Monday: I didn’t do anything to the bike still recovering from flu and the Christmas Fair on Sunday. The postman delivered the sand blasting gun from the UK so that I can de-rust some of the non-chromed brackets prior to re-painting. He also delivered the chromed frame hanger covers and the triple tree cover from F6Ecke in Germany from the German VRCC. These are great pieces of bling from another Valk owner who puts you on trust to get the parts and then pay him. I am looking forward to starting to put things on the Valk rather than taking them off. My storage room is getting full of pieces.
Tuesday: It is a Bank Holiday here in Spain today and so there will be no post delivery. I got some work done today. For the first time I have started re-fitting things to the Valk. I fitted the new left rear indicator but in doing so I found that the right side captive nut in the cover wasn’t so I will have to do an epoxy repair on this rather than buy a new cover.
Wednesday: After reading the advice from the friendly guys on the main VRCC board I got the cable clips undone easily on the handlebars without breaking any of them. I now have the front end completely stripped including the triple trees so now I can look at starting to do some polishing on the master cylinders, forks and triple trees. I took the top off the air cleaner just to check the state of the filter and this is what I found
Dirty air filter
I suspect it is the original from 1996 / 17,000 miles ago. This was surprising given the mechanical state of everything else that I have found on the bike. The cosmetic condition is what has been the problem to date. I suspect that it might even run a little better with a new filter.
Thursday: Nothing removed from the bike today. Spent the day in the workshop sand blasting and cleaning bits ready for painting. I started on the lower triple tree with wet & dry paper and am pleased with the results so far, a bit more work is needed before I can put it on the buffing wheels. The postman delivered the replacement switch housings, I was / am going to polish these but they are really good without.
Friday: Put rust curing paint on the inside of some of the rusty chrome parts and then painted them with black smooth hamerite. The outsides have polished up fine. DHL finally arrived with the progressive air shocks. Unfortunately the pipes have been crimped either in postage from the seller to my son of from him to me so I am going to have to get some new ones, hopefully they won’t be too expensive. Waiting for progressive to tell me how much. If you live in Spain don’t ever get anything delivered by DHL, allegedly for two days my street (built 30+ years ago) didn’t exist, then today when I had given up hope he drove straight to the door!!
Saturday: Did some more cleaning and painting of pieces and also polished the lower triple tree. Started with 240 grit wet and dry paper as it was that bad and ended at 1500 grit before putting it on the buffing wheel. It was a dirty job but the result is worthwhile.