Well Hung Frame

Last night, motivation struck and I made some serious progress on the bike. First, I took apart and cleaned both of my forks. It turned out to be not nearly as scary as I thought it would to break those down. I didn't take any pics of that process, but I did get to painting the frame - finally!

I did as much prep work as my patience would allow. That consisted using my faithful dremel tool (well, I have a cheap Harbor Freight knockoff) to take down the little spots of rust. I then roughed up the paint with some sandpaper. After that I blew the whole bike off with all compressed air. Finally, I wiped it down with rubbing alcohol.

Here is the bike before priming:


Here it is with the primer. I was able to do the whole bike with a can of primer, with plenty of primer left over. This is another good reason to convert a bike - there isn't as much surface area to work with when you compare it to a car.



Here is a shot of my professional hanging apparatus. These are some chains I found in my bins (they came from various hanging lighting fixtures and other projects). And yes, I'm just hanging it off my of garage door opener frame. It's conveniently located in the middle of the garage, so it works well. Note the little piece hanging from the chain on the right. That's the little piece that holds the gauges.



I actually got the first coat of black paint on last night. I'll take some pictures after my second coat tonight.

Getting the frame cleaned up

Last night I got some work done on the swingarm. When I started, it was covered in years worth of chain lube and dirt. Just to get the swingarm cleaned took a few hours of scrubbing with degreaser. After the degreasing, I went to town with my wirebrush mounted in my drill. That worked pretty well for the swingarm, but didn't go nearly fast enough for the shock mounting brackets, so I broke out the grinder with sand disc attachment. I had to be very careful as that disc tore through the metal pretty quick.

Here is the swingarm prepped for pain in my state of the art painting facility:


And here it is after painting. Notice the use of my high volume, low pressure ventilation system (garage door opened). It's critical when using high end paints (such as Krylon) to have proper ventilation. You can also see one of the shock brackets hanging in the upper right hand corner of the picture.


Here is the paint that I'm using for the frame:


I don't know how well it will perform, but it went on easy enough. I highly recommend the purchase of this little guy (I got one at Walmart for between $2-$3). It makes spraying from a can sooo much easier than pressing that little tendonitus inducing button on the top of the can.



Next up is the main frame of the bike.