Per my previous post, the thing I want to tackle immediately is the rust. It’s only surface rust right now and I’d like to keep it that way. The foot-board in particular looks like it doesn’t want to live through another winter. Some work up front now could save me a lot more hard work six months down the line if it becomes structural.

I’m not ready to do a full body re-spray right now. I want to keep the bike road-worthy for as long as possible while I “work around” the problem areas rather than disassembling. This means treating and priming the rust but not doing a final painting. That will wait until I’m much more familiar with the bike’s innards.

Before throwing myself headfirst into majority of the bodywork – something I’ve not tackled before on any vehicle – I figured the cowls would be a good place to start, something I could easily remove from the bike and take a look at in my basement.

As they say, 99% preparation. Following JPM’s great guide, I had gathered the following materials together over the past week:

Materials left to right: WD-40, steel wool, sanding blocks, wire brush, dust mask, Naval Jelly, tack cloth, filler, filler spreaderss, primer

I bought the filler and primer at Danken Auto Parts on 4th Avenue in Brooklyn. The rest came from Lowes and Home Depot.

Starting with the engine-side cowl, the first thing to tackle was to remove the rubber trim and electrical to get it down to the metal panel. The rubber trim where the cowl meets the body came off easy enough, but I came up short when I realized that the last piece of the rubber is held in place. The strip had the original rivet, which needed a hacksaw to get loose. I destroyed this trim in the process, but that’s something that’s easily and cheaply bought. When I put these back on I’m going to go down the nut and bolt route, which I later found out was how the second cowl’s trim had been held in place.

Second up was removing the rear turn signal. The lens comes right off with two Phillips screws. Here I learned my first issue of restoration: Rear bulbs are removed by depressing downward and turning. I immediately snapped the glass clear off the metal thread of the bulb by trying to simply twist, leaving the thread in the bulb socket. This took some working to get loose. This is where I learned that WD-40 is your friend. A liberal squirt and a jerk with a pair of needle nose pliers, the remainder of the bulb came loose. This is where I also learned that WD-40 has a habit of spraying back at you. In my case into my right eye. I immediately washed my eye out with water. I won’t be making that mistake again.

The bulb housing itself is held in place by two bolts that thread through the cowl into a nut and washer. These came off easily enough with a pair of pliers and I put these to one side in my handy storage tray. These are the kind of things that are easy to loose and much harder to replace.

What's left of the engine-side bulb

Finally the housing is wired into the main body of the scoot by a wire that follows under the lip of the cowl and is (presumably) soldered into the brass contact on the tip of the guide peg that pushes into the scoot when you lock the cowl in place. Thus transferring electricity from the main body to the lights. Clever huh? I did not know this. Something else I didn’t know was how to remove the wires. The Haynes manual made no mention of them.

I gingerly tugged the wire out of the back of the bulb housing to thankfully find that it is supposed to unplug. This allowed me to get the bulb housings completely clear of the cowls. Finally this just left the wire which is held in place by thin metal tabs under the lip of the cowl like the kind you would find on the back of a picture frame that you bend to gain access to the glass.

Because the cowls were going to need a thorough washing, I didn’t feel I could leave the wires in place. I wasn’t however going to simply pull them out of the brass contact – I gave it a gentle tug but it didn’t seem to want to come out. Instead I looped the wire up and taped it clear of trouble. It’s clear that it’s going to be important to make sure these don’t get damaged when working on the sanding, filling and spraying.

Before moving on to the cowl metal work I carefully reassembled the turn signal so that all the hardware remained with the housing. Much harder to loose an entire turn signal than a tiny washer.

Per JPM’s hit list of how to clean up bodywork ready for sanding, I gave the cowl a thorough cleaning with soapy water. This was a much messier job than I was expecting and revealed more rust than I had originally thought caught up under the lip of the cowl and particularly down behind the turn signal where the cowl is effectively working as a mudguard. Thankfully none of this was more than surface rust. I felt vindicated in my decision to take care of this issue on the bike first.

