Your soldering job doesn't look bad, at all. It's nicely flowed-out. The issue is that you have to work quickly, control the amount of heat that reaches the condenser. My technique: heat the gun (I prefer using a soldering iron, especially for this application), tin the tip, then apply heat the leads. Once the attachment point of the condenser is hot enough to flow the solder 1-2 seconds is all it takes to get a solid, properly-flowed, joint.
Restoring Dads CT70 KO
- Thread starter Atomic Rebel
- Start date
Atomic Rebel
New Member
Alright, time for an update! I'm so close to getting the Honda rolling, I can almost TASTE it!
I got he engine mounted back onto the frame and I have to say, it starts like a dream. I couldn't be happier after all that engine work. Here's hoping it doesn't grenade when I give it some revs while trying to haul my 180lb behind around!
The process of removing the wheels from the frame was quite a bit more difficult than I imagined it would be. I'm used to greased axle bolts that just slide right out of the wheels. These axle bolts eventually came out, but they were kicking and screaming the whole way. Major pain! Next step was to separate the rubber from the metal. 30 years of fusing together with the rusted frames made this a challenge. Speaking of rust....
The insides of the rims were pretty rough. The rear rims were in a bit better shape than the front, but both suffered from pretty bad pitting.
The exterior of all 4 rims halves ended up cleaning up quite nice!
I originally started the rust removal process with a 1" Scotch Brite roloc disk, but quickly moved to a wire wheel. The wire wheel worked really well, but I have to say this ended up taking rust off the fastest. However, it didn't quite remove every last piece of rust. This project was my excuse to pick up a cheap blast cabinet off of craigslist. The blast cabinet finished the rust removal quite nicely, and I'll be using it to clean up the foot pegs sometime soon too.
While waiting for my Honda Cloud Silver paint to ship to the local power sports store, I decided to work on some of the chrome components. I was absolutely blown away by how well they cleaned up with nothing but some steel wool and elbow grease!
The rear fender cleaned up nicely too! May not be a mirror finish, but I'm quite happy with it!
I spent the big bucks and bought a replacement factory exhaust instead of aftermarket. I took this picture before I cleaned up the heat shield. I polished up the heat shield and got it mounted back on, and wow...Worth every penny to have the factory exhaust on this motorcycle! It was nice to start the engine up and hear it with an exhaust too!
The factory headlight housing was cracked on both sides, and since I had to get in there to replace all the light bulbs, I decided to go ahead and buy a replacement housing. It was quite dirty inside! Several old wasp nests and who knows what else fell out when I pulled the headlight.
I got he engine mounted back onto the frame and I have to say, it starts like a dream. I couldn't be happier after all that engine work. Here's hoping it doesn't grenade when I give it some revs while trying to haul my 180lb behind around!
The process of removing the wheels from the frame was quite a bit more difficult than I imagined it would be. I'm used to greased axle bolts that just slide right out of the wheels. These axle bolts eventually came out, but they were kicking and screaming the whole way. Major pain! Next step was to separate the rubber from the metal. 30 years of fusing together with the rusted frames made this a challenge. Speaking of rust....
The insides of the rims were pretty rough. The rear rims were in a bit better shape than the front, but both suffered from pretty bad pitting.
The exterior of all 4 rims halves ended up cleaning up quite nice!
I originally started the rust removal process with a 1" Scotch Brite roloc disk, but quickly moved to a wire wheel. The wire wheel worked really well, but I have to say this ended up taking rust off the fastest. However, it didn't quite remove every last piece of rust. This project was my excuse to pick up a cheap blast cabinet off of craigslist. The blast cabinet finished the rust removal quite nicely, and I'll be using it to clean up the foot pegs sometime soon too.
While waiting for my Honda Cloud Silver paint to ship to the local power sports store, I decided to work on some of the chrome components. I was absolutely blown away by how well they cleaned up with nothing but some steel wool and elbow grease!
The rear fender cleaned up nicely too! May not be a mirror finish, but I'm quite happy with it!
I spent the big bucks and bought a replacement factory exhaust instead of aftermarket. I took this picture before I cleaned up the heat shield. I polished up the heat shield and got it mounted back on, and wow...Worth every penny to have the factory exhaust on this motorcycle! It was nice to start the engine up and hear it with an exhaust too!
The factory headlight housing was cracked on both sides, and since I had to get in there to replace all the light bulbs, I decided to go ahead and buy a replacement housing. It was quite dirty inside! Several old wasp nests and who knows what else fell out when I pulled the headlight.
Atomic Rebel
New Member
The new headlight housing is a slightly darker blue than the frame, but I expected that to be the case. I'm sure it's hard to match color to 50 year old paint job. But I'd much rather have an intact housing than a cracked one! I couldn't get the dash to seat all the way down into the headlight housing though, which seamed a bit odd to me.
The Cloud Silver paint finally came in, so it was time to paint my wheels! After blasting and thoroughly cleaning, I initially painted the bare metal with a self etching primer (forgot to take a picture) Then after waiting for the primer to fully cure, I sanded and applied this white primer. This was probably an unnecessary step, but I read a couple places you should put a normal primer on top of a self etching primer. Who knows, but I figured it couldn't hurt anything.
Or maybe it can hurt.... On 3 different spots of the hubs, I had the Cloud Silver paint bubble up like this. I'm unsure if it it was improper prep work, or the cheaper Rustoleum primer I applied on top of the self etching primer. You can see the bubbling didn't go through to the base layer self etching primer, so that makes me think it was the Rustoleum layer that caused my issue. I'm not going to strip the paint down and redo it this year, I figure it'll be good enough for now. I'm not going for a complete cosmetic restoration of the Honda. Yet....!
The exterior of the rims turned out absolutely beautiful! I went back and forth on whether or not I should put a clear coat on the outside of the rims and on the hubs, and finally decided to put on a matte clear coat. I figure since they're exposed to the elements it wouldn't hurt.
The process of painting the rims seemed like it would never end, I believe I'm finished! This weekend I'm hoping to get the tires back on the rims and new bearings and seals installed in the hubs. If all goes well, I should have the wheels back on and I'll hopefully be able to do the first test ride soon!