Progress
I took advantage of an early finish at work yesterday to get down to some serious business on the scoot. First up, taking a look at the cowls and horn cover freshly painted with two coats of the Rust-oleum/mineral spirits following the hot-rodders’ method.

Two coats of Rust-oleum mix rolled on with a micro-fiber roller. Not bad at all.

In short, the cowls looked great. Hardly any runs, or “orange peel” texture from the application of the paint. Because it was still light I was able to take them outside to scrutinize them thoroughly. The coverage for two coats was in no way complete but it was much deeper than my previous attempt with four coats of rattle can and very smooth considering it was rolled on not sprayed. The next step in the process is a wet-sand to smooth out any imperfections before moving on to coats 3 and 4. Ideally I need 600 grit paper for this but I didn’t have any at hand, so I used a slightly more aggressive 400 grit wet-sandpaper. This, in combination with the paint coverage revealed that in all my back-and-forth will filling, priming and sanding I still had a couple of depressions in the metal.

At this point I’ve gotten the hang of the filler technique. My mistake before had been putting it on too thick and then having to aggressively sand it, which opened up the problem of sanding it too flat back into the original dent. This time I put it on real thin and only just covered the depression, allowing me (after drying) to give it a gentle smooth out with wet-sanding, and then a more aggressive sanding only on the edges of the repair, feathering in the filler into the surrounding paint work. Much better.

After wet-sanding the two coats, and feathering in the filler.

Reading up on the Rust-oleum method, folks who had tried it had said not only can you add filler directly on top of the paint (which I did) but also paint directly over the filler without primer, so I washed the cowls down one last time and gave them their third coat of the Rust-oleum mix. Again, the coverage looked even and smooth so I put them aside to dry.

More progress
This allowed me to turn my attention to the horn cover which I had removed a few days back. I’d done this as an experiment to see how my painting skills were on a small part of the bike that hadn’t required any filling or sanding. This had also had two coats of Rust-oleum mix but due to the steep curves, had suffered some runs. After wet-sanding these out I added a third coat, again the coverage was good, and the self-leveling nature of the paint mix quickly revealed a glassy surface.

The horn cover after the third coat of Rusto-oleum mix.

The 50/50 Rust-oleum "Signal Red," mineral spirits mix.

The glove box
I’m going to remove the head-set (handlebar housing) when I have some daylight and more time on my hands because I also want to use this opportunity to drop the front forks and wheel out of the bike for a clean-up. This therefore leaves me with one last easily detachable item for now - the glove box. The box comes off easy enough. It’s attached by four bolts inside the box. I bagged these up and set them aside. The rubber is a little perished, but I’ll hang on to this for now because I haven’t found a supplier that has a replacement yet so may have to reuse it.

The glove box was suffering two issues:

First, at some point in it’s history either the owner, or someone more nefarious had tried to pry open the lock with a screwdriver. While the lock still works, it’s beat up, the lip around the door is also bent where a screwdriver (or similar) was inserted to jimmy open the door. I have ordered a replacement barrel and key from Scooterworks to take care of the lock. The bent rim required a little bit of nuanced bending with a pair of vice grips to get it back into shape. My first attempt at addressing metal work on the scooter (something the leg-shield would need more of.)

Second, at some point in the scooter’s history, someone had added some detachable speakers or something because the adhesive from two large Velcro pads on the top of the box had eaten away at the paint and into the metal. Some sanding with 60 grit, then 140 grit paper, then wet-sanding with 400 grit to blend the work soon took care of this. By now I was getting pretty good with knowing how much to sand and how.

The glove box after sounding out the rust.

After washing down the box, and priming with the Rust-oleum spray primer, this too was ready for a lick of paint - its first coat of the Rust-oleum mix. I had given the inside of the box two quick coats of the mix the day prior where the paint job doesn’t need to be so perfect, freeing me up to do a better cosmetic job on the outside of the box.

After priming, the first coat of Rust-oleum mix gets rolled on.

The foot-board
With the paint now left to dry, and with plenty of daylight left, I turned my attention to the bike proper. Next target to address - the rusty foot-board. To get at this, I’d first need to remove the floor rails.

The foot-board (after removing the rubber) needs some attention.

Having read JPM’s restoration stories, I knew that the rubber strips would pull right out. These are pretty perished and cheap and easy to replace, so while I’m keeping them for now, I will probably replace the entire set which will make a huge cosmetic improvement for little cash. The end-caps are made of a harder plastic and required a bit more force to loosen.These got chewed up in the process of removal.

The rubber pulls right out of the floor-rails by hand.

The chrome strips themselves are riveted into the main frame. JPM suggested these come out easy enough by slipping a flat-bladed screwdriver underneath them and giving it a whack with a hammer. While this is a classic bodge-job approach, he’s right. The rivets are relatively soft and quickly sheared under pressure releasing all of the floor rails in under 15 minutes. I then used a small hole punch to knock the remainder of the rivets through the body and onto the ground.

After removing the rails. Along the right edge, the sheared rivets still sit in the holes.

With the foot-board now free of the rails I was able to go at it with a wire-brush and then coarse sandpaper. Thankfully this revealed that the rust was not that deep and would, with the right wet-sanding and feathering likely only need primer, not filler. The very edge of the foot-board was bent here and there along the lip, so like the glove box, some tugging with a pair of vice-grips here and  brought them true. There’s definitely an art to this - a tug here, a tap there, but I got them pretty darn straight and that gave me the confidence to take a look at the warped leg-shield.

The leg-shield
With the glove box removed, the bends in the leg shield from some prior collision damage were more prominent. I removed the front turn-signal housings to expose the leg-shield further. These are attached with two bolts a-piece. The ill-fitting right turn-signal in particular demonstrated how much the leg-shield had been bent out of true.

Exposing the leg-shield to hammer it back in to shape.

Taking some advice from Restolad’s bodywork videos I set about the leg-shield. A combination of pulling by hand (vigorously), tugging at the edge with vice-grips and whacking with a hammer gradually brought the shield as true as I could get it. There’s no dent in the shield per se, it’s just warped out of it’s original line. Not having access to a “slapstick and dolly” I had to feel my way around the bend by hand. I also used the turn-signal housing as a guide as to what true should be. I think I did a pretty good job. Restolad’s “science of a dent” definitely helped me recognize that a depression has high spots as well as low spots.

With daylight fading, I cleaned up and put the scoot back under wraps. Next up will be wet-sanding all of these areas, adding some Naval Jelly to eat up any remaining rust, and spot priming.

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