Stator in and Frame out for Paint

The new stator and CDI shipped quickly, and as soon as I had them, I began installing them in the bike. Now an expert with the engine, having had it appart and cleaned, this went quickly.  The only trouble I got into was my decision to liberally grease each new stainless steel bolt before replacing it. This was a blunder I would only experience later on.

It was now time to begin putting things back together. since I had the bike basically down to the frame, I decided to go the distance and stripp it all the way down.  I took the frame to a powder coating facility in Oakland, who did the full stripp and powder for $80, it would have been more expensive, but I supplied my own powder.  When I picked up the frame it was a beautiful Settlers Gold, and the company did an amazing job evenly coating it and masking off the important parts.  

I decided to do the fancy work myself, ad took off the fenders and tank, then sand blasted them down at Tech Shop.  The old paint came off easily, and I quickly had raw metal to work with.  Paranoid about letting rust get in there, I tried to do the whole job in one day.  I cut the fenders down to get a little more agressive look, and taped them off with some green heat resistant tape.

In the spray booth, I then liberally applied a coat of white powder, then off to the oven to bake.  With the white on, and the piece still warm, I reverse taped what I had done and sprayed on a glossy cream.  

My first attempt didn't work well, as a good amount of the powder bled into the surrounding white, but my second attempt I was more diligent with my application and it went on smoothly.

In retrospect, it would have been significantly easier to just powder the whole thing white and spray on the detailing.  This method was far more labor-intense and having tried this subsequently, the difference is not noticeable.  

Seat Design

With the bike stripped down and the engine out, and with nothing to do but wait for new parts, I decided to start customizing a little.  I searched the web for a bit for ideas, and found a bike similar to what I was hoping to build, posted on Pipe Burn.  I dropped this image into photoshop and edited up this:

Following this virtual modification, I went for the seat.  Removing the former cover and drawing the new shape on the old foam.  From this sketch, I cut the foam on a band saw, I shaped a rough version.

Using an angle grinder with one of the wheels with staggered sand paper, I shaped the corners and details I was looking for.

Finally, I cut the seat pan down to match the new shape of the seat.  This resulted in the pan not having any structural components anymore, so I ended up scrapping the part all together and just fabricating a new part from some 16 g sheet steel. This is the old pan after I cut it down:

For the new pan from scratch, I put mocked the shape up with some card board, then laid it flat on my steel.  I then cut this shape out with a bandsaw and made the contour bends on the edge of my bench with a few clamps holding the pan in place.  The pan was still a bit wobbly, so I took it over to the english wheel and with some channel rollers, put a nice channel through the flat parts of the pan, adding a lot of rigidity and strength.  I then lined the pan up to the bike and marked exactly where I would need to add tabs for clipping/screwing it down to the frame.  Since I planned on mounting my taillight to the seat, I welded a tab at the back.  Lastly a line of holes drilled around the outside perimeter for some rivits to hold down the vinyl finished off the build.  

A shot of the seat pan being fitted: