The work begins....Part 1

As you can see from the last post, I've figured out how to stick piccies on here so all going well, I'll be putting them on here to show what the wee Starfire looked like at the start, progressing up to the finished, and running (hopefully) item.

Anyway, here we go...

When I bought her, she looked in a right state. She was 99% there, but looking kinda manky from some possible oil leaks or needing a good cleaning.

Here she is from both sides:

As you can see, not looking her best. Also included in the picture is one of the active, roaming alarms that are at Thrash 'em Motorcycles. The others aren't shown to keep ne'er do wells from knowing their whereabouts.

A couple of other shots of the wee one in a less than glorious state:

As can be seen from both shots, there is a fairly good amount of grease and grim everywhere, along with some corrosion. And for some reason that's beyond my comprehension, the chainguard is missing, but then it does give a really good view of the condition of the chain itself.

The petcock taps on both the main and reserve sides were gummed up to the point that they would not budge. After liberal soakings in WD40, they finally can be moved, but still with a small amount of stiffness in both which may be a good thing overall.

The following shots are of the engine area to give an idea of how badly they looked:

Gawd what a mess this all is!!!!!!!!! I have no idea why the sidecovers were painted black, they just were. This took a lot a large packet of wire wool, WD40, Solvol AND a huge vat of elbow grease, some green srubbing pads and water to remove the paint from the panels.

I know some people will say that they prefer to leave the patina of age on a bike as it shows character and all, and to a small extent I go along with that.

However in this case, the patina, along with the oil, grease and other muck had to come off. I figured all this may very well be covering small cracks or breaks and they'll never see the light of day if hidden away. Plus, with any leaks that there may be, it'd be easier to spot them if the areas were clean as well as making it easier for me to do work if I didn't get covered in a layer of grime each time I got close enough with a spanner.