Winging it

Last night I went out and started with this:

and managed to turn it into this:

It's still pretty cluttered up, but it's actually a pretty big improvement. Along the way, I did a little more disassembly on the '84 so that it's almost just the frame at this point. The wiring harness is still intertwined, the clutch hydraulics are still on, and I think the rear brake reservoir is still there, but otherwise, it's the frame plus the front forks.

I still haven't checked the fan yet, but I did get a new left side mirror in the mail yesterday, so whenever the title arrives in the mail, I'll be able to get it inspected by the sheriff.

Seals may not be available through Honda but check EBay and dealers for old inventory. You can also measure the OD of the seal, the width, and the shaft size, and look it up in a seal catalog.

For the seals, there have been a lot of people asking for a part number and claiming to be thumbing through catalogs for a seal in the right size, but on all the forums out there, I haven't found anyone yet that was able to actually post up any part numbers. There are probably some NOS ones out there somewhere (along with piston rings, apparently), and if I ever see them, I'll snatch them up just to have them. Some people swear that the seal for a Gl1500 will fit fine, but others claim that it doesn't work because the 1500 rotates the wrong direction. That sounds kinda sketchy to me, but that's what I hear.

I think I may have gotten the overheating problem fixed tonight. I took the sides of the fairing off so I could get to the cooling fan and when I jumped it with a battery, it spun just like it should. The next thing to look at was the thermostatic switch and when I got in there, this is what I saw:

The wires had come apart right at the connector. Fortunately, I've got an extra wiring harness, so I went ahead and snipped off the connector. As it turns out, this was one of those thing that seems doomed to fail -- the way it was crammed into the other bike, the wires were starting to abrade as well, so I used some tape and heat shrink tubing to shore that up. I get it all reconnected like so:

Tomorrow, I'll take it out and get it good and hot and see if the fan comes on.

The fan still does not come on. I think I may just wire up a fan switch and control it manually. The bike cools just fine out on the open road, but sitting in traffic or at a particularly long series of red lights will get the temp into the danger zone.

In other news, I acquired primer, base, clear, 3M 5200, and a lot of sandpaper. I've got a bag, the front fender, and one side panel sanded down and ready for bodywork and I'm just wiped out.

No new pictures, unfortunately, but I was out of town and Rallycrossing so I didn't do too much with the bike the last few days. Tonight, however, I took the trunk apart and got the lid sanded down. Also, I did a little test-spray of the primer to see how well it builds and how easily it sprays and I think it's going to work out fairly well to cover the sanding scratches.

I've got the lower part of the trunk and the battery side cover left of the parts that are not currently attached to the '87. Once those are sanded, though, it'll be time to take the bike off the road so I can begin working on the fairing and the left and right lower fairing bits. I also need to find and buy the lower cowl bar that goes across the bottom of the radiator.

914Driver wrote: I did one a few years ago, currently have a 1977 1000 in the garage. Torque, low center of gravity; you can surprise a lot of profilers out there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7BHYhN3390

Is that your bike in the video? What is that single gauge you have on there? Where did you get it?

Absolutely beat from work today. Thinking about trying to ride the orange machine to work tomorrow, so I put the new left side mirror on the bike. Thought really hard about sanding down the lower part of the trunk, but I'm just too tired.

Wow, its very cool to see these big old cruisers turned into something more nimble and sporty. I recently picked up a little Honda Rebel 250 and am playing with it in a similar way. I'm basically removing all of the unnecessary bits but also building it to take off-road on an occasional dirt path or trail when I spot one.

It's been way too long since I've updated, but then I haven't accomplished much. Basically, everything except the main front fairing is pretty much sanded down and ready for primer. I am planning to sand and paint the front fairing on the bike rather than trying to take it off and put it back on -- there's just too many parts to worry about there, and honestly, I think I can paint it just fine on there.

Today I purchased from eBay Motors a new lower center cowl piece since both bikes were missing that as well as three new side cover pegs/posts that I can epoxy onto the existing left side cover. Tonight, I plan to get the front fairing sanded down and ready for primer.

One other problem that I'm having is getting in to the various crevices of some of the parts to get them sanded down. I'm going to look in to Dremel bits/tools that might get the job done without damaging the ABS.

A good portion of the weekend was consumed by watching F1 and re-starting the deck re-finishing project, however, I did get out to the garage to make a little more progress. The front fairing is de-oranged and needs to be wet sanded to take the scratches out. It also has some gouges that will need to be filled. I’ve wet-sanded most of the rest of the plastic, and used some 3M marine adhesive to fill in some deeper gouges. Apparently, the adhesive takes 7 days to cure and I’m only in day 2 right now so we will see if it hardens up enough to sand down. But progress is being made once again!

What shade of Orange are you going to re-paint it?

bgkast wrote: What shade of Orange are you going to re-paint it?

Strange, I asked something similar but he didn't seem enthused about the idea.

I was thinking about a somewhat blue shade of orange, actually =)

Well, day almost seven and the 3M 5200 adhesive is not a good choice for use as a sandable filler. Back to the drawing board...

Bummer.

Maybe just spray it a bunch of different colors and no one will notice the paint isn't smooth

Still no pictures to add, but I've started using PVC cement as a filler/repairer and it seems to be working well. I scraped and peeled the 3M stuff off and then hit the surface with more sandpaper and acetone to encourage adhesion before applying the cement to the plastic. It has to go on in fairly thin layers, otherwise you get a ton of air bubbles and pinholes, but through a regimen of application, sanding, application, sanding, and so on, the plastic panels are smoothing out and taking shape. At this point, one of the saddle bag lids, the main tank cover, the side fairings, the right side cover, the lower cowl bit, the trunk lid, and the trunk trim bit are all ready for primer. The main fairing is going to stay on the bike and get painted in place, so I'm fixing to do that last. The remaining bits still have some build-up and sand-down work to be done before they're ready to have a final wet-sand to be ready for primer. I have tried putting the PVC cement on some of the panels and giving them some pretty serious flex and I haven't seen any problems with the fill cracking, stressing, delaminating, or any other issues, so I'm pretty hopeful that this will wind up looking good. From what I can tell, the PVC cement is basically PVC fillings suspended in MEK and once the MEK evaporates, the PVC hardens and just becomes plastic. By sanding down the paint and using a little acetone to soften up the underlying plastic, the PVC and the ABS should be bonding pretty tightly.

While the PVC was drying last night, I took the opportunity to get some PVC piping that I had left over to build a frame for painting the parts. It's fairly small diameter pipe (1.5", I think?) and I basically just made a quick bar-on-a-stand out of it so that I can use bent-up wire hangers to suspend the plastic body bits in order to be able to get them well covered. I've also started covering the various bolt-holes in the panels with duct tape from the un-painted side and will work on getting them masked the rest of the way as Paint Day get closer.

Wow, so this hasn't been updated since August. I guess the good news is that I haven't done anything since August, either... Most of my time in the garage over the summer was spent putting transmissions in the Neon, and as a result the motorcycle side of the garage has turned into a horror show of disorganization and disaster. I started organizing things a little bit a couple weeks ago and finally got the Goldwing project unearthed so I can try to get this thing wrapped up finally.

Two nights ago, I had the bike cleared out and all the bodywork set aside and identified (except for the left side cover, but more on that later) and was wrapping up mainly due to the dust and dirt aggravating my allergies. As my last step, I decided to just sit on the bike and enjoy it for a minute, but once I did that, I couldn’t leave it alone — I had to turn the key to see if there was any juice left in the battery. Sure enough, all the lights came on so I turned the choke, flipped the run switch on, and hit the starter. After sitting out there in the garage for the last four or six months without being touched, it started up without any hesitation. Go Honda.

Anyway, last night I went out to find the left cover since that’s the last bit of bodywork that I need to prep. Thanks to my efforts in digging out the crap, I was able to find it in about a minute and a half. I sanded it down and used a bit of PVC cement to seal up the cracks. It’s not finished yet — I need to fill in the larger crack a bit, and then I have to find a way to clamp one of the smaller cracks to hold the plastic together, but I should be able to get that wrapped up tonight and then I can start painting soon!

I've got my PVC-and-sheeting paint booth set up in the garage and have started getting things colorized finally. I've already gone through three tall cans of primer and there's plenty left to do, so that activity got delayed for a while. In the meantime, I decided to go ahead and try shooting some color onto the sides of the faux tank. The close-up pictures make it look really turquoise, but it's a much darker blue than that. It needs a couple more coats before I'm ready to consider it ready for wet sanding and then I'll hit it with clear, but so far, I'm pretty happy with how it's turning out. Not bad for some rattlecans.

Shooting the primer:

Adding some color:

(that bit in the bottom left is some sort of glare or reflection. And I swear it isn't that light of a blue)

I like the blue

Going for this look?

I swear! It's not that shade of blue! =)

Although, if I would had seen that picture before I got started... the Gulf livery on a 'wing would be pretty epic...

The whole paint thing was moving along, but really slowly, until I had this exchange with a coworker:

"Why are you painting it?"

"Because it's ORANGE!"

"No, I mean, why use paint?"

"To change the color?"

"Yeah, but why not vinyl wrap it?"

"Oh, I can't do that because...". Pause. "Heyyyyy...!"

So I went out and picked up some 3M 1080 Gloss Blue Metallic wrap from an eBay seller along with a felt-covered squeegee, some knifeless tape, a bottle of propane, a set of silicone kitchen spatulas, and some denatured alcohol.

I started out just under a month ago with a 2'x5' section of the blue by doing the flattest piece I could find: the gas door for the top of the faux tank. I had to do it twice because I didn't have the surface clean enough the first time and got a bunch of bumps in the vinyl, but once I tore off the vinyl, scraped the surface, and re-applied a fresh sheet, I had this:

I moved from that to one of the side box lids and wound up with this:

The lid was a real learning experience. I will probably go back and re-do it to get it right because I was foolishly trying to wrap the whole top with one sheet of vinyl and no seams. Maybe it can be done, but I'm not skilled enough to do that. By heating and stretching to get the wrinkles out of the corners, I managed to stretch a hole in the vinyl, so I had to cut out a section and put in a new piece to cover it, and then on the opposite corner, I just couldn't get the wrinkles out, so I had to do another cut. You can see one of the seams in the picture and it's fairly obvious, but I'm going to wait until everything else is completed before I try to lay new vinyl on it.

What I've found is that I can do a much better job with the vinyl than I am capable of doing with paint. It takes a lot less time for me, the house doesn't stink of paint, and I can go out and work on it for a little while at a time instead of being committed to a certain amount of work. Honestly, I don't think I'll ever try to use paint again.

Once I had those parts done, I realized that this was just the best way to go, so I ordered up another 30' of the blue plus a foot or so of some carbon fiber print for some of the trim work. Everything had to stop for a few days while I waited for the additional supplies.

I've been working on it for a couple hours a night, minus a week that I was in Vegas and minus the few days that I was waiting on the bigger roll to be shipped. Some of the parts have been pretty straightforward, but I've been pretty generous with the knifeless tape, putting in seams right on the corners and using multiple smaller pieces. I've experimented with some non-overlapping butt seams, but oddly they come out looking worse than when I use a 1-2mm overlap. With the butt seam, you get a pretty defined line, but with the overlap it just looks like more of a bump than a seam.

As of last night, I have three bits left to do: The flat trim panel that goes on the bottom of the top box, under the tail light; the left side box; and the part that will be done on the bike: the front fairing. I haven't checked in the last few days, but I think my estimate of 30' of vinyl may have been a bit high, but that will give me some extras to keep for repairs in the future, to re-do a couple trouble spots, and/or for other projects (I'm thinking matching helmets might be cool).

I also have the carbon fiber vinyl that I did the bottoms of the side covers in, and I may try to do the inside of the front fairing in order to spruce that up a little. We'll see, though. Once the vinyl wrap is complete, I'm going to look into getting some new chrome fasteners for the places where the bolts are visible. The existing bodywork will need to come off the bike, and I'll need to get the lights and reflectors installed on the wrapped parts. With the bodywork off, I'm going to send out the spare wheels for new tires and reseal and re-oil the suspension and put new brake pads on and change the brake fluid. Then I need to do the timing belts, change the coolant and oil, replace the seal on the gear shift, and put a new fan thermostat switch on. With the wheels back on and the fluids changed, I'll get the bodywork re-attached and be ready to go get a license plate.

Here's where it's at so far. By bye orange!

Side cover with carbon fiber accent:

Hanging the pieces on the bike for encouragement:

Future view from the top:

The hardest part on the bike. Took me about 4 hours yesterday:

Wow! That looks great! The carbon fiber bits are a nice touch!
That last part must have been insanely hard to do.

Im going to have to try wrapping something. You make it look easier than paint.

The hive demands a wrapping tutorial.