Well I've made a start on these:
I've never dealt with aluminium castings in such a bad condition. I had hoped that as the bike had the black finish on the transmission that it would need less work than the bare type.
No such luck. This bike was obviously stored somewhere that was continually damp. The dirt and grease on the black castings has rarely been able to dry and the damp has penetrated the coating and begun turning the aluminium into white dust. Then to make things worse, whoever sold the bike to the owner it was purchased from, had squirted black paint over the crumbling finish.
There's nothing for it, all the coating has to come off and the aluminium stabilised. Start of manually scraping all the old coating off:
It's a bit tricky in some corners of the gearbox:
Not done, work in progress:
Meanwhile, I can now reveal the chosen new colour, BMW Dakar Yellow (code 267).
This was the same colour as used on the first E36 M3 saloons and it was a K75S colour for at least the North American market, I don't know if it was ever imported into the UK.
Like this (not everyone will but me and the owner do
)
I couldn't resist re-assembling some bits, the graphite K75 badges look much nicer than the chrome or gold ones against the yellow:
The rear section of the loom has been cleaned and on this model, the ABS loom has to be fed into the seat cubby as that's where the ABS control unit sits on bikes that retain the shorter, non-Paralever, wheelbase:
It's hell of a fiddly process to get the ABS controller into it's cradle and connected in there:
These later bikes were made with the variations in mind. The low seat option has a lift-off bench seat as opposed to it being hinged and two lugs are attached to the seat cubby for that purpose. This bike has the holes for the lugs, plugged with plastic pins:
The cubby cover in place, just waiting for the new under-seat labels:
The painted parts that cannot go back on the bike just yet get a coat of Zymol polish, then any re-assembly can be done before being stored out of the way. The re-painted mesh back in the radiator panel:
As s colour change is involved, rather than leave the insides or undersides showing the original blue and over-spray:
I'm masking the Dakar Yellow and applying some satin black:
Then there's a thousand little jobs like cleaning and treating all the bits such as the tank mounting rubbers.
I should be able to get the first coats onto the transmission parts in the next couple of days but first I want to get a new filter into the tank now that it's painted, re-stick the large rubber pad at the rear, put new badges on and the fuel filler cap.
I've never dealt with aluminium castings in such a bad condition. I had hoped that as the bike had the black finish on the transmission that it would need less work than the bare type.
No such luck. This bike was obviously stored somewhere that was continually damp. The dirt and grease on the black castings has rarely been able to dry and the damp has penetrated the coating and begun turning the aluminium into white dust. Then to make things worse, whoever sold the bike to the owner it was purchased from, had squirted black paint over the crumbling finish.
There's nothing for it, all the coating has to come off and the aluminium stabilised. Start of manually scraping all the old coating off:
It's a bit tricky in some corners of the gearbox:
Not done, work in progress:
Meanwhile, I can now reveal the chosen new colour, BMW Dakar Yellow (code 267).
This was the same colour as used on the first E36 M3 saloons and it was a K75S colour for at least the North American market, I don't know if it was ever imported into the UK.
Like this (not everyone will but me and the owner do
)
I couldn't resist re-assembling some bits, the graphite K75 badges look much nicer than the chrome or gold ones against the yellow:
The rear section of the loom has been cleaned and on this model, the ABS loom has to be fed into the seat cubby as that's where the ABS control unit sits on bikes that retain the shorter, non-Paralever, wheelbase:
It's hell of a fiddly process to get the ABS controller into it's cradle and connected in there:
These later bikes were made with the variations in mind. The low seat option has a lift-off bench seat as opposed to it being hinged and two lugs are attached to the seat cubby for that purpose. This bike has the holes for the lugs, plugged with plastic pins:
The cubby cover in place, just waiting for the new under-seat labels:
The painted parts that cannot go back on the bike just yet get a coat of Zymol polish, then any re-assembly can be done before being stored out of the way. The re-painted mesh back in the radiator panel:
As s colour change is involved, rather than leave the insides or undersides showing the original blue and over-spray:
I'm masking the Dakar Yellow and applying some satin black:
Then there's a thousand little jobs like cleaning and treating all the bits such as the tank mounting rubbers.
I should be able to get the first coats onto the transmission parts in the next couple of days but first I want to get a new filter into the tank now that it's painted, re-stick the large rubber pad at the rear, put new badges on and the fuel filler cap.
):
Highly recommended !)
to where it can cure fully before a final check of the finish and hopefully de-masking ready for re-assembly:
