leapinggnome.org

Hello all. Last week Saturday, the moon and the stars were in proper alignment! The weather was nice, I had some free time and more importantly Walmart finally got in their shipment of fine sand for the summer. After buying a few bags and setting everything up, I had the chance to try out my new sandblaster. I was somewhat disappointed at first — it seems the blasting media needs to be quite dry in order to perform. And of course, walmart keeps their sand outdoors and it had rained the night before.

After a quick setback when the sand refused to blast, I started baking the sand in the oven to get rid of the moisture. Although it’s a bit of a pain, it did work. Once we got the sandblaster figured out it worked quite well. The part you see below is the swingarm for my Honda CB360, it used to be black and rusty. Now it is shiny and 95% rust free! I’m going to blast it again to get rid of the last few traces of paint and rust, and then it will be ready to be primed and painted.

I was hoping to get the ‘cycle out before school let out here, but it looks less and less like that will happen. This week is exam week, the last week before (most) students head home. I only have 1 exam on Wednesday, but I have a decent amount of studying to do before then. I’m thinking I will finish stripping the rest of the frame and get a coat of primer on it by the end of this weekend. Seems like a reasonable goal, but it also seems like things pop up that get in the way.

Yes, that’s right folks. The Honda is getting a genuine strip down and all around overhaul. It’s officially spring now (even though it doesn’t really feel like it) and it’s time to shift my focus to getting the Honda ready for this season. I have big plans, as you may have gathered from the images above. The first step in these big plans is to strip all the paint off with a media blaster and repaint most everything.

I won an auction for a sandblaster on  ebay a couple of weeks ago and am looking forward to using it, but the weather has not really been cooperative with me. The last several weekends have all been rainy, snowy or windy/just plain cold. Also, I’m told that play sand works well for blasting as it’s pre-sifted, clean and dry, but when I went to wal-mart to pick some up all they had was super expensive Crayola brand sand. It came in red, blue and (I think) green varieties. I really don’t want to blast with colored sand because it’s more expensive and who knows what kinds of nasties are in there.

Other things on the long list of Honda work (in order of priority):

• Install and re-jet Mukini TM33 flat slide performance carburetors  8)
• Replace mufflers with new/shiny/non-rusted out mufflers
  (already purchased)
• Rewire electrical/charging system
  (bring it up to par with the 1980’s)
• Bondo, paint and install the correct gas tank
• Rebuild front brake master cylinder (leaky)
• Replace fork seals (they leak a bit and shocks are soft)
• Replace nasty sealed beam with a halogen (or better yet HID) bulb
• Change out current blinkers for LED lit ones

Anyway, it’s a long list and will probably take me a while to complete. Hopefully things are warmed up here by the time I’m done. Finally, I took a 4th picture of the bike with the front wheel completely removed. I felt I had enough images up top, if you want to see it it’s here.

Well guys, it finally happened. I skipped a month. Personally, I’m going to blame it on February being the shortest month in the calendar year. 28 days – what is that? Anyway, as you may have imagined I have been keeping very busy. It’s odd…it’s not like I have things to do for all 16+ hours of my regular day, but spending 9 of it at work every day just seems to take a lot out of me. When I get home I don’t feel much like doing anything.

I’ve been especially lazy the last week or so. I took a little spill snowmobiling a week ago and banged my shoulder pretty good. I’ve been doing a lot of sitting around watching TV and using my laptop, allowing it to heal. I even switched to using my left hand for mousing on my computer at work. I’ve been known to do this from time to time, but usually only when my wrist is bugging me. Have no fear though, after a doctor visit and x-rays of my shoulder, nothing appears to be damaged too bad. Praise God!

Let’s see here, other news. I sold my Polaris 440, it’s about time that thing was out of my life. It cost me a lot of money to keep in service and I’m glad to see it gone. At the same time it’s odd to not see it sitting in the driveway when I get home every day. It’s been with me for almost 3 years and at times it felt like it was never going to leave.