Translation
I've been working on this one on and off for many years. There have been several incarnations of this bike while I've owned it. Shortly after I bought the bike it was stolen by an SF Gang Banger. The SFPD found the guy riding it with no plate, and without a helmet. He had broken all of the locks, crashed it a bunch of times, at messed it up pretty bad. I had just gotten it running when other issues form the theft appeared. Out of resources the bike collected rust for nearly a year, upon which time a friend from my bio class came over and helped me get it running again. From there the incarnations began. I'll do a quick run through some of the incarnations, but really this current resurrection is the one I'll be focusing on. For now it's an unfinished project as I'll have to wait on the plastics.
Here's the bike as it was when I first bought it.
After the theft, some repairs, and sitting for a year.
The tail section had been busted up pretty bad from the thief crashing the bike, and had to be replaced.
The front faring had been damaged too, and I was lucky enough to find a front faring from a 2003 Malossi version.
Then a friend hooked me up with side panels from a 2004, and 17" wheels.
He also had a 2004 tail section, but it was cracked and beat up. I was able to fix the cracks.
And then I sprayed it black.
I took it to the kart track a few times, where the plastics got all scratched up in the truck by my friend's Honda! Damn it! This is how it was before the scratches—you'll see plenty of photos of the plastics all scratched up later. I quite liked this version of the bike, and had a good time with it on the track too.
Okay time for the fun.
A friend bought a membership to one of the local craft clubs where they could do powder coating. We were going to do a bunch of bits, but found that their sand blaster was lame, and the powder coating didn't work out so well. But we learned a bunch from this experience!
So this meant that I had to go to the pros, and that worked out amazing!
The frame was red so I went for black for the other bits. The swing arm was black, and I was lucky enough to have Cagiva end caps. Here's how it was looking, but to me it needed something more...
Here they are in red.
And as you can see the wheels are red as well.
Because powder coating is so thick it's important to not do the threads, or bearing surfaces. The Coater thought that the swing arm bolt access holes were bearing surfaces so they were taped off.
Of course this needed paint or it would rust, and because I didn't want ANY over spray to mess up the sweet powder job I had to mask off the entire frame.
