A new old ride, and a salute to ThomWV

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

I picked up a "barn find", a '73 BMW with a 1995 license plate. Bad chrome, bad paint, and the gas tank had something that smelled like turpentine in it - just very old gas. This will be a slow project.

It has good compression, and I finally got it running on one cylinder. The other cylinder has spark - I pulled the plug cable off the plug and it felt like holding the wrong end of a bee, my way of verifying the coil is working, ouch.

My first goal is to make it road-worthy. Next (maybe next year), I might tackle paint, so ThomWV's thread is very interesting. My goal would not be so artistic. If I can get a paint job similar to Mrs ThomWV's original blue, with maybe the standard BMW white double-pinstripe, I'd be more than happy with that.

The chrome will not be close to perfect, unless I decide to have a bunch of parts stripped and re-chromed. For now, the budget allows a can of chrome polish and some rags. It's not too bad.

I just got a can of carb cleaner and a can of starter fluid, so I'm ready to tackle cylinder #2. :)

[Haole Girl]

1. You're going to show us pics, right?

:hi:

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

7. Pic 1

Ok, KC2, I can try some pictures.

Camera battery is charged, let's see if this picture stuff actually works. These pics are after an opening round of S100 cleaner, to knock off the bird droppings, dust, general grime of stagnation.

A beat-up tank, with a poor re-paint job done at some time.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

8. Pic 2

A cleaned-up carb on the old motor (lipstick on a pig?)



Note all the rust on the crash bar. This thing is going to require elbow-grease.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

9. Pic 3

Rear wheel and muffler, lots of cleanup needed.

[ThomWV]

10. Sweet!

That doesn't look bad at all. Let me ask you, what state are you located in?

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

11. Michigan, where the riding season is coming to an end soon

Anyway, I managed to get the thing running on both cylinders after dismantling the carbs and replacing most of the rubber seals, blasting out the ports with carb cleaner, etc. Things are looking up.

[lumberjack_jeff]

2. Personally, I think there's nothing cooler than an old BMW.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

3. That's a nice one

A nice old /2 model? Mine is not that old, and is certainly not in that good condition. +

I think I need a new camera battery, but pictures of mine might be ugly. Rust, bad paint, dirt, and a few parts missing or replaced with bad hand-made iron chunks.

I've got the carbs disassembled, cleaning the jets and replacing a few rubber bits. It was running on both cylinders, but only with the constant help of starting fluid, so I'm guessing the old Bing CV carbs is a good place to start. Getting the engine running is my first goal. Scraping rust and adding paint will be next. I just hope I get it running before it gets too cold.

[ThomWV]

4. Is the sheet metal straight on it?

What a wonderful find! Where did you locate it? How did you get it? Every barn find has a story and I think they are fascinating.

You know, looking back on it I've spent a lot of years trying to encourage people to do a lot of things for themselves. The painting is like that. Very nice paint jobs are within the abilities of most people if they give it a try and they might discover they enjoy doing it. I'm not saying that either I or any other damned fool can just grab a spray gun and lay down a show-quality job, but I do say that a dedicated owner who takes the time to ask a bunch of questions and follow instructions can come up with a very nice paint job on their own.

Here's the thing; every town of any size worth mentioning has a couple of auto parts stores. I'm not talking about the chain stores that stock a zillion alternators and brake pad sets and have isles stocked with every over-priced spray can in existence, but the real auto parts stores with long counters and guys behind them that know exactly what they are talking about. Anyway, in just about every town there is one auto parts store that specializes in refinishing supplies. They will sell paints and guns and all sorts of magic and often poisonous liquids. If you are really lucky - as I am - there is actually a shop in town that sells nothing but automotive finishes and related supplies. So once you find the paint store in your town your best hope is that they will be friendly and willing to help out a novice. Like I said, I hit it real lucky. The two guys who run "Automotive Paint Technologies" in Morgantown, West Virginia (about 15 miles from here) were extremely helpful to me. I told them what I wanted to do and they picked out the appropriate products. They gave me the tech sheets for everything they sold me and they told me what to be careful about when applying it. I told them what tools I had and they told me how to best make use of them. After that it was just a matter of paying attention. I had done a little bit of painting when I was younger but I certainly had no 'technique'. So I just bought some cheap paint and started shooting it on the panels of an old riding lawn mower I had laying around. Practice, practice practice.

About the money end of it. It would be cheaper to pay a professional painter to do your bike than to do it yourself. I'm not kidding about that. I already had a fair sized compressor and had it piped into my tool shed and so there was several hundred dollars saved. My air system also already had a very large industrial filter/water-separator in it too so that saved me another hundred bucks. I believe in using good tools and so a spray gun from Sears wasn't going to cut it. I read up on what was out there and then went to E-bay to see what I could find. Yikes! It might surprise people to see what a good quality spray-gun and air-brush cost these days. I ended up putting out about $250 for a used gun and $100 for the airbrush. So as you can see, if I had started from scratch I'd have already spent as much money as a nice paint job cost and I haven't bought so much as a drop of paint yet.

Paint prices are all over the map. You can spend an awful lot of money on paint and additives. Although the water-based paints I used for my color can be had in 4 oz. packaging for the most part the smallest size materials are available in is quarts. So you start with a quart of epoxy primer to seal off the metal and that stuff cost you $30 a quart. You do whatever repairs are necessary and shoot it with some sandable primer - another $30 per quart. Then you need a color sealer, which gives you a uniform base color to start from. The stuff I used was available in an 8 oz. size so it was only $20. After that, at $20 a pop, I used silver, black, and white. Then came the blue which had to be mixed 1:1 with a special clear for another $50. In between coats another special sealer (recommended by the paint store) was applied from time to time @ $50 a quart. Finally everything gets coated with clear-coat. The version of it I bought cost another $50 a quart. Then there's the acetone, degreaser, tack-cloths, smooth shop rags, paint filters, mixing cups, masking tape, and on and on and on. Its just amazing how much you can spend for the opportunity to break your own heart when a god damned fly decides to land right dead in the middle of the last coat of clear.

So, it all adds up. Like I said, it would be a lot cheaper to just have someone who knows what they are doing to give you a flawless job. But its a mighty good feeling to do it yourself too and there's no reason you can't produce a very nice looking job. Oh, since finishing Janet's bike I've been asked by 2 people if I'd be interested in painting their bikes. I've said yes to both, they just have to do much of the prep work and buy all the materials. The painting is free, but I give no guarantees. I also give the reminder that you get what you pay for. Both still seem interested but I haven't seen anyone buying any paint yet.

[lumberjack_jeff]

5. If you're content with a selection of only a few colors...

there's a guy who sells paint on ebay (paintforcars) who sells a reasonably good acrylic enamel paint. I've painted a dumptruck and a jeep with it, (and a $49 harbor freight spray gun) and they both turned out fine.

I painted my bike about 10 years ago and it still looks good-ish.

[ThomWV]

6. Yep, that works too

You've got a very nice looking bike there.

Paint is so forgiving these days its pretty amazing. All the work is still in the prep of course but I don't mind sanding in great detail. What is really so nice is that with all the two- and more-stage stuff you can always scuff out any blemishes and spray right over top of it and of course the clear coat makes everything look great with the big plus of giving you UV protection at the same time. It doesn't matter much that a spider flopped down in it at the last moment or that the gun blew out a big old bugger of paint right when you were getting done - it will all sand out and polish up nicely the next day.

This is the tank I did for wife's bike: