Okay so I am bit perturbed, I got the exhaust all nice and purty, and upon final install, I had to use a black rubber mallet on the 'U' bend that routes the pipe down and to the muffler... Upon getting a good seat of the pipe, with no gasket maker... I found that a black rubber mallet had chipped the paint and perhaps the chrome off right out in front for everyone to see...
Soooo.... I sanded, and I sanded, and I recoated lightly, and recoated lightly, and I recoated lightly, well you get the point... But the end result...
A different color. Same can, same bike, same guy, but different tone to the paint.
So my theory is that sanding produced a different surface effect for the paint to adhere to... DAMMIT!
So now I have it looking okay, but still it has a two tone look as you follow the headpipe down to the bottom of the 'u' where is begins to stragiten out and head toward the muffler...
Arrgghhhhh!
All I can think to do is remove the whole dang thing, again, and sand it down and paint it... But I really do not want to do that. I was hoping that maybe I could sand the pipe all the way down til the shady part where things wont be so noticable and repaint most of the head pipe by masking off the bike with garbage bags as I have been doing since I ran into the problem. In the hopes that perhaps I will achive a nearly imperceptible fade from one tone of flat black to another...
Eesh... What a pain. Just for a cool looking black exhaust.
However the other parts came out pretty good, I am no pro so their are a couple runs on the kickstart lever but they are hard to notice because they are on the inside 'face' as it were. The shift lever looks perfect and I even carefully sprayed the slpine shaft to make it look better, and the headlight bezel (is that right) and pilot light retainers look pretty damn good, so does the ACE can lid.
One problem is that only one of the headlight aiming screws wants to turn so I will likely have to disassemble that and fix that problem...
Also of note was that the vibration of the exhaust and e swing arm moving had created a 'blade' on the muffler mounint bracket. That is to say their was a part of the bracket that had continously rubbed on the right rear swing arm and made a 2 inch thin spot on the bracket and also wore down the swing arm a few millimeters. I hope to have solved the problem by putting a piece of rubber hose over that section of swing arm and taping it i place with electrical tape, for now. If it holds great, if it moves or fails I will go to more extreme measures.
I just don't want to be hitting the 10,000 mile mark to find the rubbing has destroyed the bracket and wore a hole in the swingarm...
It ain't internal engine problems but they are still challenges and fun ones at that. About all thats keeping me going these days.
I still haven't named my bike but I am getting close to it, and I still need a gremlin bell. But that is another story.
I
One of my potential names is from a favorite strategy game (yes video game)
GORT...