The Never Ending Refurbishing of a Dream

[Greggie-e]

Hi Clarence,
Great looking bike, and a worthy project.
I will give you my opinion on your questions, but i am no expert...
Paint remover will harm the vinyl. If you want to try it put a little bit on a part of the vinyl that you can't see.
You will have to delace your wheels to put on new rims anyway so why not take them off and show them to a professional chromer. They can tell you if they are too far gone and the cost to clean them up a lot easier than I can from a picture. Now days they can do some pretty special things to make wheels look new again. But then that is only helpful to a point where it is cheeper to buy new ones.
I think welding the aluminum plte will discolor the paint. If you use two largish washers on each hole (one either side) it should disguise the tear and hold the plate with enough force so that the problem does not get worse. Alternatively here in Australia the police have a system where they will replace your old number plates with newly made ones that look exactly the same for $20 or so. Not sure if you guys have this option, but worth checking out.

Cheers,
Greg

[clarenceada]

Greg:
I was going to say that I've been too busy to post, but the truth is I've had such a aggravating time getting this Dream painted that I haven't looked at this for 6 months, so sorry for not thanking you for you input. To keep my excuses tractable let me number them:

1. None of the local car shop would give me a quote for less then $1500

2. finally found a "custom car shop" that would do it for $500 + body work
(they had a replica Cobra in their showroom with BEAUTIFUL job) said it would take 2 weeks.

3. Noticed that the guy they assigned to my Dream was a young (read:inexperienced) fellow that hadn't shaved in a week and looked like he didn't get enough sleep the night before. (The experienced painters were doing a $10,000 job on a 1953 Plymouth---ech)

4. found out they expected me to furnish the paint----@ $240 quart

5. Talked to the "girls" at the paint shop, they needed a paint code, found code after much looking, go to shop, code don't work, say they can read color with camera, go home (25 mi. trip one way) get side cover, come back, camera doesn't work, have to pick color from book, color that seemed to match original-----they don't have the right pigments and would take 2 weeks to get it------pick a Toyota color, take to painter.

6. Finally after much delay, and 3 months they give me my frame and parts back and as I was looking at them laid out precariously on some boxes, one of the workers came up and told me that I scratched the paint by moving them around to look at them.

7. Get bill, $500 for paint and $1000 for redoing the battery box:-0

8. Take parts home and notice many sags and rough spots in paint but the worst was I tried to clean off a speck of dirt and the paint pelled off with my finger nails.

9. painter says that it was after 30 days and they had no liability---lost cause

10. so after recuperating from this set back 3 months later I find another paint shop---supposed to be good at powder coating and take the Dreams front hub in to be bead blasted and after a month (said a week) I call them and their phone number was disconnected, so I panic thinking they went out of business and I would lose my hub I ran right over and pick-ed up my hub which had only been sand blasted (said the boss was going to spray it the next day---ya right) which comes to a question that maybe someone here could answer: Is it ok to sandblast aluminum if your going to powder coat, as it fills in the roughness, or should it be bead blasted (plastic) Here is a couple of picture of my hub after they sandblasted it:

IMG]http://i758.photobucket.com/albums/xx22 ... 300040.jpg[/IMG]



IMG]http://i758.photobucket.com/albums/xx22 ... 300043.jpg[/IMG]



This hub was smooth if dirty before they got it, I'm just wondering if I should insist that the next shop (dread) use beads:




Clarence
p.s. Thanks Greg

[G-Man]

Clarence

You could buy a compressor, bead blast cabinet and some paint spray equipment for those prices. Much more fun to do it yourself anyway. Sandblasting the hub doesn't do it any favours but bead blasting will smooth out some of the imperfections. This stuff is too precious to leave it to idiots.

This is my effort with the CL77 so far.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3527/383 ... 811a_o.jpg

Blue paint cost around $30 for 1/2 litre - plenty for this project

G

[clarenceada]

G:
Great looking paint job! What brand of paint are you using? Is it powder coat?

I thought about getting a sandblaster last year before I started on the Dream, but the cost of the equipment was more then I wanted to spend, compared to a $500 paint job. Now I see I could have spent $1750 (what i have in cash out-lay on paint job) and got a nice cabinet and had money left over for a large air compressor. At that time I was only doing one bike; but now I am fixing up 2-3 ct90's and being able to at least sandblast the parts would save a lot of time and money. The other thing that stopped me last year was sandblasting the frame and having a cabinet large enough to fit it in---same goes for the 90's frames--- I tried to sand down the Dream frame by hand, takes for ever. What about a free-standing sandblaster?

