More clean & shiney

I bought a cheap random orbital sander yesterday, less than 30 quid complete with various grade sanding discs, a set of scotchbrite type discs & a set of polishing discs !

I was getting a bit bored with rubbing down & trying to get a good finsh to the alloy parts by hand, so had a go with the new toy...

came out sweet!! I have decided to leave the matt scotchbrited finish rather than bling polish. Wont be quite so demanding to keep clean either!

Shiny bits!

Spent some time cleaning & smoothing  the top & bottom yokes:

I polished the top by hand, wish I had some polishing mops! but it has come out quite well considering!!

The pitted cast finish to the bottom yoke was smoothed off, ready for either paint or powdercoat:

 Also have received the new tapered roller bearing headset.

I decided to have had a go at using electrolysis to remove rust using a solution of sodium bicarbonate, & a battery charger. I understand washing soda is a bit better, but I don't have any washing soda & have a big bag of bicarb!

The first part to be treated is the front mudguard, as you can see the underside is quite heavily corroded!!

 It was left fizzing away overnight, & it ended up like this:

Not too bad, quite pleased!

Christmas progress

Well having the Christmas week off meant that not only did I have to suffer the ususal trials of the festive period, but I was able to get some time on the project!

The engine is now cleaned & waiting for the new cam & oil pump chains & a set of seals, so while I wait for them to arrive I thought I'd start sorting out some of the bits & bobs on the forks.

I made brackets for both the Bates type headlight & the mini speedo that I'm using & sorted the mounting positions etc. 

I decided to utilise the old top fork shrouds that also originally supported the headlight, the headlight brackets were cut off as they are surplus to requirements, part of the base was trimmed off & the remaining shrouds cleaned up, they don't look too bad in the rough finish state.

I also have done the first rough pass in cleaning up the top yoke, chopping off the original handlebar mounts & cleaning off the casting line that ran around it.

Before:

After:

At the moment I'm not final finishing things until I complete the dry assembly of everything. I don't want to put a whole load of work into something that may get trashed! So don't think that crap look is what I'm going to end up with!

Happy Chistmas!!

Have a good & safe one folks!!

Today's little ditty

Not much to report. Only seem to manage a couple of hours in the evening now & again.
 
I am still disassembling the second engine which seems to be pretty good internally. The various oil seals, 'o' rings, camchain & oil pump chain will all be replaced, but I seem to have become a little obsessed with scraping all the crud off the outside & trying to get the finish back to natural alloy. There are some patches of the original silver paint that I want to remove, which may prove to be rather stubborn!

I'm actually finding it somewhat theraputic!

Latest update....

Having pulled the engine, & finishing the refurb of the heads, I pulled the rear cover to check the state of play, discovered that the gear change shaft was bent!!

Also, had another look at the cylinder & noticed that one of them had some signs of scoring, (don't know why I didn't spot that before!), so I decided to dig out the other engine that came with the original purchase. That looked as if the previous owner dug it up from a field!!, it looked rough so wasn't holding out much hope.

I quickly removed the heads & checked the cylinders, They were fine, as was the camshaft etc. I'll use this motor then!

 
I will use the refurbed heads from the other engine though.

Today I mostly did..

Tonight I whipped the engine out so that I could start delving into the inner workings!

First bit I removed was the water pump housing...

yeeurgh!! Still turned ok, though I suspect things would have clogged up eventually!

Next I'll remove the rear cover to clean it up & replace the seals.