"All things painting a motorcycle tank..."

WARNING!
THE FOLLOWING PHOTO'S LOOK SIMILAR TO THE LAST SEVERAL POSTS!

These pix were taken tonight, May 20th.
I sanded down all the Bondo with 80 grit and then finished with some 320 grit. I'm geting pretty sick and tired of sanding. Weighing in the scales having a nice looking paint job, or rat-bike seems to be tilting to the  side of vermin.







 Of course during the course of the work I had an inquisitive neighbour stop by and question why I started over.  I'm strongly believe in being neighbourly and a good neighbour, but sometimes a wrought iron fence would be a good thing. Or even one of those sci-fi laser ones. Cause then you could choose to have it on when needed and off when you wanted aesthetics. The Ghetto look of the wrought iron isn't usually synonymous with aesthetics.
 Four more of how I finished below te funky scrunched one. Again.

I think these scrunched ones may have to do with how I hold the camera.

Stupid camera! Operator. Or whatever.

Gonna sand the primered tank, then putty and do a final finish before I try coating with paint. 

You may be able to notice some inconsistencies with the primer job. Well guess what! A little more sanding and then I'll try shooting the red paint. I was hoping to do a gold pinstripe to outline the tank "side-edges". (I think of this as where the tank sides drop sharply and where the corners form on the side of the tank)

 I have jury duty coming up that will last ! 3 DAYS!!! That'll keep me busy when I could be blabbering on this computer. Or more importantly working on this project. Interestingly a friend who's the editor for on online news and events site (woodinvillepatch.com) made the first suggestion. I'm not sure that they'd allow a laptop with me. Initially I agreed with her statement. The more I thought about it though, this occurred to me. 

Even on the "Patch" I've done some blogging. This also has been about motorcycles. Would I rather spend time in front of a computer pecking away at the keys or be out there riding.

 Nuff said. (no offense Lisa. Btw love the look facelift one the Patch!)

Square One.

 So is today's post title referring to me, or where I'm at on this project? Both really. Though I feel more like a looser than a L-7 (square). By the way I am aware that "loser" is mispelt. Insyde joke.
 After getting different advice from 3 sources, my self confidence dropped immensely. So after a check of what my "end-goal" is I decided to sand to mostly bare metal again. This is what I ended with.

Not sure why the first pic is scrunched.

In the above photo's you note where the tank had been primer-ed before. This also indicates where the low spots in the tank are. I learned that I should really be using a sanding block. If anyone's reading this your probably telling me "Duh George!" All I can respond to that is... "Which way'd he go George, which way he go!" Another good piece of advice was to do a skim coat of Bondo to rid any of those spots. So I did. If you noted, before those pix I also finally filled the tank badge fiasco. I'm stepping up my program to try to have the "GiN" road worthy again within a week. For now back to he man-cave to sand and hopefully prime by tonight. Then I'll hammer on that tail piece and try to prep for paint.

Setback

Did some wet sanding after letting the primer dry. It looked pretty rough. Starting from 80 grit again.
Wrong or right, it's back to square one.

2 weeks into paint...

Ok, originally I'd wanted to have the bike out of commission no more than two weeks. This was the utopian dream (for me).
So quick recap. Gas leaking from tank. Seal tank with POR-15. This was my "kill-two-birds-in-one" move. This would seal the entire tank as it needed to be redone and would get the leak too! Since working on tank would also redo paint since some rust on exterior.
Well-intentioned neighbor that is knowledgeable (obviously, not with motorcycles, so much) uses fast method to get rid of tank prep overrun with grinder. Takes some of the previous body fill out that was used to cover former tank badges.
Maybe that was a medium-paced recap. Here's where I'm at today.

First I filed down the two drops from the tank seal below the petcock. Time, fifteen minutes.

Then, getting ready to Bondo, I re-primed. The original was a sandable/fill mix. This darker one is straight primer.