I looked around a bit and found this thread on making your own sanding cabinet:

http://www.honda305.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4442

Is the cabinet used just to keep the sand from flying all over or dose it collect the sand to be reblown by the spray gun. I have an old pick-up canopy with glass windows that could be used by standing on it's side and enclosing it with plywood; make for a big box---8ft long.

If not I found this on e-bay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/New-Sand ... veQ5fTools

Which can take almost a 3ft. long item, not too expensive. What would cost the most is a new air compressor, the one I got is only a 2 1/2hp, one that put out 12cfm is at least $1000 new but I found one that has been reconditioned by Northern tools for $399:

http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/ ... _200396620

This one is 11.5cfm, is that close enough?

What set-up do you have?

Thanks for the suggestion, It's always nice when I can rationalize buying new tools, now all I have to do is convince "She who must be obeyed"

Clarence

[jensen]

Hi Clarence,

Powder coating : It's a cheap way to protect it in further live, especially for a plate steel frame as the dream has. Find a good powder coater, and look at parts he already coated before.

After powder coating in a base color (mostly RAL numbers), sand it and you can spray it yourself, as explained in previous mails.

Never blast aluminum with grid, it will destroy the surface and opens the structure. It's the best way to collect aluminum oxide, but I'm sure you don't want that. Beat blasting is less aggressive. Take a very fine beat, it is expensive but worth the trouble. The surface of the aluminum will be perfect, and will close the surface (microscopic holes will be closed). Combined with a low pressure you should be able to bead blast the carb, but small particles and low pressure does the magic.

The reason that company's won't do that is TIME, it takes hours to bead blast the engine cases this way, but the results are a perfect finish and a closed structure, once sprayed with WD40 also not oxidizing anymore. For hubs you could choose to spray with clear coat.

If you're are planning to beat blast more, it's wise to buy blasting tools, otherwise not. Don't forget that the beat itself, especially the fine stuff is expensive. Bead blasting consumes a lot of pressed air, so the costs are not the bead blast cabinet but the compressor you need and the bead itself.

If you are blasting to paint it after, it's important to make the surface rough, that makes the paint more adhesive to the surface.

some figures :

bead for hubs : 100-200 micron
bead for cylinder / head : 50 - 100 micron or smaller
bead for engine cases : 50 - 100 micron or smaller
bead for carbs : 10 - 50 micron

the pressure is depending on your wishes and patience, but varies between 1 to 3 bar, or even lower, but that also depends on your gun.

The time I need for a carb (10 to 50 micron) and 1 bar pressure is 0,5 hour.
(for my Honda CB400 it took almost three ours, but it's having a very natural look)

results (one year ago I beat blasted these) :

http://www.flickr.com/photos/40215250@N04/3768594968/

Jensen

[G-Man]

Hi Clarence

I paint with 'clear over base' and the blue color there is an English Rover car color. For cleaning big items I have used a sandblaster in the open using a pressure washer as the motive force. This gives an nice sheen to alloy parts and uses cheap sand (has to be dry). You get incredibly wet and covered in sand but if you do it on the back lawn it just becomes part of the soil.

My blast cabinet (cost around $200 in US money) will just about fit a cylinder head with room to manoeuvre.

I paint outdoors on sunny days with a small gravity feed spraygun and 8cfm compressor. I've done many bikes with this setup and have not found any problems with durability with cellulose or clear over base paints. If I am in a hirry to get things done, I heat up the workshop after wheeling out all of my other projects or covering them up.

This is my CL77 tank done in my 'al fresco' paint booth.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2486/383 ... 79c2_o.jpg


Here are a couple more done in the same way

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1246/101 ... 101e_o.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3120/270 ... f52b_o.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3530/379 ... 4436_o.jpg

I find that having your own equipment adds to the enjoyment and you can do a project piece by piece when you have time. You also save a pile of cash and have only one person to blame if it doesn't come out right!

I have owned the 400F from new but it got into a terrible state when I was riding it to / from University in the 70s. The engine was cleaned by hand (no blasting) and the cases painted with Simoniz '5 wheel silver'

Have fun!

G

[davomoto]

Graham, I'd love to see more pics of the street tracker. I'm building one from a CL77. The seat fender looks awsome, as does the whole bike!

davomoto