I'm glad I found this post. I believe this one was the one that was deleted and resurrected because I had another one under the same name or at least very close to it with only one post trying to recall everything that the original one this one had contained in it. It never got no more than that one post because I got really disillusioned. My apologies for that. Still at the point now where I've actually got some time to get back here and post my progress for what I've been doing for the past two years. A lot of that time has been a lot of nothing when it comes to the restoration.
A fast synopsis is:
- A lot of my zinc plating sucked. Some of it took forever to get the chrome work done. One batch took six months and I thought I was going to be able to get back to do some nickel plating but that really sucked.





- So I sent it out a few months ago of this date to get it replated and that turned out really well.
- I wish I could have found nickel plating like the original but there's nothing like that around at least locally.
My painting sucked and a lot of that took two coats, especially with the rims and the wheels. The tank took four if not five times. But you'll see that later as things are exposed with pictures and commentary

When the bike was all stripped down and I turned the frame upside down, I was actually surprised to find out that I had two issues on the underside of my frame. I failed to take a picture of the areas before I repaired them so here are pictures of the old part that was cut out laying over top of the repaired frame.
I think this bike was ridden really hard if not raced from all the other symptoms I had seen with the motor and other parts of the frame when I was working on it to get it running initially.




It isn't the cleanest patch but it's a lot stronger than what it was. One hole actually got broken out by impact and the other one you could tell was actually a rust hole, so I was glad to get those repaired




After that was all done, I was able to get the painting started on the frame and other parts. I already think I mentioned that the swing arm took a second coat for some oversights that I made on it. But this paint blistered terribly whenever it had a fresh coat of paint applied over top of it. Something that I learned from the hard way.

Ordered the decals for the tank, fenders and number plates, got the wrong size number plate decals from the vendor. After few back and forth emails, he got me the right size ovals for my number plates.



The side panels are painted but need another coat over the black oval. I clear coated over the silver paint used and it changed the sheen of the flat black that was there at first. I should have known that was coming. The oval on the side cover over the exhaust pipe is painted, not a decal like the others.



Cleaned up the lower tubes and clear coated. Finish failed twice. Had them looking good too before the finish went south. I used a direct to metal Rustoleum product the first time, 2 coats, the second time I used 2 coats of POR-15 after stripping the front tubes back down.



Even the two coats of POR-15 let me down and right now I'm not even gonna mess with it going any farther.