I’ve been making slow progress with the rebuild, mainly painting the fairing and it’s been a bit frustrating so I haven’t felt much like posting – I realize now that was a mistake and it would have been better to document the stuff that didn’t work out. On the plus side, I have installed the required front brake lever guard and sorted out the routing of the front brake hose.
I also got my race license (sweet!) and have been allocated my second choice number 73, my first choice was 78 which was the number I had in the pictures from Mallory Park in 1997 but that was already taken. So I downloaded some fonts and cut a plate and some numbers on Zoe’s Cameo 3. I took Danny’s advice and went with one plate on the single seat unit on the back and put side numbers in the belly pan area. It took a couple of goes and I had to go slow and carefully to try and avoid bubbles but overall I’m happy with the final result.
I couldn’t put it off any more, I had to get on with some painting. I sanded and painted the black on the upper fairing but after a few coats it was as rough as A-holes! So back in the basement for some hand sanding to smooth it out. Second time worked out much better, you can still see some signs of the underlying imperfections but it’s passable.
So I masked off the stripe I wanted and put a bin bag over the rest and sprayed the white on. It took quite a few coats to get coverage and then I noticed that the masking tape had a few ripples in it and the bin bag had not been covering anything in between the sides that I had been spraying! It came out quite nice apart from a few little wisps where the ripples had appeared and that dang over-spray in the corner there, ugh.
That bugged me so I tried to remove the over-spray with some light sanding with a micro sanding sponge and then autosol but the paint on the edges was thin and the red underneath started showing through. I also couldn’t get right into the corners to get rid of the last bit of white and scraping the white wisps off did not go as planned; it ended up getting smudged and looking worse! So I let the white dry overnight and then masked it off with blue painter’s tape (making sure there were no ripples) and sprayed black over the over-spray and thin edges. I couldn’t believe it, when I took the tape off, it pulled some of the white off right next to the edge on one side!! Aargh FFS!
I tried touching it up with a brush but surprisingly I didn’t have any white paint in the garage and when I tried spraying the white can into the lid, it seemed thin and barely covered anything. So I got some green painter’s tape from the wife, masked off the black with it and the bin bag, fully closed this time and tried painting the white again, just waiting for it to dry before trying to remove the masking tape … I hope it works.
