1980 GL1100 "Orange Crush" build

[CrashDown]

Okay, I fixed the side play issue on the swing arm. Ad to back that castle nut looking thing on the one swing arm bolt off, then drive the bolt in. Everything is nice and tidy.

Got the side cover that i have painted orange.

Prepped the surface thuroghly with a 3m Red Scuff pad and then wetsanded with 600grit wet.

Then Masked off the area I want to remain pearl white. Fist masking the area with blue fine line tape. Tehn going over that with yellow (or you can use green) 3m automotive tape in 3/4" width. Then covering the rest of the area with automotive masking paper.

Sprayed the first 2 coast very thin to fight agains basecoat bleeding under the masking tape

After 2 full coats and a light effect coat the orange is done.

Carefully unmasked the taped off white area

And 2 coats of clear later.

Tomorrow I'll do the silver pinstripe and reclear so I can hand it off to my Vinyl guy to make the company logos to fit.

Also Ive started hand sanding and polishing the fork brace and will begin work on painting the for tubes tomorrow as well.

-Matt

 

[CrashDown]

SNEAK PEAK

Side cover goes to my vinyl guy tonight so he can cut my buisness logos to size. Hopefully tax return will be here in a few days, and when it does, these get ordered... http://www.hagon-shocks.co.uk/catalog/partdetail.aspx?partno=32016TTSA

My question about rear suspension is how do I figure out what spring rate i need? Is there a chart that you use that calculates riders body weight and shows you what spring rate you'll need?

And are there different spring rates for the fork springs as well? If so whats a good recomendation?

 

[CrashDown]

Okay, update time.

A bunch of little stuff got done today.

Broke out the side cover i got from Pony and gave it a look over.

Ouch!

Looks worse in person. Im up for a challenge. The cover had been painted a few times, and I dont trust all that old paint, time to strip it off.

Looky looky

While the stripper was eating away at the old paint i pulled out the upper triple i was able to find at the local cycle salvage, and using my speed blaster, and coarse sand, got it all down to metal

Sealed

And repeated those steps on the lower triple. Heres the pic of it in sealer

Triples are gonna be silver, and wham here they are in basecoat.

While the basecoat was flashing i scrapped off the stripper from the side cover. Washed it in warm soapy water and used a heat gun to dry the plastic off. Then like the first side cover, i countersunk the holes, used a 3" grinder to prep the surface, and filled with Fusor411

After blocking the fusor down, i pulled out the glazing putty and gave it a thick coat, it was really wavy. Work stopped there on the side cover.

Anf here's the upper triple cleared

And the lower

And last, I blasted more of the heavy rust off the headlight ears, and prepped one of them ready for sealer. The one on top is ready for sealer, and the one on the bottom is after blasting.

More tomorrow.

-Matt

 

[CrashDown]

Okay, another paint update. lots of pics so lets get to it.

A few of ya have asked via PM what materials I use in the refinishing process. So in this update i've got pics of the primers and stuff i use at work on a daily basis.

Lets start with the Headlamp ears. I already have 1 ready for paint, but heres the second one after I blasted all the heavy rust off it.

There are 3 different sanding steps in prepping chrome for the refinishing process. First is to use 80 grit on the DA (Dual Action) sander. Then i take the angle grinder with that green wheel you see in the above picture to get in all the nooks and crannies, and give the surface a once over. Then on the DA you swap out the 80 grit for 180 grit and go over the entire surface again. This ensures 2 things, 1. the entire surface has some sort of a scratch on it, and 2. the scratches are fine enough that they wont show through in the basecoat, but coarse enough that the paint has something to bite into.

Both ears are ready for paint.

When you go to prime over bare steel, or prepped chrome, you need to etch prime it. This is the etching primer I use at the shop. It's activated at a ratio of 1-1.

With that stuff you apply 2 light to medium coast, and you get this as a result.

Now its time for sealer. You have to apply sealer over etch primer, as it has an acidic additive that will eat through basecoat is not sealed correctly. This is the base that goes into the Primer Sealer. It's also the base that goes into Primer Surfacer, the difference being that as a sealer you add a wet-on-wet additive to the mix transforming the product from a primer surfacer to a primer sealer.

heres the wet-on-wet additive for the sealer.

Sealer applied to both ears.

Now lets take a break and get back to the left side cover. this pic shows it sanded and shaped in 80grit.

And then guide coated

Then the whole things is blocked and smoother out in 180grit by hand in preparation for adhesion promoter and primer surfacer

Heres the plastic adhesion promoter Spies Hecker recomends using on all bare plastic parts.

Side cover with 2 coats of Adhesion promoter applied

And then 3 coats of Elastified Primer surfacer.

Now back to the headlight ears now the the sealer has had some time to flash off... Lets get some silver on these.... NOT!

That's right, even the headlamp ears are gonna have 2 tone on them!

And here they are cleared,

I'll get the ears finished tomorrow, work on the side cover some more, and start getting the fork tubes cleaned up and ready for paint.

Ordered the Hagon 2810's today. Should be here by the weekend. Woot Woot!!

-Matt

 

[CrashDown]

More paint progress. headlamp ears and 1 fork tube are done. Dont have a while lot of time to explain, in kind of a rush, but all the steps to get them painted, are exactly the same all everything else ive done.

Ears masked off for silver.

Fork tube was blasted, sanded, masked off and sealed.

Ears after silver has been applied and unmasked.

Shots of the 3 parts clearcoated

Yup.... the one on the left looks brand new!

Gonna blast the battery box and get that painted tomorrow, along with the other fork tube, so I can bolt the front end together this weekend.

More pics tomorrow night.

-Matt

 

[CrashDown]

Update w/o pics, sorry!

Other fork tube is painted.

Started hand sanding and polishing the for brace. Tomorrow is front end assembly day! Forks, triples, bars, and front wheel are going on the bike.

Rear suspension hasnt shown up from Hagon, most likely early next week. Once the bike is in a roller, it's onto the motor!

Will finish the left side cover next week.

Also going to pick up a sand blasting cabinet tomorrow. Gonna totally help when I do some of the covers on the motor, centerstand, foot controlls and customer bikes.

And going to be reorganizing the work space in the side yard. Throwing away alot of stuff thats broken and useless. Once the Motorcycle stand is free the 69' CL350 Frame (Project name: Cherry Bomb) goes on it and get's prepped for paint.

Pics will be up tomorrow afternoon/night.

 

[CrashDown]

She's Got a front end!

The Lower bearing was a B***H to get on. And then I had to source a hot to video on the correct order of those lock nuts and lock washers.. But I got it on there.

Sat the upper trip on and gave it a few smacks to make sure it was fully seated.

Then 1 fork at a time. had to scrounge around for those rubber gaskets that go on the headlight ears, but i found em.

New cafe bars from Dime City Cycles sitting on the clamps.

Hand sanded and polished the fork brace...

And to finish today off, got the handlebar clamp tops all sanded and polished.

 

[rocketman]

You do some nice Fu$%ing work! I absolutely love that two tone paint on the ears!

 

[CrashDown]

You do some nice Fu$%ing work! I absolutely love that two tone paint on the ears!

Thanks dude, I almost didn't do it. But Ive never seen another GL with the ears painted like that. I'm slowly starting up a side buisness painting Vintage Euro and Japanese bikes, so when this is done, and my Shark bike from the first post, they will be my rolling buisness cards.

 

[downtown809]

I concur with Rocketman, beautiful work..

 

[MotorbikeBruno]

Hell yeah, glad I found this! I had a couple of GL1000's and they were actually pretty fun to ride. This is turning out great!

 

[CrashDown]

Didnt get a whole lot done today.

Got the battery box bolted in... all new stainless steel hardware is gonna be used wherever i can use it.

Took the shelter and seat off so i could start to route the Harness. But then I realied theres a few brackets i still need to blast and paint that the harness attaches to.

Cut out an extension of the work bench ont he side yard so I could have a little more room to store the GW

Just about everything in this bin, besides the cup of paint, and the welding helmet needs to be blasted and painted. There are a few CL350 parts in there as well.

Here's the Taillight I plan on using. It was originally the third brake light for a 1070's Porsche 914, Gonna convert it to 2 Stage LED's so it will function as a running light and a Brake light.

The lense use to have (HELLA) markings on it and Made In Germany... ya know the usuall stuff. Scrapped it down flat with a ravor blade then sanded it with 400, 600, 1000, 1500, and 2000 grit sandpaper.

Gonna build the Blasting Cabinet tomorrow at work, so I should have some updates with stuff all blasted clean and ready for paint tuesday or wednesday.

-Matt

 

[Hoosier Daddy]

Been a while since I saw another GL1100 here, hellofa bike man, you'll love it.
You sure know how to make them pretty!

 

[CrashDown]

Update time: Sorry this is taking soooooo long

Got myself a blasting cabinet

after 2 minutes in the cabinet, no more rust!

Blasted pieces, far right is a Centerstand for a 69' CL350 (next project)

Nasty GL1100 centerstand

Disassembly of the turnsignal/ HI low/ horn switch control

Contacts cleaned and greased up, housings have been repainted

^Looks horrible in the pictures, much better in person^

All the parts blasted, cleaned and ready for paint

After etch primer and sealer

Silver appied

Cleared

^ Someone please tell me where this bracket goes^

So looks like I should have the centerstand in, wiring harness in, and start getting the gas tank cleaned out ready for sealer this weekend.

Peace peeps, more paint work comming!

 

[MotorbikeBruno]

Great work man. NO APOLOGIES NEEDED for being "slow." This build has more progress than 90% of the builds on here (mine included!) keep it up!

 

[Carpy]

Looking sweet. Love the color scheme as well.

 

[CrashDown]

Wasnt able to start on the gas tank this past weekend. I'm gonna bring it up to the shop tomorrow and rinse the inside with SEM Rustmort. That should take care of neutralizing the rust, then on wednesday i'll empty that out and apply SEM Rust Seal, that should seal off any the metal on the inside and make it ready for blasting and painting.

Here's what I was able to do over the last few days.

Got the wiring harness loosely routed. bracket for the rectifier is blasted and will be painted in the next few days.

While putting the Left hand control on the bars, tightened the screw too tight and cracked the housing... Wont be doing that again.

And today i blasted a ton of parts so they can go silver in the next few days

-Matt

 

[Hoosier Daddy]

Nice stuff!

^ Someone please tell me where this bracket goes^

For the life of me I thought that sliver bracket was to mount your R/R but I see you already have it on the frame.

 

[Maritime]

Nice work, and I do not know where that bracket goes either? or wait is i maybe for the coolant overflow tank? It looks like one that holds one of the large multi-wire connectors, maybe under the false tank?

 

[MotorbikeBruno]

Yeah, I'd look for a large flatter connector, maybe 2 rows? looks to hold something like that in place?