KZ650 cafe-racer

gazzz wrote:
And in addition eccentric adjusters are helluva practical: you tight axle nut only once when install it and the process of chain adjusting becomes simple and fast thing, moreover with no need to check marks every time.

Adjusting the chain slack is a one minute job now.



BTW gazzz, you have impressive metal working skills.

Thank you!

That Krüger & Junginger swingarm costs fortune. There will be quite a lot of polished parts in my project so I decided to paint swingarm in black.

Looks like I overloaded this page with photos. But OK, lets continue, I'll just make my posts shorter.

I disassembled wheels and prepared them for glass blasting, which is, as I mentioned not once before. is the best way to get aluminum parts clean and ready for either , painting or polishing. Glass blasting is quite soft in action, but all the same, I protected areas I wish to preserve completely unchanged.





After glass blasting parts looked fascinating, just like some kind of 3D models. Even brake discs that were rusty (which is not surprising for parts made some 30 years ago) looked much better than I expected.

Honda CBX550 wheels’ parts are raw and never meant to be polished. Even counting that wheels are the first to contact with road dirt and different small solid particles including bugs and flies, I couldn’t lower quality of polishing works. Thus it took a lot of time to make them smooth and suitable for polishing. Here is few photos to illustrate what I mean:

I am not new to aluminum polishing and over the years I worked out my own tips and tricks to do the work. However these wheels turned out be a real test of all my skills. Some "in process" photos:

There are four grids for every brake disc patterned with round holes. They are made of steel and initially were painted in black. Sure, no painting lasts in such places unharmed for more than thirty years, thus grids needed refreshing. So to paint grids anew? Nah, it’s too trivial and we all know that devil is in details.





Thus I got those grids glass beads blasted and then brass plated. After that I semi polished them and finally they were clear coated to prevent them became dull. Here is result:

Progress of polishing work was slower than I wished it be, but as I finished part after part the pile of unpolished parts gradually became smaller.



Spokes adapters are flat and might look like easy game, but believe me, after polishing in true mirror every tiny scratch will be visible on flat surface. I sanded them as little as possible not daring to decrease their thickness even on some tenth of millimetre.











Once I finished with Honda CBX550 wheel’ hubs polishing I gave hubs to the paintshop, where all unpolished surfaces were painted with same heat resistant paint I used for Honda CB815 engine. Why bother with paint? Simply to protect that vast aluminum surfaces of hubs from oxidation and make them more easy to clean in future.

I already had hardware of right type: 7mm flanged bolts with non-reduced body diameter (strength grade 10) and high 7mm flanged nuts. I found suitable bolts among Honda OEM part numbers while nuts were provided by BMW, both of these manufacturers are well known by their love for 7mm hardware.

I decided to polish insides of air intakes on front brake shields. You may take it for madness, but I think even a bit raw work I made on those intakes was worth it.







I also polished fins of outer covers air intakes.





All these aluminium parts were designed to be lightweight, so they are quite thin, thus I didn’t dare to grind a lot of aluminium off them and in result surface is not flawless. Another funny thing : after polishing it is became apparent that, alloy they cast of was not quite homogeneous. After being polished to mirror it looks like some kind of Damascus steel pattern.



Mix of different views:

Brilliant work gazzz, your parts details are looking so great.
I have to extend my browser Cache to watch all you pics.

Thank you for good words.

I am used to give information as combination of text and photos. I'd gladly insert thumbnail of pictures instead of full sized photos (even as they are prepared for web), but since the only option to put picture in text body is button "insert" I could do nothing about that.

I hoped for some comments to dilute my posts, however the only person that commenting this topic is you, thank you for that.

Beautiful work, nothing more to say than keep the pictures coming.

Love this build!:laugh: