Frames, Forks and Wheels

When we started, the fenders were painted but in rough shape. Both of them had rust on their surface, and needed work. First, we used ScotchBrite to get off the rust and scuff up the existing paint so that the primer would stick. After that we did the same thing but with dry sandpaper. Then, we used wet sandpaper of a finer grain. The wet sanding allows the dust particles to remain in suspension so that they don’t stick to the fender. Then we used a heat gun to dry the fenders before priming. We did a few thin coats of primer in order to avoid drips. We finished priming the fenders (and suspension forks) and are now waiting to take them to the paint shop.

-Emma and Eliza

We started out in different areas, but ultimately accomplishing many of the same things.  Most of our jobs included monotonous cleaning of different frame-related pieces with machines such as the sandblaster and parts cleaner.  Main pieces that were sandblasted include the nacelle, hubs, gas tank, forks along with other small pieces.  Haydn spent a lot of time despoking one of the hubs from an old wheel to salvage the hub.  This was made harder by the condition of the wheel and our lack of a spoke wrench.  We also applied bond-O to the gas tank and nacelle to smooth out and solidify their structure.  After lots of hand sanding and priming both pieces are coming along nicely.

-Haydn, Hilary, and Adam