I appreciate all the warm sentiments from the board
So, I figured I better get back to posting some progress photos. I'm actually further along than this, so here's more to come, but here are the ones I had in my camera and available to upload today.
09.27.10 - A day that I will never forget. This is what I left behind as the ambulance drove me to the hospital.
001This is what a year's worth of blood, sweat and hard work looks like after suffering just a split-second of another human being's negligence.
002Adding insult to injury. The wrecker driver was kind enough to break the dampening adjuster lever off my right rear shock by carelessly hooking his giant hook at an inopportune location. The cop, as seen in the background, could barely read or write. His police report had some key facts wrong and was rife with mis-spellings and grammatical errors.
003Sigh.
She doesn't look so straight anymore. This is a straight-ahead, head-on photo.
004Somehow, my plastic headlight bucket didn't break. Instead, the aluminum headlight brackets sheared right off. What is 1970's-era plastic made of, anyway?
005I discovered later that one of the factory seams on the tank (near the tunnel) even split. The handlebars were bent in on themselves. Both levers were broken. The left handlebar control was crushed into the tank. Needless to say, my mirror didn't survive, either.
006New left-hand controls are needed.
008The stator cover and case have been ground on the asphalt. The bright side: my engine paint seems to be holding up well. I'll definitely use it again.
007Wow. It took some serious force to bend the chain adjuster. It didn't get hit directly by anything - just transmission of forces taking its toll, here.
009I have custom knee indents, now - made by my very own knee and arm. You can see one of my 350 projects in the background (CL350)
010Electrolytically cleaning the inside of the new (old) gas tank I scored off eBay. The tank is filled to the brim with a conductive solution of sodium carbonate (not sodium bicarbonate) and water. The sacrificial anode (the piece of rebar, here) must be suspended and cannot touch and metal inside the tank, which explains my strange combination of holders, clamps and counterweights.
01212 volts feed the process. My puny charger can only put out 6 amps at 12 volts. A bigger charger would speed the process. The anode (rebar) gets the positive end and the tank itself gets the negative. This process breaks the surface bond with anything that's stuck to the tank, including rust, paint, fuel varnish, etc. In my case, some mild rust and too many years of gas varnish build-up.
011This is what I'd find daily. I cleaned the anode off with a wire wheel once daily. Hook everything back up. Come back the next day. Do it again. I did this for a couple of weeks. Did I mention that a bigger output charger would have sped things up?
013Yep. That's the muck that's been coming free. Interior tank photos are hard to take. But take my word for it. After a couple weeks using this process (which does not degrade the tank metal in any way, btw), the inside looks practically brand new, showing a dull, metal appearance. I rinsed the inside thoroughly with water (multiple rinses), dried it with compressed air, dried it more with acetone (to help drive out any residual water), again with conpressed air and finally fogged the inside with WD-40. That should prevent flash rust until I'm done painting and ready to fill it with gas.
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