Naked Bike

Sunday - My Birthday - Mark helped me remove the gas tank and the final body panel off - the inner rear fender. I now have a naked bike. We also removed the decals from the gastank & saddlebag, not sure if the one on the gastank is going back on yet the final paint job will be the deciding factor.

I have alot of sanding & painting in my future! Mark is going to help me wire it for lights on Sunday.

Not getting much done

I was all gung ho at the beginning of the week to get a little something done on the bike every night that only lasted the Monday - when I got the front fender off the bike she is really starting to look naked but once the gas tank comes off then it will be really naked.

My Kangaroo leather and my deer leather lace arrived today so I can redo my seats, back rests and make a tank bib.

One thing I am really pleased about is the job that the Plastics place did repairing my saddlebag and it was only $67.

I will just have to smooth a few spots with filler, sand lightly, prime & paint.

Time to get back at her tomorrow after I finish up a sewing job I have been procastinating about.

Bodywork

The current state of the bike!








Mark picked up my sidecovers for me yesterday so this morning I could start working on them as soon as I wanted to.

The first thing to do was smooth out the dents with some more precise hammering and fine tune the fitting. After that was done I put the first coat of filler on to smooth it better.









Check out the before picture in the prevoius post





Then thanks to Rob's motorcycle jack and a pattern for a adapter made of 2x4's I no longer have to work on my hands & knees. Mark helped me to center & hold the bike to insure it won't fall off the jack.




Still have to figure how to mount permenetly - I am thinking magnets will do the trick.

A couple more thin coats of filler - ALOT of sanding between coats - a couple coats of primer sanding between - then ready for paint.

The Makeover Begins

The first challenge I put to myself was to create new sidecovers. I really don't like the shape of the stock ones and they don't cover all the gaps and that you can still see the frame under the gastank. Most people I talked to about it said it couldn't be done - I thought to myself it can't be that hard, get metal that I can work with a hammer and dolly plus a small paint can and the edge of the table and I think I created something that will work. The guy that I bought the metal from said I have to turn under the edges wasn't sure I was going to be able to do that but I tried and it worked for all but one complicated turn so I took it back to them so they could do it for me. I get to go pick them up tomorrow. Total cost of two custom sidecovers $120. I still have to smooth it out with a little more hammer & dolly plus some body filler. That is my job for Saturday.



This week I started taking the bike apart.







Tuesday night I removed the saddle bags and took all the hardware off of them. Discovered that one of them has a crack in the bottom and thanks to facebook I will be checking with the plastics place in town to see if they can fix it.















Wednesday night I removed the saddlebag brackets and the rear fender. The wiring of the fender came off with a little assistance from Mark - I don't do wiring! Brought it in the house and washed it down it was a little dirty and discovered the original color of the bike was bright red.














Tomorrow night I will be making an adapter for the jack and removing the front wheel and fender.





Sunday I should be able to remove the gas tank with Mark's help then it will be a week of sanding ahead of me.