Yesterday was a bushing and bearing kinda day. Snowbanks, as it turns out, are good for two things. Sliding down when you're three years old and freezing bearings before an install -
Wheel bearings installed -
Reverse engineered the socket press and installed the swingarm bushings -
I like to use words like "reverse engineered" and "fabricate" whenever even remotely possible. They make me feel warm and fuzzy inside.
The elephant in the room however is of course the nickel plating attempt. I'm not going to say it was a total fail, because I did learn how the process works. In principle anyway. I just think my attempt to plate Every Nut And Bolt On The Bike was a bit of a moonshot. Maybe should have started off with something a bit more realistic, like, maybe, a single washer. Instead I attempted several piles like this -
and things went south. After the whole blasting, polishing, acetoning rigmarole I then washed everything in water with Dawn dish soap. This is where it went pear-shaped - I left them on the kitchen counter after the wash and before I got them into the final TSP bath before plating they flash rusted. What I should have done is put them in the TSP bath immediately of course to prevent this. I should also have worked in much smaller batches rather then doing the whole lot in one hit.
I did learn however that TSP is an excellent degreaser (and has no smell, so the missus was cool with me working with it in the kitchen), and the few parts I checked with the water break test all passed with flying colours - no doubt those parts were clean and ready to plate. The flash rust however put the kibosh on the plan to plate these myself, this time anyway. So they're getting professionally zinc plated this time, at a fraction of the cost I was originally quoted. Live and learn.