Body work time. I sanded the replacement tank down and found lots of minor dings, a few scrapes, and a few larger dents.
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Most of this will dress out with featherfill, but not all.
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This is one of the larger dents, just above the badge area. There is another dent towards the rear of the tank, where that blue paint still is.
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This one is deep, but small. Probably had something dropped on it.
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And a few deeper dents at the very front of the tank.
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Next I started to tackle those pretty blue side panels. They seem to have lost their crisp edges, so I suspect there are a few layers of paint that I will need to sand through.
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However, I never suspected this. By the time I was done, I found 9 paint layers. No wonder they had lost definition.
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This shows the various layers. Now, I could have kept sanding everything back to the base black panel, but we looked at this and decided to stop here. This patchwork is something you really can't duplicate.
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All the sanded body parts were sprayed with sealer. We had a second front fender, but since both had minor issues, we decided to see which would work out better. We had also found a second rear fender so that we didn't have to paint the chrome one.
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The top sides in the sealer. Time for bodywork.
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The areas where we did not want the featherfill were taped off.
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Then we sprayed featherfill on all parts, not just the tank.
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The front and rear fenders in featherfill.
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Time to sand everything smooth, starting with the rear fender.
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The tape was removed from the tank before sanding. It won't take much sanding to get this smooth.
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The first fender sanded out so well that we decided to store the second fender as is.
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It's a good thing I prefer sanding by hand. Every piece is nothing but curves.
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The rear fender ready for color.
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The front fender ready for color.
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So is the tank. The dents and dings are all gone.
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The side dents are gone as well. Featherfill is amazing, but there was a few touches of putty in a couple of the dents.
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Time for the seal coat under the color.
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The Ranchero was covered up during this process.
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Time for color. We will be using a 2 part system of base coat and clear coat.
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Yes, the bike was blue when we got it. But Kurt likes blue motorcycles, so we went back with something similar but a few shades darker.
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The original side panels were just sprayed with clear to preserve the mottled colors sanding had revealed.
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This is a beautiful blue, now with clear.
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The front fender in color and clear.
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And the tank. Notice the reflection of the photographer in the finish.
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The other side of the tank. No dents.
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And those mottled side panels. Kurt named the bike Jawbreaker.
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Time to reassemble the bike with the freshly painted parts.
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The painted parts had to be stored for a short while as we finished up with the Rebel.
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These are an original set of side panels. Notice the crisper edges. The badges will be removed and I'll lightly sand these to give a smooth finish. Then we can paint them, but that will come later. Time to put this beauty back together.
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