SA Dealers News and opinions about topics in general

Had this bike for a few years now, originally bought it to fix another SR I had that needed spares.

First piccie shows bike as I am starting with it, started a while back with cleaning uo the tank and prepping it for paint, but moved around a bit so the bike stood on one side for a few years.

Second piccie shows my perfectly sealed and airtight spray booth

Was hoping to spray primer but found that after a few months of standing my hardener had gone … hard.

3rd piccie, so just to stop the tank rusting again, I decided to use some old paint. By old I mean probably as old as me, got this paint from my uncle a few years ack and sprayed an XJ 650 the blue. Colours name is Ford Jewel Blue. You can’t make it out but the label is actuially printed in Afrikaans, whan was the last time you saw that??

In 4th piccie are the 3 fibreglass items I copied from the other SR I had, the side covers are my best achievement I think. The sprocket cover was made cos the bike did not have one and I was feeling adventurous with the fibreglass. It’s still quite rough so will be working on it for a while yet

5th photo shows the tank spayed and hopefully sealed against rust (on the outside) for a while.

6. My little quality inspector checking the finish.

7. Tank and panels on the bike, as you can see plenty of work to be done! Seat is again a fibreglass copy of the other SR’s seat base. Was covered but the upholsteres put the foam on the wrong way!

8. Piccie with the home made fibreglass sprocket cover, coil needs to be rewound, cos no spark.

Lastly. Hoping to end up with something along these lines, at least the tank and tail piece!

Posted under SR 500 Project Bike

Hmmm.. nasty I know, the scoot in the background is a little Gomoto Buzz rocket (ok stop laughing) which I bought for my wife but ended up using to work and back for a while.

Behold! My ultra clean garage! Tralers rusty butt above.

Closes shot of how bad it had gotten, sigh.

Rusty bolts

Needed to get the lights off to get the rust sorted, but they had rusted too. Here is the one set, trailer is standing on it’s side btw.

More rusty bolts

The bolt closest is slightly less rusted because I attacked it with the wire brush in the hopes that the nut would come off more easily. Alas that failed so I had to remove the bolts by cutting them off.

Piccie taken so I don’t have to remember where the wires actually went

Same as above only for the other side

I decided that the reflective panel would look way better if it fitted inside the rear channel between the lights as opposed to being rivited on the outside. This meant it needed to be cut down slightly.

Cutting it fortunately allowed me to be rid of the ugliest part of the panel, as can be seen above. I cut it using a small angle grinder and a very thin cutting disk.

Amazing how quick it is to type, but how much time and effort went into getting the suface prepared for the black stuff you now see adorning my trailer. Liberal use of a large wire brush on my big angle grinder and a small hand wire brush for the small stuff meant the majority of the rust was removed.

I think it looks much better, especially with the reflective panel on the inside.

Side view cos I hade the time and an inclination to take useless photos, wheels I am hoping to remove this weekend, have the tires removed so that I can clean and de-rust the rims, so that next weekend I can put new tires on. (It REALLY needs new tires)

Herewith the RB10 metal primer I bought at the local Mica hardware store, apparently you can paint it over rusted surfaces so long as the rust is not flaking. Hope it works because there were a few spots I coud not reach! I guess time will tell.

All in all I hope to actually fetch the car (at least most of the pieces that will eventually make up the car) in April. Let’s hope I have made enpough progress by then!

Posted under Lucky 7