Long time no update.
Regarding my last post, I wound up using a cutoff wheel to get the spindle off. Ordered new hardware from countrycat, also ordered the stupid brass choke adaptors that I needed. $20 each for a small brass threaded part is borderline criminal, but okay.
Seat took way more time then I thought. Used nylon webbing and pop rivets to make the front mount.
After a LOT of trimming, it was getting close. I decided to try to mimic some of the existing design language of the seat's aesthetics. The electric trimming knife worked awesome, and yeah, huge mess!
I'm trying to avoid spending money on actual upholstery work, so I cut the vinyl, rolled the edge, and glued with pliobond. No idea how it will hold up though. Here it is almost fully mounted:
It was a pain to get the belt off, there was barely any clearance between the clutch and the bodywork. I checked the motor mounts, and sure enough, one was toast. I took it out and realized it was a melted motor mount with stacked large washers on top of it, wrapped in electrical tape. Who does **** like this? LOL.
I reused the BMX grip flanges around the spark plugs. They're silicone so they shoudln't melt, and they look kind of cool. The studs on the exhaust manifolds were 3 different sizes, but all the studs were identical. Again, WTF. Threw all the hardware away and used some stainless washers and stainless freakin' ACORN NUTS for added bling.
Removed the belt cover, forgot to get a before big put it was pretty beat/rusty looking. Sanded, sprayed with the same charcoal metallic as the tunnel, then clearcoated:
After that, I tore into the front suspension. The front a-arms had a lot of rust, to the point where they wouldn't even flop downwards when disconnected from everything. Note the upper a-arm frozen upwards:
Spindles were scraped with a razorblade to remove the remnants of decals, then sanded, sprayed with charcoal metallic, then clearcoated:
The front shocks looked awful, but it rode okay. I figured they'd need rebuilding because they look absolutely awful:
However, after noticing no oil whatsoever, and very smooth/steady movement in both compression and rebound, I decided to just clean them up. The springs were sanded heavily to roughen the existing powdercoat and remove the rust. Sprayed with RustOLeum Lime Green Engine Enamel. I like their engine enamels a lot, they have great coverage and leave an extremely durable finish, with a lot of gloss. The shock bodies themselves were pretty awful, and a wire wheel didn't have enough bite to get through the zinc coating. What wound up working great was putting them to a metal finishing wheel. Followed that up with a few coats of clear (masking the shaft), sandblasting the hardware and clearing that, then reassembling. I did one at a time so you can really see the difference here:
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I also POR15'd the top of the spindles and the ski mount area, and am currently throwing everything back together. I purchased all new hardware from CountryCat, I didn't want to put those nasty old bolts back in, so here's my most recent photo of where I am at:
