WOW, that is crazy. we had a guy in basic get pissed and pointed his M-16 at another soldiers head. Boy the Drills where moving fast to get him. What is worse was in AIT he turned out to be the guy in my room. There where 4 others in there also with him. Small world at times.

 

People think you're safe if you can duck behind something solid, but some of that stuff goes almost straight up, and then falls down where being behind something, or in a hole, doesn't help. If you didn't catch any falling grenade bits that close, you were lucky, although they probably wouldn't have hurt. I had a tiny piece of some kind of something that went bang land on my bare back once, no impact damage, but it was red hot...

 

Just a quick update...no pics...sorry, there's nothing new to see. I put the second coat of texture black paint on the engine last night and it looks good. I think I got most of the spots I missed first time around but I won't really know until we get it out into the sunshine. If there's something glaring I'll have to mask things off and touch it up. But I'm hoping for the best.

A couple of points about painting the engine for those that might want to tackle the job. I realize that most of this is pretty basic and probably covered in a hundred other threads but maybe it will help someone who is following this. Obviously, my engine was out of the bike which makes things a lot easier. But still assembled isn't as easy as you'd think, so here are some tips from my experience:

You can't have too much light. The paint booth at the shop has plenty of fluorescent overheads but they don't help you see very well into all of the cracks and crevices on the engine. Overheads create shadows everywhere. I had a hand held fluorescent shop light that I used with my left hand while I painted with my right. That helped a lot, but if you have some standing lights you can place around and below the engine that would work better I think. I know a lot of guys have just painted their engine outdoors on a nice day and as long as there's not a lot of dust and debris in the air that's probably the best option for spotting any coverage issues.

I took a lot of time tapping things off and I think it paid off. Have several different sizes of masking tape and a good exacto knife handy. Also, the foam earplugs come in handy for filling bolt holes and you saw me use the rubber bolt end caps for covering the bolt heads I didn't want painted. The big ugly steel bolts holding the main case together I just painted over. I taped off most of the surfaces where other parts will be bolted to them. Places like the sprocket cover bolt holes and the rear engine mount I taped off the flat surfaces so there wouldn't be any paint between the parts when bolted together.

For those who chop their sprocket and/or cam cover you're going to have bolt holes that are now unused. There are a couple of options - 1) do nothing and just paint completely over them, leaving the hole empty but painted black. Or, put a bolt in the hole and then paint over it. I didn't think about this (or I did and immediately forgot about it) until right before I started painting and decided I liked option 2 the best but didn't have any suitable bolts on hand to throw in the holes. So I plugged them with earplugs so the threads didn't get gummed up and I'll put some button head cap screws in there later and shoot some flat black paint on them. That should look ok and personally I think it will look better than leaving them open.

Also, for those who've chopped the cam cover, you'll have the oil pump to think about. I taped mine off and painted around it best I could. There are some bare spots behind it that I can see now with the tape off but I'm not sure it's worth worrying about. When all the oil lines and pipes and controls are back in place it's likely that the bare spots behind the oil pump will be unnoticable. If they are noticable I'll tape things off and shoot some flat black in there. The other option is to paint the oil pump itself black. I'm still pondering that one. Most of the ones I've seen on line are all left bare aluminum, and that looks ok, but I'm not sure the best thing wouldn't be to just paint it black like the rest of the engine. Six of one...maybe.

Painting the rear of the rear cylinder was quite difficult. The way the cylinder slants back over the rear of the block makes it almost impossible to get a paint can in there to spray between the cylinder fins. It's easy to see, it's not so easy to paint. Having the starter out of the way made it a little easier but still very difficult. The issue is this - unless you have the spray nozzle directly in line with each gap in the fins you don't get paint back onto the grey cylinder wall and it just builds up on the end of the fins risking serious drips and runs. And you can't turn the can sideways and spray like that. The can stops shooting paint and just shoots propellant after about .05 seconds. And with the big hump on the left side of the block for the starter mount you can't get a good angle from that side either. I still don't know if I got it all but I took my time and took a lot of those .05 second sideways shots hoping the can was lined up on each gap when I pressed the nozzle and I think the rear cylinder wall is now adequately covered. You have a similar problem on the front of the front cylinder with the oil filter in place. I had a new oil filter that I taped up and put on there instead of taping off the mounting hole...I thought that would be quicker. I ended up taking it off and taping off the mounting hole. You can't get back behind the filter with it in place. Then there are the spaces right behind the pushrod tubes. It looks like I got them covered but I don't know for sure yet. Spent a lot of time and paint trying to shoot behind them without getting so much on the cylinder fins that it dripped. I don't know how you gize who've painted your engine with it still in the bike have done it painting around all the engine components still in place. I had a hell of a time with the motor stripped down to bare bones.

The paint should be good and cured tomorrow so I'll finish taking off all the tape and pull the cam and clutch covers so they can go to powder coat. I am interested to see how much oil comes out all over the new paint when I pull those covers. I had them off before and cleaned them out but I just know that having moved it around for weeks with those covers back on that there's gonna be at least some oil dripping coming outta there. I'll try to minimize it somehow. Then I'll reinstall the starter. Frame should be done as well so look for some pics of that tomorrow night or Sunday.

And for those who took the time to read this far (quick update, my ***!), here's another pic to wet your appetite for the rest of the frame mods. This is open the area below the seat. With the solo seat in place that hole is pretty obvious and you look down on top of the oil tank. So Oz cut a piece of the perforated sheet he's using to craft the skid plate and welded it in.

 

The texture black engine paint turned out great. Love the chrome pushrod tubes against the black.




I pulled the primary cover and cleaned the oil off, getting ready to bring it over to the powder coater. Oil drippage was minimal. Then I reinstalled the starter.



Then I pulled the cam cover, cleaned it up, also ready for powdercoat. Finally, I reinstalled the injector assembly.


Progress...

 

Pure eye candy right there.

 

Thanks man.

 

Only got a couple of hours in the shop today. Here are a few pics of the progress.

Instead of having the oil tank mount bolt to the right side of the frame Oz welded it to the inside of the frame after filling and smoothing the original hole. The whole thing will be powder coated and should look pretty seamless. Here it is tacked in place.



Then he re-did the left side cover mounts. Instead of the cheezy plastic clips to hold the side cover in place, he filled the slots in the side cover and then redrilled two holes. Then he crafted, tapped and welded two mounting brackets to the side of the frame. The side cover will be held in place by a couple of button head screws that thread into those brackets.





Still have some work to do but making good progress. Haven't heard anything yet from the powdercoater on the parts I dropped off two weeks ago...

And I found someone to finish and paint the tank and rear fender. He took the fender today and is patching the ECM hole and prepping the whole fender. I'm still trying to decide on a final paint scheme.

 

Wishing you good luck buddy, but it seems I hear more bad news about powdercoaters than just about anything else these days...maybe it's voodoo or something.

 

So far it's been the worst thing about this project. Stuff is completely out of your hands. No control, at their mercy. Just sit and wait for a phone call saying come pick it up. Sucks.

 

This thing is so cool. So many mods that most will never know are even there, alot of attention to detail.


As for the powdercoating guy try giving them a call or stopping by. Maybe it's done and they just don't call. For some reason the people I use for PC work will take down my number but will never call once work is done.