Mothers Power Ball?.....Um Yes!

If you ever walked down the automotive isle in Walmart and come across the Mothers Power Ball and then have the question pop into your head, "Should I buy this?"; the answer is YES!

It is a drill mounted heavy duty sponge that buffs like crazy. What if you don't have any thing to buff you ask? Buy one anyway. You'll find something and when you do...

I has previously buffed my little heart out by hand on these timing belt covers and they came out all right. but I kept thinking that I needed something high speed. Well I was right about that. I used Meguiar's Metal Polish and a green scour pad to ruff up the oxidation from the aluminum.

I then wiped it all down with a clean rag and applied a second thin layer of Meguiar's before buffing it with the Power Ball. The parts will haze up at first and in no time that lustrous shine will break fourth.

Here is a side by side comparison.

I looked at the Power Cone as well and after using the Ball I would say for a motorcycle application that the Cone would be nice. The Ball is good but big and it is hard to fit in a lot of the smaller places on a bike. The Cone would work nicely for that and has a large flat side for the bigger parts. This will be the next one that I buy.

All in all it was well worth the price of about $20 for two reasons: the time it saved me and the resulting shine on the aluminum parts. 

How to remove Powder Coating

So you've got this sweet new powder coated motorcycle frame and it looks awesome. Until... you realize that it is everywhere. You didn't think twice about not having that part coated when you took it to the shop. Although it shouldn't surprise you any because you've seen it on every reality TV 'Pimp my trash into treasure' show out there. The cool looking parts come back and the crew goes to work drilling out all the bolt holes so they can put it all together again.

ToughCoat did a good job plugging my bolt holes and masking off the threaded studs, but there were a few places that neither of us thought about until it was time to put it back together again. I've posted a few examples below.

Powder coating is HARD. Really hard and thick. I first attempted to scrape it off using a utility knife but quickly found out that was a losing battle. My beautiful wife found this little gem on an internet forum and the following is my experience of how to remove powder coating.

Permatex 80645 Gasket Remover can be purchased at about any auto parts store for about $10. It is an aerosol foam that is much easier to control then a typical aerosol spray.

Mask off anything that you don't want to remove. I used a heavy plastic and masking tape to cover the fork mounts up so I could remove the powder coating from the steering column. (Steering bearings are press fit and you'll never get a set to press on over powder coating.) So, I applied a liberal coating of the gasket remover and let it sit for about 30 minutes.  

Once the coating had softened up, I used the utility knife to scrape off as much of it as I could. Did I mention that powder coating is hard? Well it is. I applied the gasket remover 3 times before I was able to sand off the remaining coating with a sanding screen similar to that pictured below, but cut into narrower strips.

The end result. Bare Metal.

I had several other smaller places that I needed to remove the coating from such as the rear brake cylinder mount pictured below. For these smaller applications I put a small amount of gasket remover on the end of a Q-tip. The foaming remover is very easy to control that way.

Here is a picture of the softened powder coating. You can see that I've already began scrapping it.

It kind of curls up like plastic as it is coming off. Be careful and never cut toward yourself like this bozo is doing. What a dope. After a few applications of the gasket remover and scrapping I again used the sanding screen and ended up with a very clean mount.

If you find yourself in this circumstance just remember to have patience and let the gasket remover do it's job. It's pretty slow and a little tedious but it works well and is easy to remove only what you want gone.

Let's get some parts here...

So I finally decided to get some parts coming. I've surfed for months now looking for the exact right this or that and now it is finally time to make some decisions. So here are few of them:

I have to replace the Progressive air shock lines as the old ones are very brittle and no longer hold air. That was an easy one to order. I just hope that the shocks still hold air. If not I'll be looking at getting a set of Progressive 416's to use with my new air line kit.

I also ordered a front brake reservoir since the old one looks like they all do after about 15 minutes in the sun. I ordered new brake pads as well.

I went with the Radiantz licence plate frame because it is lit, looks sharp and wasn't expensive. That equals a tri-fecta of awesome in my book. This is their horizontal plate mount but I'm going to mount it vertically. This mount puts twice the light on the plate with 6 LED's as the the vertical mount with only 3. Hopefully if my tag is well lit it will keep the fuzz off my backside.

I went with the billet look mirror with a 6 inch stem from EMGO. I saw a pair at Bob's used motorcycle parts in Phoenix and they really are quite nice and heavy. They have a metal construction and a nice finish. I think that I'll have to mount the right side mirror before I put the brake reservoir back on  due to the fact that the reservoir is so tall and the mirrors are short.

I found a nice tail light that saved me some money, more about that in a second, so I caved in and spent a little extra on my signal lights. I liked the Drag Specialties mini deuce marker lights from the beginning but they are right on the edge of what I wanted to spend. I opted for the clear/smoked lens covers and will probably go with the clear. I think that clear covers all the way around will look good especially since....

...I found this sweet integrated tail light by Astra Securities. I know that they haven't really established themselves a name yet but this little gem looks very promising. It is a replacement for the standard Harley Davidson V-Rod tail light. This light is much more streamlined, has a clear lens, has 117 LED's and incorporates the rear turn signals.

I'm not sure how it is going to match up with the Goldwing fender as the angle of theV-Rod fender is a little flatter then mine; but one thing that I am sure of is that I'm going to make that sucker fit. The only drawback that I see with this so far is that it ships directly from it's mother land of China and must take the slow boat. The estimated delivery date is in the middle of June. That's really not a big issue to me actually because it will be that long before I get anywhere near ready to mount it. 

Fresh Powder Coat.... Ummmm

So I'm late posting these but none the less. The powder coated goldwing frame revealed. This is how I picked it up from ToughCoat. All wrapped up. The car was sure a handy and cheap way to move it.

I was pretty excited to see how the cleaned up gauge set would look against the new color. I'm digging it. The power coating looks great and I have to say that the gauges look pretty awesome for Honda originals from 1978. The last 34 years have been good to this set.

This is a really cool and dynamic color. Any time the color is in bright light it is quite red and sparkly. This picture was taken with the flash on around dusk.

This one was taken at the same time with out the flash and looks pretty close to that dark by the naked eye.

I've started making a pile of parts that need to be painted black now. I plan on doing them myself. Prime, paint and clear coat. I can't bring myself to put old chipped and faded parts back on this frame. It slows the process down quite a bit but I'm only going to do it once.