I've just read through this thread from start to current finish & an excellent read it is too ! Well done that man, looking forward to the conclusion
I loved the ie models from the day they were introduced. I own two of the 750 versions and much prefer them over the slab sided older machines. I find it interesting that people seem to rave about the Super mono being beautiful yet both were designed by the same man and to my eyes look very similar. It's a shame you rate these great machines so poorly, but as they say 'everyone to their own'
So... some more decent progress has been made! I have spent a lot of time with the Gateros plating kit, really learning how to do it correctly. As guessed I was right suggesting it was beginners luck with the head-bolt washers. I was cleaning/de-rusting parts in Hydrochloric Acid, and found that if you do this for too long you get "smutting" where the carbon comes to the surface. There is also a lot of info online suggesting that high-tensile parts become brittle with too much immersion in HCl... The Gateros team are great at support, so a call to them helped to understand what was going on... In essence the parts before plating need to be "like new"... that is to say cleaned perfectly...no rust, no dirt, no smutting...clean metal that you add the zinc to. It meant that nearly all the parts (bloody hell...nearly every nut, bolt and washer)...would go through Bob's Greatest Invention™ And if required, de-rusting first with the Bilt Hamber Deox-C.
The fantasy of electroplating is that you can just dump all the pieces in the bath in one big plating session... Unfortunately I was finding that I would get very mediocre results if I plated lots of pieces together.. Also as the weather has cooled I have seen the results change (especially with the yellow passivate dip after zinc coating). So it meant small batches, and trays of pieces...
It is necessary to work out the surface area of all the pieces to be zinc coated in square inches, this it then divided by 10 to give a figure in Amps. I started to try to do this via estimation with a small piece of plastic 1" square that I used as a guide. Branded of course.. Unfortunately the results again were not that great..it was too easy to be wildly out on the required current.
So I engaged in pages and pages of maths.. thankfully I noted the size of each bolt/nut/washer in the calculation, so after the first hundred or so bolts I could repeat the figures...
It was clear that the plating has to be a process from start to finish, de-greasing, cleaning, plating and chromate... I saw flash rusting if I waited too long before getting the parts into the Zinc bath.
Also getting the timing right on the Yellow Passivate was tricky, too long and the parts end up looking a little too bling-bling for my tastes! still, it is reasonably easy to strip this with Bob's Greatest Invention™ and then redo the final passivate layer..
I redid my first attempt at the calliper brake fluid hardware...they had the impression of anodised tat! Much better: In fact as the bike starts to come together, there are some parts that I will redo...crazy I know, but when you have spent ridiculous amounts of time on it, you might as well do it the way you like
Having all your own kit does mean that there is a certain flexibility to try things out.. I thought that Yellow passivated pulley wheels would look good against the bright silver of the engine...but in the end I didn't like them at all... In the end decided bright sliver was best, here I'm transferring the timing marks from the belt covers to the heads as I'm going to fun the belts open. (Yes I know there is a risk associated, but it's such a good look!)
As work progressed, I realised I'd made a rod for my own back with a nice shiny new engine...for the frame and cycle parts every single nut, bolt and washer was rusty and would need lots of work to achieve the same level of finish.. Is that project creep, or just bad planning? I spent ages (still not finished ) cleaning and plating all bolts. For anyone trying the plating kit, the part has to be absolutely perfectly clean first.. and on removal from the initial Zinc plating the finish should look like a bright silver/grey almost like primer. Then time in the passivate bath is important, it is too easy to get large variation across all the fasteners, especially the yellow. (Also as noted the temp in the garage was impacting the time required in the baths). Also as you remove the parts from the passivate bath, the final colour is not yet visible, this arrives on heating with a hot-air gun which is the necessary final step, so you are kind of judging if something is ready that you can't see well... definitely felt like an "art"!
Some good results though, and it's not really practical (£££) to purchase new axles or engine mount bolts...
So I'd bagged and tagged all the fixings from various parts of the bike, and was steadily working through the plating process... This was what I was looking at for hours upon hours...it became very, very tedious...
The build has at times been an exercise in managing gumption...some days you are just not into it at all unfortunately. To help with motivation, I decided to change tack... rather than restore all the parts in bulk and then assemble on completion, I'd start assembly and restore as needed for whatever part I was working on. This definitely helped with a feeling of advancement!
Oh, a small note...here I'm heating up the left-hand threads on the sprocket carrier to try to remove them, thinking that they are right-hand...everyone knows that if you heat them up enough.. they change thread direction..
Got the ExactFit belts installed, new bearings on the adjusters, still need to replace the idler bearings...(hoping for just one more Stein order, so waiting till the list is complete..)
A bit late in the day you could argue, but it was about now for some random reason I decided to calibrate my torque wrench... It's real easy to do and gives a peace of mind. Also I got to use my 10 year old weights for the first time... (I also went back and re-torqued the cylinder head stud nuts)
If I was to change tack, and start assembling things I needed something to assemble to... The frame was in a right state...rust and battery acid damage. (Please ignore the state of the workshop - mid advancement it always ends up chaotic, then gets tidied...I promise )
Around about now I purchased Pro paint/primer/lacquer for frame, wheels and bodywork...ouch...I've stopped adding up the costs, I briefly looked to see how much a 900ssie was when new, but thankfully didn't find anything online... please don't post anything to torture me. Lots of sanding ensued...and primer... It's a tricky thing painting tube frames...getting into where you need the paint gun to be. I did a spot of painting a looong time ago with average success. This time round I found a pair of second-hand DevilBiss Gti Pro paint guns (one for base, one for topcoat) not too expensive. These where considered the dogs bollox a few years back...and wow what a difference, very easy to get very good finish.
