Part 2

A lot of the work that has been done already, and it was pretty much just clean-up of all the grunge that was covering the bike.

And as this was a tedious as well as dirty task, no pictures were taken except for a few times. But in the meaantime, I'll list what I did to make the wee Starfire look more like a motorcycle instead of a field to plant spuds.

Starting at the front end, I remove the front wheel and then the front fender/mudguard. I cleaned the fender/mudguard up and other than an old scrape at the front end, it was in good nick. I sanded the braces down, primed them with some spray paint and then used some black paint from rattle cans.

After that I took the wheel and brakes apart and gave them a good cleaning. The inside of the brake drum I attacked with some sandpaper to get rid of the very light surface rust that was there as well as to rough up the brake lining on the shoes.

With a small wirebrush attachment for the Dremel, I managed to clean up the ribbed hub so it looked a little more presntable than a travelling rust farm. The spokes and wheel got the WD40/Solvol/wirewool treatment.

The wheel hub beaings I drifted out and took to the local bearing warehouse to get replaced. They were actually in great condition, but I felt that after sitting for roughly twenty (20) years a new set was called for.

Aftr dealing with all that, a bigger job came to hand....the forks. Those actually weren't as hard as I thought. After loosening the pinch bolts & top nuts and giving th etop each leg a good wack with a lump hammer and bit of wood, each leg dropped out.

As I didn't have all the tools needed, I didn't replace the seals in the stanchions, but did do everything else that could be done.

The headlight brackets along with the upper and lower crowns were sanded, primed and repainted, the boots were replaced due to dry rot and all the bearings were replaced as well.

The biggest hurdle was getting the stanchions back into the trees and secured. This would be alot easier on two counts; 1) if the fork damping springs were internal instead of external and 2) I had the fork-leg puller upper tool  used to pull the legs up into place.

As th elocation of the damper springs couldn't changed, I was forced to deal with the tool issue which wasn't that hard after all.

I got a pair of fork top nuts, some threaded rod and an asssortment of nuts, bolts and large washers and proceeded to fabricate my own puller upper tool.

I did need a little assistance from Frank Ceeko who drilleed a hole down the center of the nut with his drill press and then using his bench grinder we ground off the flats on the nut so it would fit down through the fork crown.

Then by putting everything together and then screwing into the top of the fork tube, I was able to draw everything up into place. Yeah buddy!!!!

With all that done, and put back together it was time to work on the engine area. That comes in Part 3, which is next.