C95 project

[skeptic]

What a beautiful job. I had a C95 - Honda Benley Touring, in High School. It was very reliable and did everything asked of it. Bought it at age 15 and upgraded to a scrambler at age 17.

Your work is very impressive.

[Geoff Hastings]

Thanks Skeptic, I appreciate your comments.
I took it for buzz on Saturday doing about 60 miles round our country lanes, it was really enjoyable, not fast, a bit gutless on a long steep hill but it did have a great smile factor. Quite a few people wanted to ask about it and some to reminisce. I also have a CA77 and while superficially they look the same I think I’m tending to prefer the smaller engined bike which I didn’t think would happen.

[Geoff Hastings]

The C95 seems determined to give me grief, the paint on the tank around the filler cap has pickled up despite leaving a clear gap between raised lip and the paint. I rubbed it back to solid paint before putting several coats of primer on and flatting to lose the step between old and new paint. I speeded up the hardening using a hair drier before applying the fresh paint, I’ll give it a couple of weeks before I apply a coat of petrol resistant lacquer and hope it doesn’t change the colour noticeably. I’ll keep you posted on the result of applying the lacquer.

[Geoff Hastings]

As promised, the result of applying the fuel resistant lacquer. Not good I’m afraid! My fault though, the instructions say to apply a thin coat, then wait a minimum of 15 minutes but no longer than one hour between coats. After one hour you should not apply any more lacquer. I previously did a tank this way and it turned out really good but for some reason this time I just applied coat after coat. The result, it won’t fully harden, it was touch dry as normal but now two months on it still is not hard enough to polish, any attempt just makes swirls. I’ll leave it now till spring and if it’s still not hardened then I’ll have to remove the lacquer and do it again properly.

[billy]

Looks nice, great work!

[Geoff Hastings]

Thanks Billy, I’ll post on here come the warmer weather if the petrol resistant lacquer has hardened up at all.

[Geoff Hastings]

As promised, an update on the paint repair. What happened was the paint around the filler cap pickled up so I had to flat it back and respray the damaged area. This was no problem and to avoid it happening again I also applied a few coats of fuel resistant lacquer. My mistake was in not following the instructions to the letter. I’d used this product on my sons tank with great results but this time I just applied three coats of lacquer without waiting the 15 minutes between coats. The result was the lacquer never really hardened, it was touch dry but would not polish. I left the tank till now hoping that a six month rest would harden it it up but no, it’s still soft so I’ve no choice but remove the lacquer and start again.