Bike cleaning (TLC) advice

Hi guys - this is sad - but I’ve taken Thursday afternoon off work so that I can give the bike a really really good clean. I’m going to take off all the pannles, the whole shebang to clean off some of the ingraned dirt that winter throughs at her.

My questions are simple… :slight_smile:

1 - how can I get my pipes clean?

http://web.mac.com/mattcashmore/iWeb/Personal%20Site/bike_photos/pipes.jpg

the bike is only 8 months old, and I know it’s done a winter but I’ve been very careful about cleaning off salt… but still… they’re not looking great.

2 - how can i get a chip out of my tank?

http://web.mac.com/mattcashmore/iWeb/Personal%20Site/bike_photos/chip.jpg

small - but it’s still there - there are also a lot of surface scratches that I’d like to clean out - my normal polish doesn’t seem up to the job and the paint on the cbf doesn’t seem that deep :slight_smile:

3 - I dropped the bike a little while ago and the only damage was to the engine case

http://web.mac.com/mattcashmore/iWeb/Personal%20Site/bike_photos/case.jpg

the damage is only light… but how can I get rid of those nasty silver marks (the paint appears to have been scratched off the actual cover)

Any advice - much appreciated!

m

on the pipes go for some high grade wet’n’dry emery paper (hardware store) to get surface corrosion off then wirewool and autosol to bring it up to a polish

(unless you can get your hands on a natty buffer machine but using one of them normally means taking the exhaust system off)

Or if you plan on keeping the bike for a while, invest in stainless steel downpipes.

After doing what JB said, spray paint with exhaust paint to make them last longer - your current pipes that is.

The casing, either replace or sand down and paint.

That’s really helpful - thanks guys - will give the emery cloth a go and then perhaps later this summer invest in some better pipes… I also want to replace a lot of the corroding bolts etc etc - where’s the best place to go for those?

I would sand the cover down and paint it, though looking at yours, it might be tricky. I did this once to a previous bike of mine when I had a slight track vs bike incident:

if your going for the whole shebang you might aswell take the front sprocket cover off and get all the grime and old lube out of there! its surprising how much gunk gets in there.

I think I’m going to end up doing that! Might need more than an afternoon though - will do the pipes this Thursday PM and see how they come out - then move on to the cover later… I wonder how much they are to replace?

Gunk… gotta love gunk!

m

rather interestingly a brand new alternator cover for the bike - with gasget is only £39 pounds with VAT… not bad… I may just replace the cover… never done that before but how hard can it be!

m

Don’t know about anyone else Jay, but I reckon you’re onto a winning thing with that newspaper look. And I like the Sports Page touch…something to read at traffic lights…

joy

for the bolts I’d have a look on fleabay as there are often cheap bolt kits. check with the dealer first as might not be that bad from them

www.tastynuts.com also do kits but these are high spec and pretty expensive

it depends how bad the bolts are - you can clean most up too in the same way as the exhaust with a bit of wet and dry

try using ACF50 to keep the corrosion down in future too

on the engine covers if you’re spending cash you might want to looking into the extra hardened ones that are race spec

cool - will have to have a look at those - but at £40 I’m not sure it’s worth going for extra hard ones… I’ll see how much they are…

Rather sadly I’m actually looking forward to taking the bike apart and cleaning all the crud of it!

m