Labour of love

Going through the grits, page one of thousands...

There has been no time this week to take the head off yet - it is still sitting in the summer house awaiting hours of patience with an open ended spanner, but we can finish cleaning up the rocker covers.

I haven't committed to any polishing equipment yet, but with a spare hour I have started to polish the two rocker covers by hand.

Starting by scraping off the dirt with the ubiquitous credit card/hotel room key, we move on to 240 grit used wet to cut back most of the oxidation. Moving through 400, 600 & 800 stopping periodically to ensure that the whole surface is cut to the same standard.

For some reason we seem to be out of 1000 grit, but we move on to 1200.

The next step is a waste of time - we try with some Farecla G3 cutting compound, but quickly find that this will not cut aluminium. It is an excellent product for what it is made for - paint & lacquers.

For final finishing - Solvol Autosol, resulting in the shiny parts we see hereabouts. Shiny enough, not to ruin the patina of a 60 year old bike? too shiny? not shiny enough?

You be the judge.

More next time...