I had to buy used covers and they came with screws. I had been buying all sorts of new screws for the project (more $$!) and I decided to cheap out on those and polish the existing ones. New stainless cap screws will look killer against the bronzy gray metallic.

The factor that is a little more overwhelming to me than the money spent is the "do over" factor. It seems like I have done so many things twice to get it right on this bike. My latest is I rebuilt the Fox shock and found that when I tried to cleverly mount the reservoir on the CDI mounting bracket (CDI moves under the seat) the straight ended two foot reservoir hose I bought collides with the right passenger peg bracket. So today I am installing a 45 degree hose adapter. That means pulling the shock off, taking it apart, draining the oil, installing the adapter, refilling and re purging the air and pumping it up before reinstalling. Deja vu, all over again.Then there was the two paint jobs on the frame, the redos on the vinyl wrap, the tire I stupidly mounted backwards ( I swear I checked it twice), and I'm sure a few more things I'm forgetting. All in all a major learning experience.

 

I hear ya...I've had a few of those too. I rebuilt the forks only to find oil leaking on my new paint...good thing I used the good stuff. But, I have to take the fork tubes off and find out what's wrong. Ordered new seals, O-rings and dust boots...again.


We'll get there...and like you said we will be CBR experts when we're through.

 

Got back in the build groove yesterday. Fox shock reservoir is now mounted. I used a rubber cushioned pipe mount from Mcmaster-Carr attached to the bottom tab of the CDI mount, bent vertical. 2 foot long braided paintball supply line attaches with a 90 degree adapter at the shock body, and with a 45 degree adapter on the reservoir end to clear the passenger peg mount. The anodized clicker **** on the reservoir was a very faded and dinged up pink, so I overshot it with the Krylon X-metal clear red I used on the wheels. Freshened it up pretty nicely.





I finally brought my good camera home from the office and took a shot of the front wheel and fender. The fake carbon fiber doesn't show up too well on phone cameras, but here you can see the texture and color scheme I am shooting for. The large areas are standard black 4D carbon fiber vinyl. The center stripe is gray, and the red stripes are 3M reflective red pinstriping, which looks pretty orange in the flash.

Discs and fork sliders are from ebay. Fork paint is Rustoleum texture paint. Forks have been rebuilt and filled with 7.5W Silkolene. Wheels balanced with Counteract beads. You can just see the cap end of the right angle tire valve at about two o'clock on the wheel. By the way if you decide to try the Counteract beads I suggest forgetting trying to push them through the valve stem. It's much easier to break the bead and pour them in between the tire bead and wheel rim.

 

Nice! Looking good.


Since I couldn't work on the bike itself this weekend, I decided to finally finish the tank. It took me a while because I removed the side indents where the seat used to go...wanted a clean look. Then figuring out how to get the Hurricane tank to look like the Playboy theme took me a while. The Hurricane tank is much bigger and all the schemes I came up with looked wrong...after a lot of playing this is what I came up with.

 

Wow, super crisp lines! The fill of the indent is invisible and I really like the black around the edge.

 

Thanks! I waited to do the tank until the end to make sure I had my technique down. There are tricks to getting crisp lines. Use good tape. 3M makes a green masking that is really good for getting nice lines. Then I go over the paint side edges with my fingernail to make sure the tape is down tight. I also make sure I lay down a good 3 coats of paint and then sand and polish the edges (and the whole surface but the edges usually need to be brought down slightly...that's the reason for good paint thickness so you don't go through to the base coat. I prep the paint just like you would finished surface and then apply clear coat. The picture of the tank is before clear coat. It will look like glass once clear coated and polished.


I added the black around the edges to get the tank to fade into the frame when mounted, also to accent the color change and to make the tank look smaller. It's a bit of a visual trick to try and reduce the size of the Hurricane tank...it will be interesting to see if it works on the bike.

 

I've been ruminating about trim for the fuel tank edge. The little rubber riser blocks on the stock setup were obviously spec'd with the idea that the bottom edge of the tank would be hidden behind the edge of the midfairing. So I'm thinking of using some kind of trim to keep the tank bottom off the frame and fill in the exposed gap between them a little better. Here are the choices I have come up with so far -

McMaster-Carr

McMaster-Carr

I'm leaning toward the first one from a standpoint of functionality, but I suspect the second would look better.

I'm also ruminating about that oil cooler. At this point I am talking myself into changing the aluminum plates that adapt the upper fairing mount to the frame to a pair of steel ones. I would weld a "tongue" between the bottom edges of the two plates, and that tongue would project forward several inches, ending in a T that could mount the oil cooler just below the fairing. Using steel would not only allow easy welding but also make it a bit more rigid so that somewhere in the middle of the length I would also be able to drill a hole to attach a GXSR electronic steering damper I bought.

 

The second one is like what I using. The first one is too tall.

 

Yup, second one is what I ended up ordering. Been heading to the garage each day after work. Exhaust system is now in place. Looks like my next step is caliper rebuilds. Going to blast them down and do them with silver caliper paint. Brake lines will all be stainless and I will be trying out a 929 master cylinder for the fronts. Had to do a trade show last weekend and gotta go away to a cousin's long wedding weekend in the San Juan Islands on Friday and I feel like I just got back in town from the last trip. This summertime schedule really cuts into build time.

 

Yes hard to find time. Hope to get the engine prepped this weekend.