Finished!

I put the third mile on my odometer while breaking in the bike at 25% throttle around the block pretty much signifying the completion of the bike. Finally, after 6 months of work the bike is finished!

It's...ALIVE!!!!

After taking Halloween weekend off, I got my throttle cable in the mail. I installed it in to my new PHBG carb (which was cast a bit poorly and took some sanding and filing to fit the slide) I attempted to start the bike for the first time. Luckily my buddy Adam was around to help fitting the slide and spring, a huge pain in the ass.

So after a of couple of tries, nothing. Then, my friend Tyler takes a try and gets it to sputter and then, with a true quarter-kick, the engine roared to life! The bike idles deep and strong and I couldn't be happier. Even cold it will kick over with a modest pedal and seven months of work was celebrated with a 10 mph ride down the street and back. The engine temp gauge worked as well, showing a healthy 250 degrees. Some tuning definitely needs to happen (I'm a bit rich at the moment) and other small tweaks, but it's all minor compared to the success of last night.

Oh, and here's a picture of the back wheel flying, just to prove it!

Last Steps

As you can see, the bike is almost completely done. I tested the spark last night, and it's bright and strong so my kill switch and all the lights are operating correctly. I can officially scratch the electrical system off my list!

There are three last things remaining:

• Throttle Cable - Usually we have them lying around but I had to order one.
• Carb Tuning - Having the throttle will let me actually start the bike, test for air leaks and tune all the jets properly.
• Speedometer - The drive I bought was too small for the axle, and the cable was too short, of course. I tracked down a long cable and new drive on ebay and handybikes.com, so fingers crossed they're compatible.

Other than that, I'm completely done with construction. Once the bike is running (and the snow that's falling right now passes) I'm planning on doing a quick video-tour of the bike and all the parts for a final post, followed by some nice photos. Let's hope it's soon!

The journey nears and end...

I've spent the last few weeks rebuilding from the ground up. The light at the end of the long tunnel (400 hours I'm guessing at this point) is getting close, so I haven't been posting much.

Here's a brief update: I started with the frame and engine, obviously, and began building up from there. I have to be constantly aware of parts scraping together so it's slow work. Also, the paint does change the tolerances of certain tight-fitting pieces which have to be sanded, oiled or ground down to fit together once again.

This is where the blog and photos have come in real handy. Complex parts like the lantern had bags of parts to be reassembled but with records of everything I've done made it easy to figure out the steps.

The most intricate part was the wiring. While I had wheels off I had the advantage of running the final splices through the frame in sleeves for a nice clean look. Some minor setbacks such as a speedo drive that was too small have been the only real problems.

Here you can see some washers and bolts I've painted before installing. It's tedious, but I'm painting each set of bolts before they're put back on the bike and it is SO worth it, the contrast really pops.

The bike is almost done, save a few more components including seat support, exhaust, condenser, wings, etc. A few more days I may actually be ready to start it. I can't wait. And I have to say, even though it's mine and I have spent so much time on it (yeah, I'm a bit biased) i still think it looks fucking awesome.

Engine Upgrades

The start of the re-construction process began with installing the new engine upgrades. The Minarelli has one of the biggest kits available, a whopping 80cc jug. You can see the difference between the old cylinder (left) and the black monster on the right.

The jug and piston went on pretty easy, as did the beefy PHBG 19mm carb and intake. Once the housing was installed the engine looked mean as hell, and I'm finally ready to start rebulding.

Phase 2 Finished - Painting Complete

Phase 2 is finally finished! I received my second batch of AutoAir paints that I used this weekend in an 7 hour paint-a-thon thus bringing this phase to an end. Luckily, an entire week of cold, rainy weather broke for a warm and clear weekend allowing me to paint outside.

Slowly but surely the gold layers were built up on the parts until each one had even coverage. I barely had enough supplies to finish but the end product turned out great. I dare say even "pimp."

After the color, I used a urethene clear coat with a separate kicker for the gloss coat. I made sure to clean all the paint from my gun, seen here, soaking in thinner, to make sure the clear wasn't contaminated with any color.

Finally, after a long day of work (and a wicked migraine from the fumes, even through a mask) I finished the gloss coats. I made sure to take some photos of the parts in the sun to really capture the sheen and I'm very happy with the way they turned out. Now all I have to do is put the thing back together and hope the weather holds for a few rides before the snow!

Staining

This week I've been sick, and I'm still waiting on my next order of paint so I started staining the wood pieces with a dark walnut stain. Compared to the painting process it's pretty straightforward and the wood parts came out nice. I'm having a bit of a motivational problem at this point, but after I finish painting I'll be in the home stretch so I'm trying to keep the momentum.

Painting Continues...

This weekend I had some free time to start painting the brass colored parts. I unfortunately ordered too little paint to cover all the parts I had, so I made it stretch as far as possible and tried to get at least a middle-weight coat on all the parts.

The metallic paint was a lot different to work with than the red though. I don't think it's meant to be applied directly to sealer so it ran a bit. However, after evening out the coats the parts had a kind of oxidized look which came out pretty cool.

I've got more paint on the way, but I'm actually feeling a bit sick so the next few days will be a nice break. It's starting to get cooler, though, so the pressure is on to finish now.

