There’s not a lot of room in the trailer for painting the wheels and I wanted to be able to rotate them and preferably be able to get to both sides while painting rather than do one side and then turn it over. I found a tube in the garage that fit through the hubs and set it on a couple of jack stands, worked out great.
I did 3 coats of primer, 4 or 5 coats of satin black paint and another 3 clear coats. The clear coat fumes were powerful even with a respirator so I did them quick and tried to air out the trailer before I got in. When the last coat had dried I moved them into the basement for curing.
The only seat cowls I have are stock ones with holes for the rear seat. I thought about trying to make something with fibre glass but making moulds and coming up with a way to mount it seemed like a lot of work. Also I didn’t to get into repainting the cowl since it matched the tank cover so I decided to reinstall the rear seat release cable and replace the rear seat with a plastic cover. I found that I could route the key end of the release cable next to the battery and operate it easily by hand. Now I just need to wait for the plastic cover to come in from China.
A while back I tried to install the seat cowl but you have to pull it open WIDE to get it over the inner plastic piece and I was afraid of breaking it. I figured I must be doing something wrong but I couldn’t find any videos of anyone installing one. I did find a post where someone else had the same difficulties and the advice was to just go for it so I decided to give it a go at last. I got close but wimped out a couple of times and then finally tweaked it into place!!! It was then that I realized that I had not installed the little vents in each side so had to take it off again! Got the vents cleaned and installed and the second installation went a little smoother.
I needed a bunch of rubber grommets to install the tank cover and seat cowl. I found some on the old fairings and there were a load in the fairing screw set that I ordered but they didn’t seem to include any for the tank cover. Rick emailed me recently to let me know about some flexible filament he bought for his 3D printer and how he had printed some grommets for his Factory Five 818 kit. He got some SainSmart TPU from filaments.ca so I ordered some to try. My first print with 1 mm walls and 40% infill was way too stiff, the second one with 0.8 mm walls and 30% was better but the closest to stock was 0.4 mm walls with 10% infill. I haven’t tried yet but I think this has the best chance of actually being able to be fitted as it was a bind trying to fit the softer stock ones in some locations. The finish is a bit rough, it doesn’t feel that bad but I would like to try and improve it.
After my failed attempt at applying a tint to my Simpson Bandit Street helmet visor last week, I figured I’d have to buy a dark visor. So I was elated when Jeff who sold me the helmet contacted me to say that he had found a couple of reflective visors for it that I could have!! I arranged to drive downtown and pick them up and bunged him $20 for his time, he’s a sound guy!
