It's Snowing

I've had a garage of my own for a few months now, it's incredibly nice. The downside is that it's winter, and North Dakota winter is really cold. I have the Sabre bottom end all together with the exception of a few little odds and ends.

Since the motor and indoor stuff is mostly done on the Sabre, I pulled the motor off the Wards Riverside 175. It's not getting anything special, just a rebuild with new bearings, gaskets and seals. also every part of the engine will be cleaned really thoroughly. I've been getting pretty into trying different medias in my bast cabinet too, and this motor has sort of been my test subject. I have access to beads/crushed glass in the shop where I work, and have glass bead in my cabinet at home. The thing with glass bead media is that it has to be shot using low pressure peened off at a 45 degree angle, otherwise it shatters the beads making it just crushed glass. So the staining and nasty gunk that soaking in degreaser didn't remove the high pressure crushed glass/bead does and the glass bead at low pressure in my cabinet leaves the surface silky smooth and semi polished. However, its incredibly time consuming. The center halves took about two hours of basting with glass bead to get them smoothed.
The cylinder was blasted, primed and painted with VHT high heat gloss black. Also cut all new little round gaskets for the carb along with replacing the weird stock steel wool looking airfilter element with some red uni foam. Also cut a new center case gasket too. The porting isn't too special and there looks to be a lot of room for improvement in the future. The was a flat head screw in the cases that had lost it's head that was free floating around. The leftover stud was fairly simple to remove with the dremel and a left handed drill bit.
Some photos.

Painted cylinder

Broken screw in engine cases

New filter in the carb

Before and after glass bead

Little mockup of things

New Stuff.

Not a lot has happened since I last posted here. The Sabre engine has a new bearing in the big end, and the two intake plate halves have been welded on. Still need to cut the intake path, but I'll get to it later. The crank needs trued up, and then the Sabre will just need bearings, seals and put back together.

Currently stripping down the Hodaka frame to bare metal to prime and repaint since the paint is bad and there are rust areas all over it. The tank has been bondo'd up, reshaped and painted. The seat has been painted and I made a vinyl cover that gets Velcro'd to the inside of the pan. The forks have been rebuilt, and the upper parts with the fork ears have been banged out straight, bondo'd up and repainted. Still need rings for the top end before the engine is complete but who knows when I'll find those.

Went to Washington very recently because my mom got remarried. During my few days there I drove out in the country to where I had seen a motorcycle a few years back when I was there. Ended up knocking the the guys door and telling him I was interested in what he had by the fence on the edge of his property. It was a Wards Riverside 175 with a Benelli engine that he told me had been in a barn for 15 years, and 5 years outside in the spot that it was. I asked if he'd part with it and he told me yes, so I ended up buying the bike. Took it to my Dads garage, got the forks off and crammed it in the back seat of my Ford Focus with help from my homie Chris. Once I get the Sabre and Hodaka done I'll jump in on doing an actual restoration on the 175. It's all there except for the back cap of the muffler, kickstart lever and red paint that the sun faded off.

Well.

Aircraft paint stripper can't sit forever. It just make the paint become super paint. Like it took a ton of antibiotics and then became mersa on what ever you sprayed down a week ago. Anyways, I gave it another coat of stripper and sandblasted it 15 minutes after. Came off pretty easy peasy. Now most the paints off and it just needs more sandblasting. I might take it to where I work and blast in the parking lot because the compressor there is huge. Mine is 26 gallons, but it heats up and sprays a lot of water when it's used for long periods. Also I need to figure out a plug for the powdercoating oven, and find the breaker I tripped trying to wire it last weekend. Kinda would like all the outlets in the garage to work again... 

Ooooo, prettyyyyy. 

...And what's the deal with Vespa paint?!

Vespa must have used the greatest paint ever applied to any object ever in the 80's because I can't take it off. Sandblasting it hardly breaks the surface. I've tried aerosol paint stripper and brush on stripper for water and oil based paints with zeeeero results. I've just about got it all down to bare metal now, but only after taking an air sander to it and hitting it with 3 coats of aircraft paint remover for what I couldn't reach. Sandblasting will have to get the nooks and crannies. Why do I need it totally bare you ask? Because this bike was being built for my girlfriend who wanted it soft pink and white. I built a powdercoating oven from an old gutted fridge and an oven I picked up on Craigslist. I had already started tearing into stripping it when we broke up. Hmm... Welp! I'm still building it this way since I already have the pink and white powdercoat and a Malossi reed case/Malossi crank/Malossi 43 already built that's just waiting in a box.