Cafe Update

It's been a bit since I've done anything with the cafe project but I got a little bit done recently. First off, I decided to pull the rotor, paint it and then get all kinds of OCD on the front wheel in terms of cleanliness. Rotor all taped up and ready for paint. 

Wheel all cleaned up and polished. Rotor turned out great and looks fantastic.

About a week ago I got home from work and found a box on the front porch. I knew it was the tank. The body work on the tank proved to be a bit harder than I was capable of. I threw in the towel and walked away from it. One of the guys on an older CB forum that I belong to sent me a message and offered to help with the tank so I took him up on it and shipped it off to his shop in Virginia. He did an amazing job on the knee dents which is the area I was really having a hard time with.

I noticed a few areas where the filler that I had applied was cracking and became concerned. A few days later, I saw another area bubbling up and got really concerned. Then I got mad. This is the right side of the tank where I obviously did something wrong. At this pout, I was faced with either getting a new tank or going back down to bare metal and starting from square one. I spoke with my buddy in Virginia and he wanted me to ship it back to him. So...the tank left again yesterday. It's getting blasted back to bare metal and he will re-work it all. I'm super thankful that he's got some time on his hands and enjoys doing body work.

Today I had some time and got down in the garage for a while. I went OCD on the rear wheel but it's a bear to clean because the hub is so big and the spokes are so short. It's really hard to get in there unless you have tiny little hands which I do not. I ended up pulling the left side motor cover. It looks like hell and I've been trying to figure out what to do with it. So I started sanding the old clear coat off and working on the deep scratches.

I used 40, 60, 100, 220, 300, 400, and am now up to 500. Im not sure if I'm going to go brushed or mirror finish with a buffing wheel yet. Ultimately, I'd like the bike to have black hubs and rims and some black on the motor but I think I want some of the aluminum on the motor to be polished. So...I've still got a lot of work to do here. Taking XTR single speed cranks to mirror finish was a hell of a lot easier.