I've been working on the bike a fair bit over the past couple of weeks but haven't had the time to do an update.
The first thing I worked on was buffing. I was having issues with cutting through these textured areas on the fork lowers using just the red rouge. I decided to try using black rouge and it worked great!. It cut through the rough areas and left a shine that I would say is as good as the red rouge. When I finally finished the fork lowers I did the sprocket cover. At some point in time a spent an hour with the wire wheel cleaning up all the nuts and bolts that go along with the fork lowers.
The finished products:
Got the points cover shined up. There's a good sharp dent in it but nothing horrible. Maybe I'll replace it if I find a better one for cheap.
This was last weekend and at the time I was dead set on getting the engine covers polished as long as the whole bike was apart. The issue was getting the old clearcoat off. The aircraft remover I have is from a spray can. I couldn't use that because I didn't want to risk getting some on the frame or engine cases. After a bit of searching I came across this:
I got it at walmart (by all the paint strippers). The nice thing is it's a gel so it doesn't run (as long as it's not put on too thick). I brushed it on being careful not to get any on the cases or frame. I was under a time constraint so I could only let it sit an hour.
Even though I only had an hour it seems to have done the trick. I washed it off with a brush and garden hose and I can't find any traces of clear left on the covers.
Now as I said before, this was when I was dead set on having the cases polished before reassembling the bike. My goal for finishing this bike was being able to ride it to the ahrma races at road america which is in a little over a week. Unfortunately I think I've just flat run out of time to finish the polishing. I want to have some time to do some test riding and troubleshooting before next weekend and there's just too much left to do it all in that timeframe. Maybe if I was able to devote the whole coming weekend to working on the bike, but there's other chores and projects I need to get done then too.I would rather be riding a bike with unpolished cases than not riding at all. I'll just add it to the list of things to do in the winter.
Since the weekend I've been doing whatever small jobs I have left while I wait for the last of my parts to arrive (mainly tires and tubes).
Cleaned up the footpegs and hardware (plan is to paint them in winter)
Tonight I disassembled, cleaned, and shined up the front fender. There are some dents on the top that I tried to fix a little. They're less noticeable now but I'm certainly no metal shaping guru.
I finished the night with taking apart the front wheel to get it ready for new tires and bearings and then pounding in my new fork seals.
