'78 KZ1000 makeover

My circles never come out that good with a jigsaw. Need more practice I guess. :blush:

Wow that came out good!

Remind me to keep you guys away from my ninja.

Tank looks good Adam!

Thanks! Here is the tank with the weld ground flush, and a bit more of the older prep work removed for a wider band of body filler. Probably not necessary, but a precaution I took anyway.

And a nice good smear of body filler all the way around should do the trick!

Looks great!! You guys are gonna convience me to do this yet!!!

You've convinced me to hire you to do it! :lol:

with all the modern tools I almost forgot about the jigsaw. Good stuff man! my son says he is buying a tig for his welder at his mom's house (his step dad just built a wharehouse of a garage) so I will have the ability to weld it up. When I go back to work full time I am trying it.

Keep the pics coming

You should see what cutting metal does to a jigsaw after a while. I just killed mine recently. I can't even cut plywood anymore. Tore it apart to see what was wrong and all of the gears are worn down to nothing. Time for some new tools. Maybe a nibbler is in order for sheet metal work. Hmmm....

By the way, Adam isn't allowed to take on any more side projects until he finishes his bike.

Nice job Adam.

Thank you guys Josh is right, I need to focus on the project(s) I have in front of me first :whistle: To be honest, it was easier and took less time than I thought!

Josh, I have a nibbler, and it makes more of a mess than anything....every punch makes a tiny 1/16" metal crescent, and they go flying EVERYWHERE. That, and its difficult to get a clean, straight line. To make a perfect sheetmetal butt joint I needed precision, hence the jig saw cut. I suppose I could have used the plasma cutter, but thats like bringing a bazooka to a knife fight, and I still wouldn't have gotten the accuracy freehand with the torch I get with the saw. Having a small lathe, a plasma and a tig welder is definitely sweet, but I still do alot of my fab work with a hammer, bench vise, bench grider, files and jig/hacksaws.

Little bodywork tip: after applying a coat of body filler, when you go back to sand it you always start by sanding down the edges back to the underlying panel. Like so:


I didn't have 36 grit on a 6" disk, and I damn sure didn't feel like doing it by hand (it was a late night with a fair amount of tequila....) so I used a 4" grinder. Not pretty, but it got the job done. Then I moved to 180 grit on a DA. Normaly I would have used 36 grit to rough it down, then applied a thinned out skim coat and switched to 80 grit then 180, but again, I didn't have any 80 grit 6" disks either. Its slower, but it sands the same. I still need to bring it down a little more, but this is where I left it before I left for a SB party.


Enjoy!

Looking good!