Finally out of the shed...

Hello,

  after a very long winter (which started some time last August...) in the shed in bits (the bike, not me...mostly), today was one of the 8 or 9 days of sun we get up here in Scotland per year, so I put the final few bolts/screws/things back in place and took a picture...



I've also changed the coolant, changed the brake fluid, sprayed the engine with Halford's Silver Brake Calliper paint, sprayed the exhaust headers with some sort of high-temperature black paint (super-generic-brand from Screwfix) and painted various parts of the frame with japlac...and I took the thermostat housing out, cleaned it and changed all the hose-clips for stainless one...

Next plan is to save up for a stainless exhaust...although I've found one of my header studs has sheared, so that'll be a fun old job...

Here's an obligatory "bloke on a bike" picture...

I'd like to say I'm not as fat as I look in this picture, but that'd be a lie

Thanks for all the help I've had getting this far!

Well done mate, looking very nice!

Looks good . . . . keep meaning to do something similar to mine.

Did you leave the engine in the bike to paint it?

When the fork lowers were powder coated, how did you stop the powder coating going inside the fork leg?

Cheers

Thanks

I left the engine in to spray it - just used a lot of newspaper and masking tape - I mainly just wanted to spray the front of the engine where it looked pretty corroded...

I didn't do the powder coating myself, so I don't know how the chap who did it kept the powder-coating from going inside the legs, sorry.  It was Lloyd at Highland Powdercoating who did it, though, and he was very helpful on the phone, so I'd ask him...I took the legs to a local garage to use their air-line to blow any dust out before rebuilding them and they were impressed with the finish and depth of the powder-coating...

Looking good.  Does it ride well?

I haven't ridden it far enough to tell if stripping the forks down has improved them (or made them wose!), but if feels pretty much the same as it did before I took it to bits, so that's good

My ride felt a lot better after redoing the bushes, seals and fork oil...

I'm just waiting for some swingarm bolt end-caps to turn up, then I'll get it re-MOT'd and give it a blast and let you know how it feels...sod's law I'd get pulled if I rode it any further then the road outside my house with no tax or test on it

MOT'd the bike today - also my first proper ride since putting it back together.  I think the rebuilt forks must have made a difference, as I got home thinking I'd really nailed the back-lanes getting there...can't imagine I've suddenly become a much better rider overnight, so the bike must have improved rather than me

Incidentally, if anybody's lost/fed up with the tacky plastic-chrome swing-arm bolt covers, these fit perfectly if you get the 41.2mm ones...

Oh...it passed the MOT with one advisory - play in the rear wheel bearings so - hooray, it passed and - hooray, I've got a reason to take bits of it it apart again

Yay and...  um...  yay!

Those caps look like a more secure fit to the originals too.

They certainly are - a smart persuasive tap from a rubber mallet seats them home nicely and I had to sand out one of my holes (not as painful as it sounds) due to rust...

"um yay" is right...I've just got really into replacing horrible corroded rubbish with new bits...it's quite good for the old OCD

it looks like u did a great job on the cb,  looks really good,  in ireland theres no mot well not in the south anyway, some of couriers do be on like mad max  rat bikes . looking forward to doing some work on mine too

wornsprokets wrote:it looks like u did a great job on the cb,  looks really good,  in ireland theres no mot well not in the south anyway, some of couriers do be on like mad max  rat bikes . looking forward to doing some work on mine too

Never a truer word spoken, Mines an Ex rat