More Than Meets The Eye!

Tank and fender are back in the most beautiful shade of  "primer grey" or as it's known in final paint: Battleship Grey! Painter did excellent job. Even cleaned up and smoothed out the fender welds. Primo job!

Look at the seam. It's filled and smooth. Better than factory!

And the surprise! I bought a couple of Transformers Autobot vinyl decals. These the painter was able to apply under the clear coat.

The motto of Transformers is: MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE.

I have some more final hand painting to do before it all goes back together.

Fast and furious, Part 2

I got the power coating back today and they parts turned out nicely.

Before:

After:

The camera augmented the F-stop and made the black look mottled. It is not.

I pick up the tank and fender on Friday. Then I will reveal the surprise!

Fast and furious, Part 1

A couple of quick posts as parts come together. First off, I painted the stop triple clamp. I would have had it powder coated, but there are rubber vibration isolators for the handlebars which I can't press out and the powder coater won't run their process with any rubber in the part as the 400F oven would destroy them.

These clamps are aluminum so I had to use a special spray primer before the black top coat. Both of these products were applied via rattle-can!

Before:

After:

I'm please the way it turned out.

I'm going to paint the lower fork legs the same way, but it's been raining here past few days.

Miscellaneous parts to be painted and powder coated

I took the tank and fender over to be painted at Florida Custom Painting. yesterday. We settled on a variation of Battleship Grey which is what a final coat color is called that looks like a Primer Grey. The significance of which is that in the olden days of car rebuilding, auto bodies in flux were always coated in primer grey to prevent rust of the raw steel, but the final product was still a ways away. It meant things were coming together, but still in transition. That's how I envision this bobber project. Coming together, but not complete, so that's how I picked this color. I envision changes ongoing.

Here's the tank and fender on it's way to the painters. I do have a surprise when it comes back that I will save until then.

Today I took the various chrome bits to Brothers Powder Coating to have these metal bits coated black. What is shown here is the tank dash, secondary belt cover, gas cap and key cap, mirror arm, kick stand, handle bar clamps, and the insert that goes into the secondary belt cover.

I still have a few more parts that I will spray paint black that I couldn't have powder coated since they are baked in an oven over 400F degrees. These include the air cleaner cover (epoxied into the air cleaner itself), the upper triple clamp (containing the rubber handle bar mounts), and the lower fork legs (containing suspension fiddly bits: oil, seals, springs...).  I'll post on these individual as I get to them.

Comments?

Peak fender achieved!

Well, I'm going through antibody/chemo therapy for my follicular lymphoma. I just had my 4th out of 6th monthly treatments and was feeling pretty good (relatively speaking) so completed my rear fender and bracket cutting. (It will be one year since I wrote about buying the fender on May 8, 2015! A lot of nothing can happen in a year's time.)

The brackets were tacked on while the fender was positioned in place and I had a friend complete the welding using MIG. Came out nice. Here's the fender in place and a close up of the top bracket.

Next up is painting of the tank and fender and powder coating of various chrome bits. I will also be rattle can spraying a few parts myself.

Few loose ends

Ya, I'm back. I finally finished the wiring after a long hot summer. Took about 3 hours to complete and you'd think I could find at least that somewhere in the long, hot FL summers, but alas, no.

I completed a few loose ends while I procrastinate the rear fender completion. (I do have all the materials I need except for a few screws, but I'm just starting a possibly long medical scenario for myself, but that's not important now).

First thing I did after the wiring was to swap out the T-handlebars. I purchased an original set of Road Star bars and I already had the mounts from spare parts that came with the bike. This really helps the bobber look:

The ride is a bit more comfortable also.

Next I needed to eliminate the huge Kuryakyn Hypercharger air cleaner setup. And I can't stress the "hyper" part enough as in "Don't believe the hype!". I found a generic K&N air cleaner that nestles nicely under the tank between the cylinders that mounts directly to the carb. This is the second nicest mod after eliminating the fuel pump.

This first picture is the trial fitting of the K&N with the Kuryakyn just hanging below.

This is the final installation. The entire area is cleaned up and nothing bulges out from under the tank. I was constantly bumping my knee into the Hypercharger.

The only downside is the K&N embossed into the chrome cover of the K&N is upside down. That's the only way to fit it since the "hole" is offset on the back side. Got some ideas on how to best handle this, but I'll deal with this on the  repainting/powder coating phase.

What do you think?

Fender Prelim

I ordered a 6.5" wide round fender blank off eBay. I found a vendor that had a 14 Gauge steel (heavy) fender that won't need rear brackets to hold it if I keep cut back to covering around half of the rear tire. The tire arrived quickly from vendor in California (4 days) and was well packed.

I positioned the fender on the tire and it's not quite fully radiused to this tire size, but it's close enough. I'm not going to pie cut it and bend it around the tire.

I then strapped it to the tire and took several pictures of the fender as I adjusted the rear tire coverage.

The picture just below shows the fender fully applied to the rear presenting a conventional appearance. This position would require some kind of mid-fender brackets.

Next picture below is slightly up from previous.

And again, a little more. This is about 3/4 fender over the tire.

In the next picture, the position was recommended to me by a fabricator. This is slightly past center. He told me that this provides significant protection over half coverage and still presents classic bobber look.

This is half coverage and is typical of what you see in a bobber fender.

This is less than half just to show some contrasts.

I will likely go with the just past center coverage. I will prune the excess fender off the bottom (left hand side) to make the "front" of the fender line up appropriately.

I already have a mounting method in mind. Fender will be mounted at the top and bottom of the softtail swing arm. More later.

Also, I contacted Michelin and asked them about how much growth this tire gets at 70MPH and it works out to less than 1/2", so I will make sure I have at least that when I measure the brackets that I will have to fashion.

What do you think?