H1, Chapter 5

More work on the H1.  The pic doesn't really show, but the fins aren't just sanded clean, but fully polished. The paint and sand the fins trick works nice and is pretty quick, but having to actually fully polish the edges of the fins turned out to be really time consuming.

More shiny bits.  I still have some final buffing to do, but I ran out of polishing compound.  I also left the big gouges and scrapes. There's not enough metal left in some of them to sand out. And they character and are a nod to the bike's previous life(but mostly I'm just lazy).

You'll remember I flipped the headlight ears upside down to get the headlight lower. The point of that was to get the gauges mounted lower. I finally got that part done. The pod still uses the same mounts, it's just on the other side of the top triple clamp. I had to cut off then drill out the factory studs on the bottom of the pod. Those studs are cast in so the won't come out, and they're harder than @#$%(for no apparent reason). Took me 2 hours and many drill bit resharpenings to get the holes drilled through. Then it was just a matter of trimming the center cover to clear the triple clamp. I'll seal it up when I do the final assembly. I'm still using the stock rubber mounts, and some stainless bolts that I'll polish nice and shiny. The ignition key still works just fine, and the pod sits like it was made to be mounted there.

The gauge pod was the last of the major "before it comes apart" fabrication.  With that done, I stripped the bike down as far as I'm going to. Once I get everything cleaned, I'll paint the frame, swingarm, and engine case.  Just pulling the forks off really transformed it from "most of a motorcycle" to "a pile of parts" haha.

Got my frame cleaned and painted(and yes, I took the rear wheel off before I did it).  Most of the factory paint was still in very good condition, so I only painted the parts that are visible when the bike is assembled.  It also saved me the trouble of having to strip off the wiring harness.  I've seen lots of black cylinders on H1s and H2s, but I don't know that I'd ever seen an engine with black cases. Since I've got a black and shiny theme going on, I decided the cases should be black too. I also put a fresh polish on the rear brake drum while I had the wheel off.