Testarossa's 78 KZ1000 Fighter Build

Tonight I managed to clean the upper case half. On the outside at least. Man that thing was funky. Like George Clinton and the Parliment Funkadelic! It took a whole can of brake clean, and about 30 lbs. of sand to get this clean. Here are the before and after pictures.







I didn't try to get it perfect since it will be wiped down with acetone, and painted black once everything goes back together.

It looks 1000x better already. I'm surprised you got away with only one can, but the sand made up for it. What are you planning to use for your engine coatings?

Originally I was planning on using the Duplicolor engine paint per kzstreet71's recomendation. However, Mark has me thinking about the KG Gun Kote. Have you got any suggestions? I'm all ears.

I used dulpi-color. Works good. Seems like it stays on too, I have a CBR engine I painted years ago and its been kicking around the shed with no big chips or scratches since then.

But if you have the means, go for the gun kote, it'll be more durable I'd imagine.

I agree with T_dub. I painted the valve cover on my car about a year ago with the duplicolor and it has held up well, and seems durable.

I went with the duplicolor on my bike just because it's easy to use, readily available, and the biggest reason was because it doesn't need to be cured in an oven.

I'm sure the gun-kote is a better product, but ease of use was the winner for me.

I have the Duplicolor on my motor as well. its ok .
it all depends on how u feel about repeating this project or doing a new project. there is no doubt that the duplicolor will have to be redone , down the road.
if i had the time and knowledge about the gun cote ,when i did mine, i would use the gun cote.
do it once and forget it type thing.

Hmmm, I have put a lot of work into cleaning this motor, but my plan is to source another motor to build into my 1075 later on. That will get the gun kote for sure. I'll be able to take my time on that motor.

So tonight, I got the lower case half sandblasted, and cleaned out. Sorry, no pictures, I left my phone on my desk at work. I also was able to remove the two broken bolts from the lower case.:woohoo: Fortunately, they both broke off about 3mm above the case, so I was able to weld a nut to each bolt and unscrew them with no harm.

Were they oil pan bolts?

porchev914 wrote:

Were they oil pan bolts?

No, they were both bolts that go thru the upper case into the lower. Both were in the vicinity of the starter. Oddly enough, neither was very long. Usually, it's the longer bolts that want to twist off in a block. None of the real long bolts gave me any problems.

One more update with no new pictures. I have been working steadily trying to get myself ready to start painting. I got the engine cases, head, cylinders, and cam cover, all sandblasted and ready for paint. Also, I have been working on polishing all of the engine side covers. What a pain in the ass. You find one little scratch, and it sands out easily with 100 grit. Then you spend 2 hours working your way through the progressive papers just so you can buff it.

I have a tentative plan for a temporary paint booth that I can construct in my garage. I just want to get to the stage that I can paint all of the assorted bits that will be semi-gloss black.

Sounds good. For the booths I put up in my garage, I used visqueen, a staple gun, a cheap box fan and cheap HVAC filters. Set up a filter on each side of the "booth" and the fan taped to one of the filters pulling air out of the booth. Viola! cheap paint booth

Yeah, that's it exactly. I'm just trying to figure out how to rig some lighting in there so I can see what i'm doing. I have two of those twin bulb flourecent garage fixtures and a double halogen work light. Do you think that will be enough? I forgot to mention that I built a DIY air drier. My compressor is kicking out some serious water vapor these days. This humidity in Houston is a killer, and I don't want that water vapor to make it to my paint gun. I'll try to get a picture of that tomorrow.