Sympathetic Restoration 1

[mikeb921]

Jay Leno's definition is: Make the vehicle safe and usable without full restoration. The bike belongs to my brother and with a limited budget we wanted to "fix" a few things on the R 50/5. Items addressed were:
Rebuild carbs
valve job
Re-ring (pistons still within specs, as were bores)
New clutch
Many seals and gaskets
Re-new rear wheel (bearings and SS spokes)
Replace many fasteners with SS
Heli-coil final drive drain and fill threads
While we were doing this work we wanted to freshen up every area we were working in. I'll show this in multiple post because, for the life of me I can't attach more than one picture per post. I know, I'm a computer idiot.

MB

[mikeb921]

As you can see, the cosmetic damage is much worse when you start looking a little closer.

[mikeb921]

The battery acid alone is responsible for much of the damage. Break time, I'll be back.

[mikeb921]

We painted the rear part of the frame, sub frame, swingarm and other black parts using Rustoleum "Professional" spray cans. It works pretty well if you only use the first half of the can. The spray becomes to weak after that to get a nice job. I know this is a "half-assed" way to do a bike, but we wanted a daily rider not a show bike.

[mikeb921]

With the engine out of the frame, it's much easier to get it clean. While there are many products to clean the bright bits, nothing takes the place of elbow grease. This was probably the most time consuming part of the job.

[mikeb921]

With everything clean, painted, and repaired the fun part begins. The cool thing about Airheads is, anybody with decent mechanical skills and some patients can do this with minimal tools (okay, I did have to borrow a BMW tool or two).

[mikeb921]

At this point of the project, it really starts getting exciting. The fruits of our labor are paying off. The best is yet to come.

[mikeb921]

Time to fast forward. Again, sorry about multiple post. I left out a lot of good pictures and it's time to wrap this up.

[mikeb921]

After all was said and done. We really enjoyed the project. We did this work over a period of 3 weeks.

[mikeb921]

Last one, I promise. Just goes to show what 2 brothers with a limited budget and a little time can do. We got most if not all of the parts from Hucky's BMW. Hans is a great guy to do business with and is a wealth of knowledge. I want to thank crazydrummerdude for inspiring me to post all of this. I don't have an Airhead at the moment, but I'm pretty sure there's one in my future.

[orbitangel]

After all was said and done. We really enjoyed the project. We did this work over a period of 3 weeks.

Well, the bike is STUNNING! That is one gorgeous toaster. Very nice work indeed.

That was a LOT of work to accomplish in three weeks! Job well done!

[dpmonk]

Beautiful job on the toaster.
If you have more pictures we would like to see them.

I haven't figured out how some manage to post multiple pics in one post either,
but you could upload all the pics into Photobucket (free) into a slide show and post the link.

Let's try like this?
http://s733.photobucket.com/albums/w...w&t=1230907751

we'll see if it works.

[kstoo]

That is just too clean to have been scrubbed! Is that soda blaster work or is this still the seventies?

[kstoo]

I'll show this in multiple post because, for the life of me I can't attach more than one picture per post. I know, I'm a computer idiot.

MB

um, you really should ask for help, advice, instructions first. There are a lot of people smarter than me here that could help you with this.

[mikeb921]

PMonk,
I uploaded all the photos to Photobucket but I don't know how to post a link.

kstoo,
We didn't use blasting of any kind. All done the old fashioned way, by hand. The date on the photo should tell you when it was done.