The Texalium is like blue carbon fiber...the most common carbon fiber for cosmetic appearances everyone thinks of when you say carbon fiber is a twill cloth. The Texalium is woven in that same twill weave.
Here's some Ebay ads for the stuff...
Yeah, that look is neat, but not for this bike. I'm leaning more towards just painting the fender as it is. Maybe I'll get adventurous and relocate the mounting points a little bit to make it more symmetric, like on earlier 500 models or even the 750. It seems the 550F Super Sport model has a shortened front tip to the fender, as the second stay arm that is typically there on other bikes is just not present (possibly not needed?) Maybe I'll just get a fender off a 750 and use that... I think they're wholly interchangeable.
Okay, on to the standard weekend update, days 53, 56, and 57 combined into one:
I dropped the frame and swing arm off at the powder coater's place on Wednesday, and spoke to the guy about being careful around the serial number, and what to mask off. I left feeling really good about them. Hopefully everything will turn out perfectly. I gave them a 2 lb bottle of the metallic silver powder that I've been using on the smaller parts I've done myself. They're going to apply a zinc protective coating first before shooting any powder, then do a clear coat on top. Should last a long time.
Also on Wednesday I dropped a big box of nuts, bolts, washers, and miscellaneous parts off at the electroplater. I first took pictures of every last piece that I wanted done, and printed them off at actual size on my printer. So my drop-off included this thick-ass binder of digital images, which the electroplater was really grateful for. He said too many people drop stuff off with no documentation, and then complain about parts missing later. Far too easy for stuff to go missing, especially with literally hundreds of small parts (I submitted a LOT). Hopefully with the binder, they'll know whether they need to go looking for stuff before I show up.
My last task on Wednesday was dropping the fenders, chain guard, and foot controls off at the chrome plater, which is conveniently right next door to the electroplater (literally, not even figuratively). They're going to electrochemically strip the chrome off, bead blast, then protect the raw steel with an acid etch. This will leave a nice, perfect metal surface from which to lay down the paint.
Other than driving around dropping stuff off, I spent most of this last week working on the engine. I disassembled the pistons and started cleaning them. I bought some cans of SeaFoam, after reading a number of people laud its ability to clean carbon deposits. I placed one of the pistons in this petrochemical soup and sonicated it for well over an hour. It worked okay, but not great. I tried my own home-brewed concotions on the next piston. I found the best solution was a mixture of xylenes and acetone. A quick sonication in this solution quickly removed the bulk of the carbon. What remained was (somewhat) easily removed with a soft toothbrush. Got two pistons pretty damn clean that way; the other two I'll try some derivatives of this mix and see how it goes.
With the pistons removed from the crankshaft, it was time to split the cases. Cracked off the clutch cover, yanked the clutch, pulled out the selector gear and related levers, and a number of plates and circlips inside that housing. Found the 2,000 bolts that tie the top and bottom halves together and carefully documented them all. Took a while to crack the cases in half, which is in line with my Achilles heel this entire engine disassembly process... getting two god-damned surfaces separated. Had to use a small flat-head screwdriver as a wedge in an area with a thick spacing to crack them apart. Managed to do it with minimal gouging in the surface. Once they were cracked, it was smooth sailing. Just pulled the top half right off and set aside! What a tremendously rewarding feeling.
With the cases split, I went to town on the internals. Pulled out the selector drum and gearbox, along with some other gear thing from the top half. Followed the Haynes manual pretty closely. There are some slight problems with the order of things, which I discovered just from not being able to extract something that should have otherwise been fine. It's pretty intuitive, I'd say. I took about 500 pictures during the entire process, a small smattering of which are given below. Also made two quick movies to document some of the more tricky parts where pictures alone would not have sufficed.
After pulling out all of the gears from the top half, I went to town cleaning and degreasing it for paint prep with some simple green and hot water. Scraped off the cylinder block gasket bits, the case mating surfaces glue, and tried to eradicate all of the grease and oil from the small crevices in the exterior sections. Couldn't get it all out, but it will come eventually. Just have to mask off the machined sections, mating surfaces, and tapped holes, then she'll be ready for blasting, priming, and painting. Going with the standard duplicolor silver engine paint, as I want the engine to be as original-looking as possible.
Still trying to get the primary shaft out of the lower half. That's the only thing holding me up at the moment from being able to clean and prep that section.
Okay, enough text... here is a sample of some of the pics I took along the way.
I'll post pics of the cleaned pistons once I get them all done. Then hopefully the bottom half of the case once I get that damn primary shaft out. I hope to be able to get everything prepped, primed, and painted by the end of this coming week so I can start engine re-assembly and time it well with when the frame comes back.
