In May of 2006,I made a trip to the show in St. Augustine. It's about a two hour ride there, four hours round trip. When I returned I noticed that the tank was vibrating a lot more than normal. When I took it off to see what was going on, this is what I found. What would be called a "captive" nut if it were a standard nut had pulled out of the tank.

Additionally, the rear mount had broken as well.

I did not own a MIG welder at that point so I reasoned that if I could save the paint it would partly pay for one. Any guy can appreciate the logic in that, right?

All looked like it was going well.

Same thing for the rear mount. That's a magnet holding the mount in place by the way.

Then I did one of those really stupid things that I sometimes do. I grabbed the bolt that I had screwed into the other mount to use as a ground and picked up the tank. Being full of water it was quite heavy. Well, perhaps it would have broken later anyway. At least that's what I kept telling myself.  

Mannn, what a bunch of gobbledy gook.

Well, it looked better after grinding and painting. You can see that I lost more paint on this one than the first.

Well, that's my tale of woe. Sooner or later the tank will have to be repainted. When that happens I will revisit this. For now, I'm just not riding as far as I was.

August 25, 2006

The carbs on my '69 Triumph Bonneville had become so grungy and stained that I was no longer able to clean them. The grey pot metal was now an ugly grey/green/yellow color that just could not be made to look new again.

This is what I came up with. I had hoped for something simpler and easier but it just was not to be.

I disassembled the carbs and bead blasted the parts.

Next I dipped the parts in a 50% mix of Muriatic acid and distilled water for 5-10 seconds. The pot metal came out pretty nice after the bead blasting but the acid dip really made them "pop".

I was afraid of corrosion from the acid dip and wanted to more closely match the original color and tone so next I gave them a very light zinc plate. After plating I dressed the individual pieces with a mild abrasive (kitchen cleaner) until I had what seemed like the right shade and reassembled.

Now, about those manifolds...

This is for the ladies in the family.