Monday – Colour
by admin on April 28, 2009
Here is a pic of colour on Niall’s frame, and a spare set of white side panels where put on to get and idea of how the final composition will look.
D.
Rain delay, sort of.
by dyoshida on April 26, 2009
Saturday end up to be the odd day. I thought we would have clear great weather for a full day. We were trucking good till the heavy wind and rain came down. The wind was so strong that a small piece of wood hit Chris in the head. I still have bits of broken lawn furniture from someone in the neighbourhood. We got most of the items back into the garage or under the roof over hang.
Had a BBQ while we waited for the rain. We spent the rest of the day inside the garage sanding and scraping the smaller parts and cursing the weather. Had another BBQ in the evening. Ate while we worked.
We had a couple of late night visitors Hon and Doris came by with some beer and to check out the operation. Kept working away till about 2:30 a.m., those beers came in to handy. Gotta double check the forecast next time.
D.
Tax time again.
by admin on April 25, 2009
Ok went to Mom’s place to do her taxes. I am one week earlier this year. The good news it that I found some old scooter bits that I had laying around, that was suppose to be part of this build a few years ago. The bad news is that by rooting around for old odds and ends, I did not finish moms taxes. Thanks for the grub mom. Yikes (mental note, go back Sunday and finish her taxes.)
My buddy Tom helped me pick up some more needed scooter parts today. While driving me around I was slowly trying to brainwash him to get a lambretta as well. Once this build is done, I’ll get him to take my scoot for a ride. Then he’ll be hooked like the rest us!
David.
Workload
by dyoshida on April 24, 2009
Chris is a workhorse when it comes to painting!!
Ask him to sand or prep and he looks like you just shot his dog.
But Dave and I don’t mind doing that if he keeps up the great paint work.
Props to Dave, You are getting very good at body work.
I tried painting for a bit and I hated it. Got too hot.. glasses fogging.. everything sticky..
Give me an engine on a work bench anytime over the Paintbox nightmare.
Niall
Thursday evening.
by dyoshida on April 24, 2009
We put in a four hours of time this evening and made some good progress. We sanded and primed some more parts. Chris was in charge of the paint booth. He only came out for smoke breaks. What a trooper.
After some paint mixing to get the right tint we now have 1 frame, 1 fender , and 1 head cover out of 3 with colour! Whoop Whoop! Getting there… No electric sanding tonight, I don’t want to piss off the neighbours. This saturday will be sunny and warm, we will use the electric hand sanders and try to get the remaining big parts primed and ready.
David.
Shocked
by dyoshida on April 23, 2009
I won a bid for a shock off of ebay that I plan to use on my Lambretta! Total of $65 USD for an 03 Yamaha YZF R6 Rear Shock. Anything is better than a standard Lami shock. Anything. When it arrives it still needs to be modified to fit. But, Niall was already successful at a conversion so I will follow what he has done. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
D.
Forks and Dampers
by dyoshida on April 23, 2009
Just a quick picture of my forks. This Year I want to make sure that there is NO lambretta dive.
Went out and purchased the fork compression tool. No more jamming 2 screw drivers in the forks and covering your eyes. Also got the Drum style front links with damper attachments from Beedspeed.
Now we have to prime and paint them. I’m researching how to paint over chrome.
Niall
28 days before… Is that a zombie on a gray scooter???
by dyoshida on April 17, 2009
We put in about four hours on Friday evening to do some hand sanding and priming. Norm (Niall’s bro) came by to give a hand with sanding.
Spray priming ran into a snag. The primer mixture need to be thinned down a bit more with Mineral Spirits (the consistency should be a milky texture). We ended up with some primer runs. We will just have to sand those down again, oh well. There are still a few parts left to sand down and have primed, but far less than a week ago.
Progress:
- – 2 out of 3 frames primed
- – 2 out of 6 side panels primed
- – 1 horn cast primed, 1 with some runs, 1 still needs sanding
- – 1 out of 3 leg shields primed
- – 1 out of 3 fenders primed
- – 20% of the smaller bits primed, including glove box, glove box door, gas tank, floor boards, forks, hubs, rims, bridge piece, head set top/bottom, I, think, I, am, going, to, pass, out, this, list, is, longer, then, I, thought.
Chris is putting together the colour schemes for Niall and I. We each should have our colours decided within a week. I am leaning towards black and tan right now. Chris has his colours ready with an illustration theme that looks really cool. Time is short and we still are hopefull that we can pull this rebuild project off. We need a parts order still but don’t have a complete list of what is missing.
There are 28 days left to go to the Niagara Scooter Rally. I have a feeling that we will either feel/look like some zombies by the end of this. Ugh…. beer…. Ugh…. need more beer…
David.
Couldn’t sleep cause of bikes
by dyoshida on April 15, 2009
Another productive night. (Or…its all coming back to me now)
So Niall, Dave and I got together Tuesday night (foregoing our usual night of escaping the wives) and hit the 3 lambrettas hard. There are now less than 30 days until the Niagara Rally and although optimistic, we are all starting to feel a little pressure about getting all 3 bikes ready on time.
Dave and Niall did an excellent job of getting Dave’s garage converted into a makeshift paint room, complete with a propane heater to get the parts nice and warm (great move Niall!). What I may not have mentioned is that my brother Neal has been kind enough to lend us his compressor and airguns…sweet (Thanks bro).
We now have a good chance of making this whole fiasco happen. woot! Our production line technique seemed to work fairly well…
First we heated the paint area and several hanging parts for a few minutes using the propane heater (then after removing said heater so as not to blow ourselves to smithereens) I would step in and begin spraying thinned Tremclad primer…Yes you heard right Tremclad (Rustoleum for our American friends). If it hasn’t been mention in this blog earlier our group is experimenting with the “$50 Paintjob” check the link – will add this later.
We are doing our own version of course, since half the idea of the $50 paint job is to use rollers instead of spray, but we have access to a spray gun and compressor so why wouldn’t we use it? The tremclad is super thinned anyway and goes through the gun nicely.
Almost ready for colour! All we have to do is convince Dave not to do another all black bike…oops I just realized the bike I’m currently stripping down was all black. Oh well that was a theme bike (my old super nerdy X-Files bike from back in the mid 90s).
We managed to get quite a few bits primed and lots others ready, so all in all a good night. t’s beginning to feel like the days when we were fresh to scootering…
The Niagara itch is really starting to burn!
Chris
DIY Lambreta paint room.
by dyoshida on April 15, 2009
Last night Niall and Chris came by and we finished setting up the paint room. Amazing what two rolls of $10 plastic, cardboard and half a garage can be converted into.
Chris had borrowed an air compressor and spray gun from his bro (Vespa dad) and brought it over for our painting experiment. Thanks Neal and Jen! We did some spraying using Tremclad primer thinned out with mineral spirits. We tried it on some test pieces and were pleased with the results. We are going to attempt Tremlad painting based on what we saw off the web. If it can be done with a car (Mustang), then Tremclad on a scooter is worth a shot. From the pics you can see the plastic sheets that we stapled to the garage door frame. Total time 45 min. Chris sprayed the first test piece using a paper mask, right afterwards he used a proper respirator mask (in case you were wondering). Most of the time afterwards was spent sanding and priming parts.
At the end of the night we had a few suds and went over some ideas on how we could make it to the 2009 Niagara Rally this year on two wheels. Time is not on our side.
See video – Paint Test – Rebuild 2009
D.