Next, again following JPM’s advice, I worked a wire brush over the toughest rust and a good amount immediately flaked away. More washing and I was ready for jelly. Naval Jelly that is.

I’ve never used this stuff before and it took me a while to find at Lowes. I don’t want to know what’s in it because man it works. I applied it liberally to the rusty areas and left it for thirty minutes. Even before wiping off it was immediately apparent that it had cut the familiar rusty brown away leaving bare metal beneath.

The Naval Jelly cutting the rust back to the bare metal

While the jelly was doing its magic, I went ahead and stripped down the battery-side cowl. This is in generally better shape than the engine-side, but does have a couple of dents. It also has the PX150e plastic badge, which is held in place by some sort of glue with the strength of a thousand Gorillas. The only way I could get it loose was to bend it in half rendering it useless. Again, thankfully I’d done my homework. These replacement badges are readily available.

Back to the engine-side cowl and more cleaning with soapy water, Comet, WD-40 and drying with paper towels and I was finally ready to do what I’d come to do.

In retrospect, I initially approached sanding the metal way too gingerly. I started with 400 grit (fine) wet & dry paper but on the second cowl later turned to regular 60 grit (coarse) sand paper. The rust on the engine-side cowl in particular had taken the form of pitting and while it wasn’t deep it was tough to get a smooth surface. Once I felt I’d done a reasonable job sanding the engine-side cowl I cleaned it down thoroughly again with soapy water and again dried it down with paper towels.

This was my first experience with filler and I must say it’s much easier to work with than I anticipated. I spread about a ¼ of the can on a smooth surface and mixed in a quarter of the small tube of activator that comes with it, until I got a smooth pink color indicating that the two were thoroughly mixed. Using one of the filler spreaders I spread a liberal amount over the pitted rust on the engine-side cowl. I figured I wouldn’t do likewise with the battery-side cowl until I’d proven to myself that I wasn’t going to screw up the first side. Surprisingly the filler said it only needed 20-25 minutes before it was ready to sand. Time for a cup of tea.

I’ve done a fair amount of plasterwork before and filler works similarly. Sure enough it was baked after roughly half an hour, and tough enough that the wet & dry paper barely made a dent. Again, the 60 grit sandpaper made light work of it. I used a combination of the coarse paper, finer sanding sponges, and wet and dry paper to work this puppy down to a smooth finish. Like plaster, it’s ambitious to think you’ll solve all your problems with one coat, but this first coat had covered the worst of it. A second coat will be needed later in a couple of patches to fill depressions from a creased dent on the cowl.

The engine-side cowl after filling and sanding

The result of the sanding made me feel comfortable enough to move on to the battery-side cowl. This required a lot less filler and more of a traditional approach to touch-up. Again, a thirty-minute wait then dry sanding followed by wet and dry sanding and both cowls were now starting to feel smooth. They don’t look pretty but they feel smooth and once they’ve had a touch more filler in a couple of the deeper depressions they’ll be ready for priming.

Applying filler to the battery-side cowl

First evening’s work:

• Disassembled the cowls.
• Cleaned them up, cleared the rust.
• Sanded down to bare metal in the worst places.
• Applied first coat of filler.
• Sanded filler to a smooth finish on both cowls.

Materials used:

• Dust mask
• 60 grit sand paper
• 400 grit wet & dry paper
• Sanding sponges
• Steel wool
• Wire brush
• WD-40
• Naval Jelly Rust remover
• Filler
• Filler spreaders
• Phillips screwdriver
• Needle-nose pliers
• Pliers
• Soap and water
• Comet powder cleaner
• Paper towels

Lessons learned:

• Lefty loosey, righty tighty. Learn it. Live it. Love it.
• Ask yourself: Am I still wearing my face mask? Chances are the answer is no. Put it back on. Sanding the filler down in particular is nasty work.
• WD-40 is your friend; use it liberally and on everything.
• Never look directly into something while you spray WD-40 into it.
• Rear bulbs are removed by pressing downward and turning, again a little WD-40 goes a long way.

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