Project Sad Panda - MC22

[Madman]

LOL... thats pretty cool Your poor brother, hahaha!

Im pretty much learning stuff as I go, its nice to hear your dad can help you if need be and your taking after him rebuilding stuff in the house too, haha!

Ok, so what does sanding it down and using washing up liquid do after you've primed it!? Is that just so that the 4 coats of black sticks to it?
Do you actually have to sand a little after each coat of paint? Hope you dont mind the question!

I'll also be doing mine via spray cans probably. Im skeptical about spraying the engine though completely... I might just tape the rest of the engine and just do the side covers.

[dansher]

im only going to sand it after the last top coat of black,

once it dries you rub ur hand over it and it will (probably) feel kind of furry from the spray can, the sanding just removes that and the washing up liquid just acts as a bit of lube (i think) so that you dont take to much off

[Madman]

Ahhhh, good to know Thanks for that!! Much appreciated!

Keep us posted on yours aswell I'll let you know what I do if I get to do it this weekend

[dansher]

i painted my brake light housing bit the same way but with out the clear coat, it had some cracks in it when i first got it so i did my best to fix them up, came out pretty well considering

dont think you can really tell to well from the picture, u can still kinda see where the cracks were (in person) but its heaps better then it was as its not actually broken any more

[Madman]

Nice!! That actually doesn't look too bad!

So, i finally have an update.

picked up a heap of parts which were on order, still waiting for more. Here was around $350 worth


Starting with the fork tubes, gave them a polish with the buffing machine and polished a bit more by hand afterwards Actually came up really well, surface rust pretty much gone. Still very little bits of pitting on them, but certainly good enough to slide new seals over them without damaging them!




Can probably see the bits of pitting from here


Bushes were pretty damn worn, so replaced them aswell.


I was debating what to do with the forks themselves, whether to coat them with paint or not, whether to polish them, etc... still undecided
I first gave a bit that was missing paint, a brusing against the bench grinder with wire brush attachment. Actually came up really well!


so, thought thinners was the way to go to get the paint off.


It pretty much started to crack the paint, but really didn't do much with the thinners at all. In fact, disappointed really it wouldn't come off, so im guessing they're anodized from factory!?


I pretty much sat there for a few hours scraping the fucker with an old knife, lol!


It didn't come up too bad when looking from afar, but far from pretty They're pitted and I just can't get them to polish up very nice at all by hand, will head to bunnings tomorrow and look for some drill attachments or some bench grinder attachments for polishing and to help remove the pitting. Whilst im there, if its too much hassle after talking with someone, i might just grab some paint and paint them silver again!
This is it next to the other fork





I even decided to see if soda blasting them would help with removing the anodizing or whatever it is on there... Ive never soda blasted before so wasn't sure what it was going to do. In all honesty, it basically cleaned the stuff i was testing it on, rather than removing the paint as such.


You can see the little clean patch it started to make on the rearset when i was trying it\testing it.


Anyway, that was enough for that fork for now, i'll wait till I get to bunnings tomorrow morning and see what the people there suggest\etc.

So i pulled the other fork apart, to find the seal starting to rust from the inside out Sorry about the shitty pic! There was definately moisture thats got in there, possibly water in the tube before. Probably a good reason to put new dust seals on forks for anyone else in future doing this (you buy the fork seal and dust caps together from honda in the same packet).



And the polished forks with new bushes


The other fork i tried to scrape clean


Only thing I was a little worried about, was this sleeve (at the bottom of the pic), which came out of the fork. I thought these stayed in the fork and weren't able to be removed? Anyway, it was rattling in the bottom of it when i was pulling the forks apart and the rebound spring was also stuck in there, which took a bit to get out! The other bike this part stayed in the fork, and one of these forks its stayed in, this is the only one ive experienced it coming out!
Will have a read of the manual tomorrow and check


And thats it for today. More to come tomorrow, hopefully finish the forks either polishing or spraying and will then start on cleaning\rebuilding the carbies with new o-rings.

[Madman]

So I left the forks as they were at the moment, until I get back from Sydney. Heading off in about 7 hours, so should probably be sleeping, lol!

I did get to bunnings and got some paint...
Etch Primer, case paint, engine enamel for the forks and flame proof stuff for the headers



Then decided to rebuild the carbies instead anyway



found a wasps nest which came out one of the overflow pipes


and all apart and yes i did take out the mixture screws aswell and set them back to standard (was pretty much standard anyway already).


and bowls after a damn good clean, came up good


look at all the shit that came out and off of them!


and cleaned


Anyway, till next weekend

[Dn-01]

You're doing a great job on this..nicely done and so orderly too.

[nappa4eva]

good job mate. its going to feel great to fire up for the first time!

[dansher]

did u get to make any progress this weekend? i need my sad panda fix lol

[Madman]

hahaha, thanks guys!!

@dansher - nahh mate, ive kinda lost a little motivation. Im thinking about getting some polishing pads though for my bench grinder to see if I can give the polishing thing a better go rather than just hitting it with the wire brush. That way I can do the top tripples clamp, possibly clipons, rearsets, forks, possibly even the swingarm, etc... to see if i can get them shiny or at least a bit better than they are

I'll get you an update on the weekend