Honda C200
Seeing it was my day off I got up at 6am and went at the engine. I spent most of the day buffing the aluminum parts. I decided to paint one side cover because after I had it buffed it looked like too much chrome on that side so I bead blasted it and applied the paint and I'm glad I went that way now.
I removed the carb and checked it out. Yuck, it was bad so I rebuilt it and buffed it as well. Hard to buff the small parts because it's hard to get a grip on them plus they get hot fast while buffing. Glad I had the sense to purchase a carb kit. It came in handy today. I snapped a pic of the cans I used to clean up the motor. I would advise anyone doing it this way to have a gasket kit as well. You just can't paint the complete motor without taking some of the stuff apart plus it looks more professional when you can see the new gaskets between the painted parts. Anyway enough of this boring stuff. Here's the finished motor! Paul
Cecil that's a good question you asked there. As a matter of fact, I've been emailing pictures of the restoration of the bikes to the man in Ottawa, Ontario that I purchased them from and when he seen them he asked the same question. I kind of knew it would generate allot of interest :) It kind of keeps a normally boring thread interesting I guess. To tell the truth I used basically all I could find to get into the hard to reach places. I removed all I could remove from the carb and I also used a new 10 buffing wheel. Was it hard to do? You bet and it takes time and buffing is a big mess with all kinds of dust bunnies flying off the buffing wheels. When you get the majority of the carb buffed you'll have to dig into getting into the hard to get at sections and to do this I used Q-Tips and Autosol in the paste. One guy came into the shop as I was finishing up and cleaning the shop. I had the motor cover up and when he removed the rag off the motor he said "I thought there was no one to do chroming in Newfoundland" He couldn't believe that could be accomplished by buffing. The more time you put into it, the better the results. To get that motor to look like it is in the picture too 15 hours but I did spend two of them repairing a crack. Glad you like it. Thanks, Paul
I don't know about that Michael. I'm certainly no expert in this field and I guess the point I'm trying to make is "anyone can do it" I'm an auto tech by trade so that sure don't make me an expert in vintage motorcycle restoration and I guess I should add the statement "Don't try this at home" but thanks to this forum and although not many post about this stuff there's allot of interest in it because of the hits these restorations get so that's why I continue to do it and post each step. A year ago when I started out at this hobby I had a hard time finding information on how to restore a bike and I hardly knew where to start but I've developed a system that works for me. It might be wrong in the way others do it but it works for me so each to his own I guess. There's allot of folks looking at this stuff on this site because I get emails about it all the time. Other sites have included links to this site of these restorations so that's nice to see as well. I appreciate your comments and I still think It's one of the best sites on the web and that's why I'm still around. Paul
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