Diligence

Wow. It's been a bit since the last post. Here's what's happening. Getting the wheels torn down was high on my priority list. It's one of the areas that needs a bit of work and replacement parts. New spokes, bearings, and paint are all on the agenda, but first the bearing retainers needed to come out. The front wheel retainer needed a special tool from Honda to remove, but since I didn't have one, a hammer and punch would have to do the trick. Unfortunately, I couldn't get it to work, so I recruited the help Tony from work. He brought it home and worked some kind of magic on it. In order to be able to use a more standardized tool in the future, it needs the grooves to be widened out, so that has been started, but is still on the to do list.

How such a small piece of aluminum could cause such a fuss...

Once that was out I sprayed down the rim with PB and let it sit overnight before starting to de-lace it. There wasn't a ton of rust, but I could tell it was going to give me a hard time. They came apart without much of a struggle, but it just took forever. I can tell that putting new spokes on is going to take a long time.

Rusty spokes. Mmm.

The rear wheel was next, and the retainer, though different from the front, was quite a hassle. After about 30 min of wrestling with it, I finally got it out and tore the wheel down.

The Devil.

There's so much cleaning to do on this bike, it's hard to keep it all in order. Since I was working on the wheels, I figured that's what I would work on cleaning next. The wire brush, grinding wheel, and Mother's metal polish did most of the damage. Here are some before and afters.

Front hub before.

Front hub after.

Wheels. Clean and not clean.

There's still a lot of prep work to do on the wheels and hubs since they're going to get painted. I also got really ambitious with the alternator cover. It looked like shit and I just couldn't take it anymore. So I cleaned it up and painted the Honda logo. I'm probably going to strip that paint out and hand paint it with the black auto paint that I'm doing the frame with, but I just wanted to see what it would look like. I like it.

That's all the photographic evidence that I have for now. Since there are parts spread all over the garage, and the frame and tank are somewhere else, I've been having trouble visualizing how I actually want this bike to look when its done and what needs to happen to get it there. I suppose that the priorities are the service related parts. Today I compiled a list of the items that I need to acquire. Well, I guess I don't NEED to get everything on the list, but I would feel better about the finished product with all of these parts in place.

Steering stem bearings

Front wheel bearings/seals

Rear wheel bearings/seals

Chrome spoke set

Fork dust covers

Front sprocket

Rear sprocket

Front tire tube

Engine hardware kit (allen bolt style- no more philips)

Engine gasket set

Petcock seal

Kickstart shaft

Headlight bracket

Turn signals

Brake light/plate bracket

Rear sets

Mufflers

Brake pads

Brake shoes

Air filters

My next step should be chopping the extra tabs and inner fender off the frame and working out where I'm going to mount the foot pegs, rear fender, and work on seat design. Then sand and prime the frame.  I though about trying to clean all the parts before starting to rebuild, but I don't think I have the patience for that. We'll see.