CL77 - Project Identity Crisis

Kickstart · Post by **Kickstart** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 9:11 pm

Well, it's been four months. It's been a busy summer so far.

I have made a little progress over those months... just haven't posted in a while

I've stripped down the tank, de-rusted the inside, found a couple holes, patched them up and lined the tank.
I'm getting a lot of heat for patching the holes with JB Weld on the SOHC4 forum:
http://forums.sohc4.net/index.php?topic=137054
I really should have solder/brazed the holes closed... but, uhm, I didn't. We'll see if that comes back to bite me.

I put my tumbler to good use... I pretty much dumped all of the bolts, nuts, screws, etc. into it to clean them up.
I had a can of 2k clear spray paint I was using on another project, and since you only have 48 hours to use the paint after you activate it I decided to give everything a clear coat while I was painting my other stuff.

Longevity wise, the right way to do this would have been to send everything out to get a fresh zinc coating (or get one of those plating kits to do it myself), but since I'm trying to keep the costs down I think this will do for now.

Decided to knock down some of the rust off the frame before painting... As I was doing this I realized there were little rust spots all over the place. This turned into more of a complete paint stripping with a bunch of wire wheels (and some of those paint/rust remover wheels). Hello lead paint dust!

It was getting late, and there were still a few spots I want to wire wheel, so I sprayed everything with some Eastwood Fast Etch to take car of any rust in crevices I couldn't get to, and to prevent any flash rust until next weekend.

Kickstart · Post by **Kickstart** » Mon Aug 18, 2014 8:20 pm

Doing some laundry :)

So, yeah... much harder than I thought it would be, and I'm sure it wasn't good for my health mechanically stripping all that paint (yes, I wore a mask... but still).

Also, if you add up the cost of rust remover jell, fast etch, 3 cans of eastwood primer, 5 cans of Rustoleum Painter's touch (apple red), and a various metal brush / paint remover attachments for my drill - I probably spent close to $150. I've got to say, two days of back braking work - might have been better off paying the extra $150 to get everything powder coated.

Oh, yeah, I'm thinking about putting a final coat of a clear 2k on it (to give it some oil and gas resistance)... so that's probably going to be another $40.

Still... it feels good to make some solid progress. I didn't take a picture right before I painted, but I had everything stripped down pretty nicely (only a tiny pit of original paint left in a few hard to reach crevices).

Kickstart · Post by **Kickstart** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 8:53 pm

Also making some progress on the tank.

Two coats of Casewell tank liner on the inside, and so far I've got three coats of Bondo Fiber on the outside.

deafanddiabetic · Post by **deafanddiabetic** » Wed Aug 20, 2014 4:33 pm

I think you did alright with the tank. If one isn't seeking perfection, there's nothing wrong with working with that you've got.

I just finished a 66' Dream 250 and it had terrible rusting, dents in the chrome, etc. I battled wanting to spend the money to have it professionally painted, but it felt better to try it myself and frankly the eyesores that I notice are things no one else who's seen it even cared.

Project on, it's looking great!

Kickstart · Post by **Kickstart** » Thu Aug 21, 2014 8:56 pm

Thanks for the encouragement!

Yeah, my plan is to just get her running and looking half decent, in a relatively short time, without throwing too much money at it.

I figure a few years down the road I'll see how things have held up and re-do specific problem areas more thoroughly.