Rolling Chassis

I've done a huge amount of work lately and have taken many photos, but tonight, things came together and I'll only show the final result. I've paid attention to every last detail while putting it together. Every washer has been polished or replaced with stainless steel, everything has been restored to a brand new condition, or better.

I think I can finally claim a 'rolling chassis':
and with the right shock on, this time (I'm waiting for a new bolt for the bottom of the shock. Stock was too stripped to use I realized at the last moment)

Love it or hate it, it's been bobbed for real. Just enough room for my butt and a tiny rear cowling. Cowling will overhang the end of frame a bit.
And for comparison sake, I plopped the original seat on the top. My seat will sit much lower and there will be very little gap between bottom of seat and frame.

On the way is a complete photo documentation of my front-porch home-brew anodizing setup. I just finished anodizing my brakelight mount, rearsets, and rear shock pieces with excellent results. More to come soon...

Progress Post 3/9/09

See my beautiful triple clamp! All painted and mounted up on the bike:
Detail views:

Final Drive painting project

My final drive was in bad shape as you can see from the as bought photos below:

I debated on powdercoating it and then decided not to as it might compromise the tolerances.
What else can I do but paint it?

The step by step process I took was:
1) strip and degrease
2) beadblast
3) treat and clean the aluminum
4) sand
5) fill any dents (or some of them)
6) sand out
7) etch primer - 2 coats
8) high build primer - 4 coats
9) sand out
10) spray high build where I sanded through to metal
11) sand out
12) color coat - 2 coats
13) clear coat - 4 coats

I didn't photograph every step of this incredibly tedious process but here's some of the shots:
Freshly blasted:
Submerged in 140 degree alumiprep for 5 minutes:
Drying out:
Application of METAL2METAL filler:
Sanded out:

Here's the paint line up:
And the final product, shot inside my makeshift paint booth:
And outside in the sun:
I had my camera on auto white balance so the color temps are different and the color therefore looks a little different.
As you can see, I decided to go with yellow to match the frame. It was either black, silver or yellow. Silver would never match the swingarm properly, black looks bad, so I had my paint shop custom mix me up a color and put it in a spray can. Took the guy 4 days to get it right and it's pretty dead on.

I'm letting the clear cure out for another couple of days before I rebuild it. I used a real deal 2-part urethane clear coat in a special one time use spraycan.

Brakelight bracket - redux

I got distracted with the process when making my brakelight bracket and shaped it to the frame cross pieces instead of rounding it. So, I did it over.
Here's the shots.

Basic shape:

Drilled out and shaped:

Sanded out:

Fit up on the bike:

Again, it will be etched and then anodized black.