My son wanted to get involved in the rebuild process so I enlisted his help.
This week-end was spent doing some of the very dirty work of media blasting various parts in preparation for powder coating and painting as well as buffing and polishing some of the aluminum parts.
This part of the rebuild is not the most fun and is quite a bit of a dirty job.
I had my son do a lot of the media blasting and I spent most of the time buffing and polishing the aluminum parts.
Neither job is fun and at the end of the week-end I had to sweep out the entire garage of blast media and buffer dust.
In the polishing operation I started out with a 3M green wheel and some spiral sanding cartridges. In the case of the swing arm I used an orbital disk sander with some 80 grit sand paper.
After roughing in the parts with the green wheel I started in with the 80 grit and 220 grit buffing compound.
It is time very time consuming. First you have to dress the buffing wheel and let the compound try for 10 minutes. Then you can start buffing. Then you have to start all over again. I tried to stagger the green wheel and buffing wheel operations so I could keep working without having to wait around.
The worst part is getting into the very small parts of the rear sets and foot pegs. I tried felt polishing bobs but they leave grooves in the metal. The sewn buffing wheels work the best.
This job is really a pain in the behind.
I am hoping we can wrap this up and move on to the powder coating and painting by next week-end. Maybe not though.
Here are some recent pictures.
First one is my son media blasting. I have to give him credit he kept the compressor going most of the week-end and at the end of each day was covered from head to toe with aluminum oxide dust.
The next image is of some brackets that have been media blasted and buffed with 220 grit compound in preparation for powder coating:
The next image is of some of the aluminum parts that have been green wheeled, 80 grit buffed and 220 grit buffed.
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