Okay, now where was I... Ah yes, the whole front end was off, awaiting the arrival of steering head bearings and a couple of genuine dust seals from Honda.
So, while I waited, time to tidy up the steering stem and lower yoke.
My goal here was to remove the original casting marks and get rid of the rusty crappiness of the last 15 years.
Out with the Dremel and grinding wheels... This was just after I started:
After I cut off all the extraneous material and treated the whole thing with some very sticky orange rust converter, the whole thing had to be cleaned up again.
Allow me to introduce now a really brilliant tool: the wire brush Dremel attachment.
This is excellent for removing softer material from harder surfaces. Safety goggles are a must, as the wheel flings off tiny bits of wire as you work, and to see what you're doing your face has to be right in the way of this.
Also, next time I won't be sitting down with the workpiece in my lap, as my jeans became filled with these wire bits, which I later discovered as they spiked me in soft places!
So this is the lower yoke when finished and painted, now looks almost as good as the top one!
Aaand, here's the front end all back together. Everything nice, shiny and new, except the master cylinder and brake reservoir, please disregard their ugliness until I can source replacements...
Being lower than original, the position of the clip-ons gave rise to a few issues with cable routing and hardware positioning, and it took quite a bit of adjustment so that nothing would foul on the instruments, but it's all sorted now (except the clutch won't disengage, as per this thread
http://www.perthstreetbikes.com/foru...e-sound-65692/)
Also you can see the lovely carbon airbox which makes the mixture a bit lean at idle, hence the 'engine sound'
just gotta shrink my hands a bit to get in and adjust the pilot screws
Also in this pic you can see my old coolant overflow and rear brake reservoir, no longer cluttering up the rear end and inaccessible under the tail... Here are the new items, hi-tech HRC tube and bottle:
There will be no photos of the bike with clothes on, until it has some new ones. In fact I would leave it naked, except the front fairing is required for the indicators... No I will NOT fighter it!
