I went down to take off the cover for the first time since I parked it. I poked around with a screwdriver and brought my nice camera to take pics. I got some issues.
Primarily I discovered a rectifier when I opened the battery box.
There is an odd bulge where the points used to be.
It used to be covered with a piece of rubber painted silver.
So there was some deception going on. There’s a lot of silver overspray on the tires and around the frame and engine.
Where the keyhole used to be is a wire poking out. I removed the glued on piece of plastic and I’m happy to see the hole is still there. I plan to buy a key set including the ignition, gas cap and fork lock so it’s important that hole is ok.
I’m also worried about some botchy welding at the stand area.
This can be worrisome but if it’s just welding that can be fixed. There are a lot of quality welders around here. Thankfully I have a good stand from the donor bike I bought the other week.
The rest of the engine is pretty clean.
The exhaust above doesn’t fit because it’s not original. I ordered a reproduction exhaust from Cruzaire Restoration but he just messaged me now telling me he might not be able to fulfill because his stock ran out and he might just give my money back. I’ll know by next week.
The inside of the battery box doesn’t seem to have rust.
I have a new wiring harness so I’m itching to get all of that spaghetti out of there.
So here’s the plan so far.
- Push it to my mechanic’s shop, around a 30 minute walk away. It’s not so hard, I already did that with Leslie.
- Get that engine to start. He’ll determine whatever is missing and I’ll order it.
- There is someone selling a Wave 100 engine with papers. That might be an option if it proves impossible to start. But I have to hurry I’ll definitely lose out if I don’t buy it soon.
- Strip engine off to check on that botchy welding. Have it re – welded if necessary. Might as well send all the parts to nearby Republic Powder Coating. I’m so happy this place is just nearby. I may have to have it sandblasted first so I can check all the dents and dings before actual repainting.
- Change to new wiring harness. I’ve already bought one.
- Buy new airbox. This can wait.
- Change nuts and bolts to stainless. Most of them are rusted out anyway.
- Buy or have fabricate a straight handlebar.
- Include rims in the sandblasting, change to new spokes. Paint rims silver?
- Destroy the seat to get to the metal part and include that in the sandblasting. The seat top is OK but there’s a lot of surface rust on the metal. There’s a guy called AllAboutCovers at Cainta that looks like they can recreate it properly.
And that’s it. Assuming engine runs it should be a simple matter of putting everything back together. After that I can register it and transfer ownership but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.