Sunday, February 22, 2009

The Real Thing

Real progress this weekend! I got the parts I need to have stripped to the media blaster on Saturday. A few days and a few bucks should have them all ready for priming. The fork tubes were chromed but the plating was pitted and peeling in more places than not. They're going to be stripped and I'm going to paint them. Prime for now until I decide on the final paint scheme. Dupli-Color has some chrome paint I may try or I may just go with silver to match the tank and some of the other pieces I'm planning to paint silver.


I also got a litter of other parts sanded and primed. I wanted to get the hubs primed and painted so I can start to build wheels as soon as I locate spokes. I figured I'd get everything I had ready sanded and primed at the same time while I was at it. You can see my little painting setup here. When I'm ready to do the painting I'm going to have to setup a 'booth' inside my garage to eliminate the possibility of dust and to cut the wind. This setup worked fine for the first coats of primer though.

The other task I started, and am still working on, is polishing the rims. I've always heard Coke was a good chrome polish, able to remove stubborn deposits from the surface without damaging the finish, but never tried it. I figured it was one of those things everyone says works but nobody has ever tried so my results would be poor. Well, it WORKS. And it works well. The before and after shots below are my testament. The before picture, mind you, was after a LOT of rubbing with steel wool alone. It did a fair job of getting rid the rust spots but the addition of Coke made a world of difference. Same medium steel wool was used but adding the Coke required much less time and gave much better results.

The first picture was after blotting the coke on the rust spots. The second picture was after a bit of rubbing with the steel wool. Don't get me wrong, this is still not an easy process. It takes a lot of elbow grease to get the chrome shining through again but without the Coke no amount of rubbing got the same results.
Before Coke treatment.

After a good rub down.

I may have located another cub owner/enthusiast who has some old wheels he may be willing to grab a few spokes from for me. I'm trying to arrange a fair exchange. He's in Scottland, which may make things like payment and shipping more complicated. Nothing that PayPal and AirMail can't cure, I suspect.

That's it for now. Stay tuned for pictures of blasted parts and shiny rims next time.

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