Paint!

Here's some process photos showing the actual paint process. I'm using all AutoAir colors, starting with Dark Red, which is cut with 10% Flash Reducer. The reducer is a thinning and reactive additive that lets the paint dry faster and flow a lot more smoothly. The first step was a few coats of straight red.

After a solid red coat and 24 hours of curing in my hot-box shed it was time to add the magic - a blended, wine-colored shimmer paint combined with the red. Here's the paint being mixed.

Once I put a few coats of the shimmer paint on it was looking really purple, like a pimp moped or something. But after a few hours the brightness faded in to the base color, just as I had hoped, and produced what I call "Shimmer Blood." My low-quality iPhone camera and the poor lighting in the shed doesn't really do it justice, but the glittery maroon is going to look so awesome with the brass accents - I can't wait!

Also, a tip for anyone painting with an HVLP gun for the first time: I keep a big can of thinner nearby and run a tablespoon through the gun between every cup of paint to keep the nozzle clean. I also break the gun down every night and soak it in thinner to clean out any residue inside. I clogged the gun pretty bad the first night of priming and this seems to have fixed it.

Sealer

After the primer, I had to seal all the parts with either light or dark pain sealant. This fills in the gap of the primer and lets the paint bond to the lower layers more effectively. It's also kind of tacky so the paint should stick extremely well to the sealed parts.

For the maroon body parts I used the dark color and the lighter color for the parts that will be painted with the brass metallic color. When I start painting, I'll bag up the parts that are not being painted, then switch when I switch color.

Finally, FINALLY, I'm ready to paint!

Sanding Primer

After painting all the parts with my gray automotive primer, I had to sand down the rough texture with 1000 grit sandpaper for a really super-smooth finish. Most of the parts had very few dings so I think the finish should be fairly even. When I did this step, I had to make sure to wear gloves while sanding and handling of the parts. Any oil from my fingertips could affect how the final paint adheres to the frame so it's pretty important.

Here's a photo (just to prove to myself how much of a pain in the ass this was) showing all the parts in separate bags to keep dust and oil off them, ready to be sealed.

Primer

It's been a while since my last update, but that certainly doesn't mean I haven't been working. Last weekend I finished stripping and prepping the second set of smaller parts for paint including the chain guards, shocks, seat bars, etc. I finally got everything set up in the shed and got to it.

I'm using a mini-HVLP spray gun for all of my painting since the area of each piece is relatively small. I'm trying to minimize my overspray since this stuff is pretty expensive. It took some experimenting to see what my best material/air ratio was but the most important thing I found was that running thinner through the gun after every cup of material (and soaking it after use) kept it operating without any problems. I'm using a 1mm nozzle at 40psi for anyone who's curious.

As you can see, the shed out back of our house is the perfect place to hang parts. It's still about 90 or so during the day here (+10 in that sweatbox at least) so I shouldn't have a problem keeping the temperature above 72 for curing.

The next step for these parts is sanding with ultra-fine paper to remove any surface blemishes. The final paint will show anything that stands out so at the very least I need the body, tank and fenders as smooth as glass. Then it's sealer, then paint, then clear. It starts to snow in October so the pressure is on to get everything painted before then!

Paint Stripping

This weekend was all about stripping the old paint from the bike and preparing the surface for the new auto paint I have coming. It's an extremely tedious and messy process, but necessary to achieve a high-quality finish.

Here you can see the tank with some high-strength epoxy/paint remover on it. Crazy stuff. Whoever painted the bike before I got it used pretty low quality paint to so that layer was eaten off pretty easily.

A few coats of stripper, a razor, and some sandpaper made short work of the decals and the surface turned out to be pretty smooth. It's really handy that Snark's have detachable tanks.

Next I started with the frame. Layer after layer was slowly removed and scraped away, the crevasses and welds in the frame being the biggest pain in the ass. Luckily, the most difficult spots are located up underneath the frame so the blemishes will be minor.

It turned out kind of odd how the original color, the darker red under the old paint in this photo, is very similar to the new paint color I'm going with. It was obviously higher quality and took 6-8 coats of stripper to finally remove off the frame and fenders.

Here's the nearly finished pieces. There's still some gunk in the seams which I may pressure-wash to ensure they are as clean as possible, but other than that just some light sanding and I'm ready for primer!

Breakdown

With my paint on the way I've started to breakdown all the parts I added to the bike over the last three months. I've spent about 3 hours so far, and I'm a bit farther than these pictures show (down to the frame and wiring) so I should finish up the teardown tomorrow.

I've been putting all the parts, screws and custom parts in ziplock bags to try and keep everything as organized as possible. I just hope I can put it all back together again!

Construction...Finished!

I'm done! After 3 months and 300 hours of searching for parts, cutting, fitting, sketching, thinking, failing, and more money spent at Home Depot that I'm willing to admit, I'm finally done with phase 1. The last two phases are paint and finally performance upgrades, but they're relatively short phases in comparison. I've already begun gathering supplies for painting and planning how to tear down and organize all my parts. But for now, I'm basking in glow of...completion. It's not quite a success yet, but I'll settle for "done" at this point.