Hubs, fork legs, petcock, painted or bare?

As I am preparing with restoring kz650 I was just curious what factory finish was on those?
It looks like bare aluminum, I was going to just take it for vapor blasting. Or was it painted from factory?

Vapor blast

wrote:

As I am preparing with restoring kz650 I was just curious what factory finish was on those?
It looks like bare aluminum, I was going to just take it for vapor blasting. Or was it painted from factory?

I'm pretty sure that the lower fork legs had some kind of clear coat over the aluminum.  I "cleaned" a bunch of the clear off of my KZ650 while trying to remove the road grime.  I got about half way through one lower leg before I realized I was removing a factory finish along with the grime. 

The other parts appear to be plain aluminum.  Or maybe someone else "cleaned" them before I got there. 

Clear coat it. whatever you do, don't leave it plain.

I sandblasted lots of engine covers and by doing so, I removed all coat that was on the parts. Looked great right after blasting but soon after, I started to get that "white powders" on the parts. Planning to remove those and blast it again,only this time I'll either paint it silver or clear coat it. Fortunately, my fork legs are in black, so no white powders on that one. But planning to paint that as well. 

It's under the cover right now, so when I can, I'll take some pictures of that "white powders". BTW, I live in middle of the pacific, so no winter for us and not a whole lot of rain. So moistures are minimum and will disappear rather quickly, even after rain.

There's been a variety of things done over the years.  Petcocks on Z1's were painted black.  From Z1A onward they were bare metal.  Most models had chrome fenders but Z1R had paint.  Forks have been plain and painted.  I prefer plain.  Some people say Z1 forks were clear coated but that's not my memory from back in the day.  I normally vapour blast them and then buff them but the scratches need to be smoothed out beforehand or they will show through the blasting.