bike again:
Pics of engine priming and painting. I used high heat engine primer and Duplicolor engine enamel (DE 1615 Aluminum). I used flat black on the cylinder and cylinder head. Prior to that, I had all the engine parts soda blasted. I had never heard of soda blasting before, but it worked very very well. For my next project, I'm just gonna soda blast everything that needs stripping. It's such a time saver.
On to the seat while I waited for engine parts. I wanted to know how to work with fiberglass, so I decided to try making my own seat. I followed the process described on this site:
http://matteoforgione.com/matteo/caferacer/cafe.html. I laminated a bunch of styrofoam sheets together, took a lot of measurements, and cut the rough shape using a band saw. To get the contours I wanted, I first made some rough cuts with a fine tooth knife and then used a cheese grater type of hand plane to shape the plug.
After some latex paint, it was ready for filling in the many dimples in the foam. Bondo was a pain to work with due to the quick curing time (even when using less hardener)...
...so my dad suggested trying drywall compound. I was skeptical, but it worked like a charm!
It's cheap and very easy to work with since it takes overnight to dry. I then painted it black to help see any imperfections, and used spot filler where needed.
Once the plug was 100% finished I made a plaster mold of it (pic to follow when I find my other memory card), and it's now ready for fiberglass. Overall, I wouldn't recommend this route to try to save money, because it's very time consuming work and can get expensive. But it's pretty satisfying building something from scratch
Here's the engine during the rebuild. You wouldn't believe all the bits of cylinder I found inside the case. And the transmission seemed to have a shredded plastic film tangled inside of it. Wish I had some pics to post. What a mess!
Remember that no-longer-available seal I hacked up during disassembly? Well, here it is side-by-side with the one Cycle Improvements made for me. Absolutely perfect fit. I sealed it in with a gasket sealer.
That's it for now. I'll have more pics later this weekend.