Concentrating on the areas where I'll be using Bindi, I sprayed the regular primer. My first shot their must have been gunk on the tip, cause for sure it was on the tank now! Seeing that I'll have to sand again I just covered most the tank with the primer. Got my dumb print in the wet primer too.
A friend who I trust more so than others, gave me a couple of bins of body work stuff today. Goal as end of today is to fill dents and complete sanding today.
Possibly another utopian vision of grandeur but I'm going to try. I feel a little closer to having it look as illustrated

Lovely pair of lumps

After sealing the tank, I threaded the petcock screws in just to flush inside. That was to keep them from getting stuck and having the stuff dribble out.
That idea worked well. On the other hand, it didn't prevent stuff from coming out the other (middle) opening. So now there's this.

I'll have to find a way to flush those down without messing up the surface to prevent leaks from below the petcock now. Also did some sanding of the primer with a Scotchbrite pad on the "sandable primer". Revealed more priming and sanding needed. Guess my goal for completion has moved to June 17. Ride To Work Day...

Saturday Afternoon

Well, weatherman said that we should expect rain this weekend. Guess what? He was wrong! Surprise. Spent my morning volunteering time to help teach others and then got home. Was planning to go mountain biking but that didn't happen. So with some unoccupied time I started thinking about the "GiN". From there I checked youtube for paint ideas. This is what I found http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MsVWj3fGkY. I plan on using the info, but also recognized that I had to get off my rear and get to work. Hopefully this will turn the tank and tail-piece into something that looks pretty nice. Started work on the tail-piece. Took a good amount of time just to cut it our from my stock aluminum. I had started cutting into it with the poor mans method, which is pictured. Time to completion 1 hour! Did take a few breaks to rest my arm/hand. From there I worked on using a template for the shape I believe would work. Using poster art plexi, I painstakingly made a graph of 1" squares to try to get it close to symmetrical. Did help me too see where I was off on my template... and my graph! After marking and re-marking the lines I'd hoped would be symmetrical, went to work with the tin-snips to get the final shape. This also was challenging as I knew that if I made any mistakes I'd want them to work to my favor. Using a grinder I worked to knock off the sharp edges. Not wanting to grind too much the decision was made to hold off on anymore grinding till after it's been shaped. Sound kinda backward? This guy wouldn't disagree. The train of thought I'm hoping to employ is that when it's shaped, the edges could be ground to sit level. Right? Below is the last point I got till I was too hot and tired to move on. Aluminum was chosen for its resistance to rust, being lightweight and what I thought would be the easy task of shaping... NOT! Hope you enjoy the posts. Sorry bout the layout. will continue to work on figuring the correct placement of text so that it doesn't get placed funny and hard to follow if you choose to read this.

Been awhile.

So much has happened since the last time I wrote, I'm not sure where to begin. As the weather warmed up I started riding to work on the "Gin". Ran out of gas once. Not more than a mile from home so that was good. Destressed over work goings on. If that's one of the top reasons to ride a motorcycle I'd be sold! There's so much more though. Attended the first "unofficial" Backfire Moto in Ballard on March 17th and rode there!! Last stop before a chilly night. Northlake tavern, another first! Went to the one in April as well! Photo is of Gin alongside someone's late model cafe racer. This was a blast. Three of us were on bikes. Jason was one of those on his Virago. He's in the process of doing some custom work on his as well. Like me, he's mechanically inclined (or at least electrically as he's an electrician)and working on his first project. Preston, another great friend just got back in the game with an 84 Honda Nighthawk S. You can view the model on the following url; http://encarsglobe.com/data_images/gallery/01/honda-cb-700-sc-nighthawk/honda-cb-700-sc-nighthawk-06.jpg Just a over a week ago it was found that the Gin had gas leaking from the tank. Pinhole leak! Drained the gas, as I had of course, just filled her up. And then started the process to prep to seal the inside of the tank with a sealer. Took a whole day to sand it. There was body fill from the previous tank paint job. So the idea of a brushed steel tank with a clearcoat was out. The next day I would perform the process to seal the inside of the tank with POR 15. This would leave it looking pretty ugly. From here I would hit another snag with a know-it-all nieghbour, who granted was wanting to assist but he ended up grinding some of the body fill off when using his wire wheel grinder to scarf down some of the runs from the sealing process. Did spray primer to prevent rust, even though I'll be sanding... again.What you can't make out is the indentation from where the Suzuki badges had been before. They're definitely visible though. Oh well, more work to come.