Bill's misadventures with cars and things
With rising temps getting the inside of the garage to over 50 degrees, I got the paint booth set up in the garage and got started. Due to a late basketball game tonight, I wasn’t able to get very far, but I have a couple coats of primer on a handful of panels and it’s starting to look pretty good.
Most of my time in the garage over the summer was spent putting transmissions in the Neon, and as a result the motorcycle side of the garage has turned into a horror show of disorganization and disaster. I started organizing things a little bit a couple weeks ago and finally got the Goldwing project unearthed so I can try to get this thing wrapped up finally.
Two nights ago, I had the bike cleared out and all the bodywork set aside and identified (except for the left side cover, but more on that later) and was wrapping up mainly due to the dust and dirt aggravating my allergies. As my last step, I decided to just sit on the bike and enjoy it for a minute, but once I did that, I couldn’t leave it alone — I had to turn the key to see if there was any juice left in the battery. Sure enough, all the lights came on so I turned the choke, flipped the run switch on, and hit the starter. After sitting out there in the garage for the last four or six months without being touched, it started up without any hesitation. Go Honda.
Anyway, last night I went out to find the left cover since that’s the last bit of bodywork that I need to prep. Thanks to my efforts in digging out the crap, I was able to find it in about a minute and a half. I sanded it down and used a bit of PVC cement to seal up the cracks. It’s not finished yet — I need to fill in the larger crack a bit, and then I have to find a way to clamp one of the smaller cracks to hold the plastic together, but I should be able to get that wrapped up tonight and then I can start painting soon!
Still no pictures to add, but I’ve started using PVC cement as a filler/repairer and it seems to be working well. I scraped and peeled the 3M stuff off and then hit the surface with more sandpaper and acetone to encourage adhesion before applying the cement to the plastic. It has to go on in fairly thin layers, otherwise you get a ton of air bubbles and pinholes, but through a regimen of application, sanding, application, sanding, and so on, the plastic panels are smoothing out and taking shape. At this point, one of the saddle bag lids, the main tank cover, the side fairings, the right side cover, the lower cowl bit, the trunk lid, and the trunk trim bit are all ready for primer. The main fairing is going to stay on the bike and get painted in place, so I’m fixing to do that last. The remaining bits still have some build-up and sand-down work to be done before they’re ready to have a final wet-sand to be ready for primer. I have tried putting the PVC cement on some of the panels and giving them some pretty serious flex and I haven’t seen any problems with the fill cracking, stressing, delaminating, or any other issues, so I’m pretty hopeful that this will wind up looking good. From what I can tell, the PVC cement is basically PVC fillings suspended in MEK and once the MEK evaporates, the PVC hardens and just becomes plastic. By sanding down the paint and using a little acetone to soften up the underlying plastic, the PVC and the ABS should be bonding pretty tightly.
While the PVC was drying last night, I took the opportunity to get some PVC piping that I had left over to build a frame for painting the parts. It’s fairly small diameter pipe (1.5″, I think?) and I basically just made a quick bar-on-a-stand out of it so that I can use bent-up wire hangers to suspend the plastic body bits in order to be able to get them well covered. I’ve also started covering the various bolt-holes in the panels with duct tape from the un-painted side and will work on getting them masked the rest of the way as Paint Day get closer.
Quick update: the 3M 5200 Marine Sealant does not make a good body filler. When trying to sand it down, it just peels off making a mess. I’m going to try to get some MEK and ABS shavings and try to make my own filler that way.
A good portion of the weekend was consumed by watching F1 and re-starting the deck re-finishing project, however, I did get out to the garage to make a little more progress. The front fairing is de-oranged and needs to be wet sanded to take the scratches out. It also has some gouges that will need to be filled. I’ve wet-sanded most of the rest of the plastic, and used some 3M marine adhesive to fill in some deeper gouges. Apparently, the adhesive takes 7 days to cure and I’m only in day 2 right now so we will see if it hardens up enough to sand down. But progress is being made once again!
It’s been way too long since I’ve updated, but then I haven’t accomplished much.
Basically, everything except the main front fairing is pretty much sanded down and ready for primer. I am planning to sand and paint the front fairing on the bike rather than trying to take it off and put it back on — there’s just too many parts to worry about there, and honestly, I think I can paint it just fine on there.
Today I purchased from eBay Motors a new lower center cowl piece since both bikes were missing that as well as three new side cover pegs/posts that I can epoxy onto the existing left side cover. Tonight, I plan to get the front fairing sanded down and ready for primer.
One other problem that I’m having is getting in to the various crevices of some of the parts to get them sanded down. I’m going to look in to Dremel bits/tools that might get the job done without damaging the ABS.
No new pictures, unfortunately, but I was out of town and Rallycrossing so I didn’t do too much with the bike the last few days. Tonight, however, I took the trunk apart and got the lid sanded down. Also, I did a little test-spray of the primer to see how well it builds and how easily it sprays and I think it’s going to work out fairly well to cover the sanding scratches.
I’ve got the lower part of the trunk and the battery side cover left of the parts that are not currently attached to the ’87. Once those are sanded, though, it’ll be time to take the bike off the road so I can begin working on the fairing and the left and right lower fairing bits. I also need to find and buy the lower cowl bar that goes across the bottom of the radiator.
The fan still does not come on. I think I may just wire up a fan switch and control it manually. The bike cools just fine out on the open road, but sitting in traffic or at a particularly long series of red lights will get the temp into the danger zone.
In other news, I acquired primer, base, clear, 3M 5200, and a lot of sandpaper. I’ve got a bag, the front fender, and one side panel sanded down and ready for bodywork and I’m just wiped out.
I think I may have gotten the overheating problem fixed tonight. I took the sides of the fairing off so I could get to the cooling fan and when I jumped it with a battery, it spun just like it should. The next thing to look at was the thermostatic switch and when I got in there, this is what I saw:
The wires had come apart right at the connector. Fortunately, I’ve got an extra wiring harness, so I went ahead and snipped off the connector. As it turns out, this was one of those thing that seems doomed to fail — the way it was crammed into the other bike, the wires were starting to abrade as well, so I used some tape and heat shrink tubing to shore that up. I get it all reconnected like so:
Tomorrow, I’ll take it out and get it good and hot and see if the fan comes on.
Last night I went out and started with this:
and managed to turn it into this:
It’s still pretty cluttered up, but it’s actually a pretty big improvement. Along the way, I did a little more disassembly on the ’84 so that it’s almost just the frame at this point. The wiring harness is still intertwined, the clutch hydraulics are still on, and I think the rear brake reservoir is still there, but otherwise, it’s the frame plus the front forks.
I still haven’t checked the fan yet, but I did get a new left side mirror in the mail yesterday, so whenever the title arrives in the mail, I’ll be able to get it inspected by the sheriff.