Odds and Sods

I decided the afternoon that I stripped the bike that it’s important for me to get a rolling chassis together as quickly as possible. It’s a mental thing. I need to have a motorcycle to work on, not a pile of parts. I suspect the reason that there are so many basket cases lying around is that it’s really easy to forget about it when it’s in so many bits.

My priorities for now then are frame, forks, shocks, wheels. And brakes, because they also need stripping and painting. That is all I’m going to work on until those bits are together.

So, the first job that needed doing urgently was to strip all the nasty flaking chrome off the frame and associated bracketry. I pulled the fairing bracket and mainstand into work and stuck them in the gritblaster, hoping it would rough it up enough to powdercoat over the top. But the chrome was coming off in chunks in some places, and was particularly tough in others. Nothing for it but to get it chemically stripped. So I took it all to S&T in Yate, near Bristol, who seem to specialise in auto restoration bits. Ten days later I got it back, looking very nasty. They seem like good blokes though, and I will no doubt see them again later.

Next time I looked in on the frame, it was covered in rust. Better get it powdercoated quickly.

There was an article in a recent Classic Motorcycle Mechanics about Reality Motor Works in Bristol; apparently expert powder coaters. I paid them a visit. They do some really nice work, for both restoration and custom stuff. I got a quote (none too stable, I suspect) for coating the frame and other bits. I left a very sad looking frame with them, along with the swingarm, fairing bracket, mainstand and chainguard (all red) and the fork sliders and yokes (satin black).

It’s lot of money, I guess, compared to painting it, but if I have to save money I’ll do it on the bits closer to the surface, where I can get them off again quickly. Anyway, it will kickstart my rebuild to have some nice looking parts back quickly.

Well that was the idea. Two weeks later (their quoted turnaround time was 10 days) and they still haven’t actually found out if they can match the red or not. Phone calls every couple of days are getting less friendly as they are getting fed up with me phoning and I’m getting fed up with their apparent lack of haste. I must say it’s not their fault. I want a very specific shade of red which they don’t have, and they are trying to source some powder for me. I could just get it painted, but I have fallen in love with powdercoating. I love the way it flows and fills imperfections where paint will emphasise them without perfect preparation. And I remember the original paint, and how it scratched, and stained, and generally looked awful after 18 months (which is why it’s been plated for the last 20 years).

The delay has given me time to do some other stuff.

I’ve stripped the forks down, and stripped all the paint off the sliders and yokes. I had a go at painting the yokes. They looked OK, but the paint was really soft and scratched easily, probably due to the fact that the temperature here hasn’t been above 3 degrees C for the last month; not ideal conditions for spraying. I’ll get them powdercoated.

The brake calipers have also been stripped to bare castings. The castings are the only bits getting reused. A big box of spares from TAW in Colorado arrived last week, with all the pistons, seals, pads and pins to renew them.

All last week, I tried to get the calipers vapourblasted, but there was never a gap and it didn’t get done. They weren’t too bad, actually, so Saturday, I sat down with a fine wire brush from the Machinery Cleanery in Australia and removed every scrap of loose rubbish from each one. The old gold paint was loose in places (it was done quickly, with an aerosol with about a tenth of this much effort, in 1984!) so it took a while. The bores were cleaned gently with one of those abrasive dishwashing sponges. Not enough to scratch the anodising, but it did get rid of the gunk.

After another good wash to get rid of the dust, I dried them off and sprayed them satin black. Not a bad job if I say so myself. Powdercoating may have been better, but I’m fed up with waiting to get on, and I’ve made a few decisions about the direction of this rebuild in the last few days.

By Monday evening the paint was dry, and I rebuilt them with all new parts. They look great, and the pistons slide in and out a lot smoother and easier than they did. I also did the master cylinders and the splitter thing that bolts on the front yoke. I’m not unhappy with the results.

Two minor frustrations. TAW sent me the wrong bleed nipples and caps. Very cheap items from them, less than $4 for all of them, but I’m going to have to pay through the nose to replace them here, more like £18! Not the end of the world, but really annoying when I’ve already paid for them once. Then putting the final touches to the calipers, I open the packet with the plastic pop-on pad covers, and they are for the wrong calipers.

And then some progress; Griff the powdercoater phoned me today. He’s found some powder to match the MHR paint. I popped over to see him this afternoon, and the sample is indeed very close. A lot closer than the factory got the frame to the bodywork in 1982 anyway. I’ve told him to get on with it so should have it back end of next week, along with fork sliders and yokes in satin black. I can’t wait to get on with it now.

Next job for the weekend: tidy up the old S&W shocks.

So, pulled them apart on Saturday, using the cable tie trick to compress the springs. Cleaned up the springs, cleaned and sprayed the shock bodies, and stripped the yellow bits to bare alloy and repainted them black. Final result not perfect, but will save me a couple of hundred quid for the time being.

Before and after…

Today I must order some stainless mainstand bolts and springs, pinch bolts for the swingarm, brake hoses etc...

Then nothing to do but wait for the frame to come back… should be done this week.

Rolling Chassis

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