Good Morning!!!! 60F @ 7:45AM. Sunny. High 76F. Winds NW at 10 to 15 mph.
Yesterday, did anyone besides me miss that hour of daylight we used to have at the end of the day?
How wonderful you were able to give your father such a peaceful time at the end of his life, Buppies. We should all be so lucky.
The clutch arm on the back of the old BMW transmission wasn't going back on in that cramped space, but after removing the exhaust system there was just enough room to wiggle it into place. That gave me the opportunity to shorten the back end of each head pipe, which allowed the collector box to move forward enough to better clear the legs of the center stand. And it was a lot easier to use a small bit of stainless steel wool and some solvent to clean the baked on gear oil off the top of the collector box. Just wish I'd noticed the clamps were missing from the front of the collector box before I installed the header pipes, but I guess practice makes perfect, right?:confused3:
Spent the rest of the day trying to get the side stand to work properly and stow away without hitting the header pipes. Got it bent using the oxy-acetylene torch in a couple spots, but the oxygen regulator kept turning down the oxy for some reason. Guess it's getting tired after 35 or so years, but as I recall, it never did work the way it should have. Probably time to update both regulators. Then I found that the new sidestand position caused the springs to automatically deploy it. Not good for anything that way, so I cut off the mount and made a new one that got welded on where I hope it needed to be. Then fired up the bead blaster to ready it for paint, only to have the drain valve on the compressor tank start venting oily water onto the ground on the patio. I'd tried to drain that tank a few years ago only to have the drain clog, and it has been open ever since. Why it picked yesterday to let go I'll never know, but I'm glad it did in spite of the mess. The little outhouse sized shed the compressor sits in needed hosed out anyway.
Was surprised and pleased with how difficult the paint on the sidestand parts was to remove. POR-15 Chassis Coat is some good stuff! But I got the welded areas down to bare metal, and the undamaged paint roughed up for another coat, and then shot everything while the compressor was already up to pressure. Finished just as the sun was going down, and it was hard keeping an eye on what I was doing as the sun turned turned the clouds a million shades of red, orange, and gold. The weather man sez it's due to a dirty high sitting off the cost that is bringing moisture down from Washington, but not enough to cause any rain.
Hope everyone's week gets off to a great start!
