Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Let us spray

Setting up a room for painting motors:



The paint room has come together quite nicely with a little help from my clam.
No, I'm not talking about my significant other, I mean my CLAM.
No, I don't have a...
*Sigh* just take a look at the pictures.

If a stapler had sex with a binder clip, this would be the result.
It spits out little reusable clamps when you slide the button.
Viola! Effortless seam clamping.
I used five separate sheets of plastic, one of which had a couple slits cut in it for an escape hatch or something. I needed to clip all those edges together to keep out the dust and keep in the heat and paint.
Now I have one seamless paint room. Even the bottoms of the plastic are clamped to the plastic sheet on the floor.

Monday, November 28, 2011

Time for new shoes; Joey's K3 needs to pass inspection.

So Joey's CB750 K3 failed VA safety inspection for a couple things: The taillight was out, the rear brake was out of adjustment, and the front wheel bearings were bad.
I'm still waiting on the replacement front bearing but over the Thanksgiving break I fixed the other problems.

I first assumed that the taillight was just burned out since it worked before. Nope, not the case.

How this happened, I have no idea.


Nothing my trusty electrician's knife can't handle.
I yanked the wires from a busted ignition switch I had lying around
 and soldered them to Joey's.
All done minus encasing the connections in hot glue to insulate them.

Next up is the rear brake shoe replacement.

Wheel off.
Shoes removed and hub cover cleaned.
Inside of hub cleaned and and roughed.
New shoes and springs installed.
Finally, the bike needs new front wheel bearings. I have a NOS rebuild kit I never got around to using, the only problem is it's missing a bearing. So I went back to Manassas Honda and ordered the missing part.
In the meantime, I pressed out the old bearings:

To say the retainer was a bitch to remove is the understatement of the century.
After a lot of hammering, PB B'laster, chiseling, screaming, and finally Dremel-ing followed by more hammering, the soft aluminum bearing retainer came out.


It looks surprisingly intact,
especially considering the amount of effort I put into destroying it.
With the bearing retainer removed the bearings pressed out, this wheel was set aside and replaced with a spare until the new parts arrive.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Posh AMAL Style Barrel Grips

I just ordered a set of  POSH 7/8" barrel grips in light brown as an early Christmas present to myself.

Here's what the POSH website has to say about them,
It is a grip produced sticking to over the detail such as total length designed to suit shape of saliva that considered the match with the mini switch and a simple handle bar, lame conditions, and color though it is a design that is reminiscent of the AMAL type of 60's.
Okay, maybe that wasn't the most helpful description but here's a few pictures I snagged from the web to make up for it.

Here's their assortment of available colors.
Here are the grips I ordered.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Wash and media blast the XS650 motor

Here's something you haven't seen in a while. Tommy and I pulled out his XS650 motor from the shed and hosed it off. After it dried, I nailed it with the soda blaster to get all the rest of the gunk, rust, and corrosion off.
The majority of the gunk got scrubbed off with Simple Green.
The harder to reach spaces got the soda blaster.

I wish I had taken 'before' photos. This motor was all sorts of dirty.

In order to get the whole motor I had to remove the starter. I quickly found out that doing so means the motor is going to void itself of oil through the starter gear hole and had to rush to put the motor over a catch pan.

Impromptu oil change, when I noticed oil spilling out of the starter hole.

Next step is paint prep and paint.

Friday, November 11, 2011

Garage makeover progress

I've made a little progress with tidying the garage up a bit. After several failed attempts at hanging some spare wheels from the ceiling, I think I have finally found a viable solution:



The only problem is, that corner of the garage is now pretty dark because those wheels are blocking all the light. A good permanent solution would obviously be to run recessed lighting throughout the garage, but I already have way too many projects on my hands. Plus that would require me to clean out the attic o.0

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Garage makeover 3.0

Consider this the Beta release of The Red Carpet Garage v3.0


CB750 motors all tucked away on the shelf.
New containers house freshly organized parts.
More available flat surfaces to work on.
A kerosene heater to warm my butt.

Things are coming along nicely. I'll update this post with more pics later.