Hello and welcome to my blog. This blog is more of a journal about building a Yamaha XS400 Bobber motorcycle. This is my fist ever build, so I thought I would share my experiences and the knowledge I gain to other motorcycle fans who might one day wish to build their own custom bike.Today Ive been to my local motor store to buy some Gunk Engine Cleaner to get all the dirt and grime off. I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked to because I didn’t start it till about 3pm, and it gets dark for about 4:30pm. But I did manage to get the right side of the engine cover cleaned up. It still looks messy as I found out that it has previously been painted over before. Now the side casing is clean, the next step will be to get it sand blasted ready for me to paint gold. Same goes with the rocker cover top, there must have been about 20 years worth of muck, greece, oil etc on there. I managed to get most of it off but still it could do with doing another one or two times just to bring it up more.
Below is some photos of the after math and what I used to clean it with:
This is an excelent cleaning product. It gets rid of any oil, paint, greece, grit, muck. As you can see from the pic this is the “Brush On” version, you can buy spray on Gunk but due to the thickness of the grime my decision was to use the brush on Gunk.
“To clean my covers I poured about just below half a cup full of Gunk into a cup and used a stiff tooth bruth to scrape away the grime. Don’t wipe it off though!. Cover the entier cover and leave for about 10 minutes. I left it for about 20 – 25 minutes because the grime was thicker. After I washed off the Gunk chemical with hot water, gave it a quick wipe with a clean dry cloth and left it look much better.”
As you can see from the picture above it looks a hell of alot cleaner. There is major scratches on and around the Yamaha logo. and some big paint chips. I realised this engine has been painted before so next week I will be getting it sand-blasted ready to repaint a gold colour.
Engine Colour Ideas:
Just a quick thought, I have put below a quick colour chart for you to see my idea’s of what colours i’ll be painting my engine.
When I took the right side of the engine casing off I noticed that inside the engine, or where the clutch plates are etc, the engine looked in mint condition on the inside. I think with some Engine Flush mixed in with the oil when the bikes done will give the insde of the bike a good clean.
As you can see from the picture above the inside looks in great shape, which is very good news to me as I only have to deal with the external parts.
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