The Rebuild and Completed Bike

After disassembly, I sanded and painted the frame and fork/handlebars with black Rustoleum. Then I drilled two holes in the left rear downtube for the taillight - one for the wiring and one for the mounting. I thought about running all the wires through the frame, but that would have been just a huge PITA to do. I also installed the new sealed bearings in the neck. The neck was too big, so I wrapped the bearings with duct tape so they fit snugly in the neck. Since it’s only going 2mph, I’m not worried and it’ll be easy enough to fix should they slip down.


The chrome on the wheels were trashed enough that I really needed to do something. The wheels are two-piece with a couple of pieces of clear plastic in the middle. I split them apart, cleaned the sand and dirt out of everything, and sprayed the chrome parts with red Krylon Fusion.


This is after the third of five paintings of the bodywork. I used black Krylon Fusion so the paint would adhear to the plastic parts. There were a number of stickers that had to be cleaned off the parts first and the cuts on the rear fender had to be smoothed out. After this I tried painting some red accents on the tank, but that didn’t work out. The tape I used to help guide my painting tore the black off the tank! So it was back to sanding and painting.


Here we are in the process of rebuilding the wheels. You can see the cleaned up motor in the background. I decided not to touch the motor, even though it has a couple of spots where the chrome is worn off. I painted the exhaust pipe with chrome Krylon paint because it was really worn, but it just doesn’t look as good. Besides, the worn motor gives the bike an "used" look to it.

I tried tapping the 10mm diameter axles so I could re-use them, but I couldn’t get the tap started. So, I used 3/8" threaded rod for the axles as well as the stearing stem bolt and used cap nuts to add a little shine. I replaced the bent 8mm rods holding the floorboards and motor in place with 5/16" threaded rod. I will probably replace the nuts shown here with cap nuts to clean up the appearance. Menard’s didn’t have any at the time.

I got the bike done Monday night and Punkster got a chance to test ride the bike in the living room. At first she was scared of it, but 15 minutes later she was tearing up the living room with it. It was all we could do to pry her off the seat for bed!

Tuesday night I took Punkster and the bike to J&P Cycles for the Cruise Night bike and car show. Of course we entered the bobber. Lots of positive comments from the others there and the event photographer and videographer spent 15 minutes shooting the bike, taping her riding the bike and interviewing us for J&P’s website. We didn’t win, but we had a LOT of fun.

I think it turned out pretty well, don't you?

I WANNA RIDE!!!