Let it shine, says Pip! Or not…
on second thoughts…
When I was a lad, I invested a significant proportion of my ‘spends’ on Solvol Autosol. This was a magic smooth white goop that arrived in a natty gold and black tube and put a lovely shine on polished alloy and chromed components. I stripped the paint and lacquer off most of the alloy parts on my CB160 and then spent a not inconsiderable bit of my waking hours maintaining that mirror finish, incidentally the cloth of choice to apply the aforesaid and buff to extreme shininess was unquestionably cotton Winceyette, as in old pyjamas. Nowadays I don’t enjoy the mind numbing, fingerprint erasing torture at all. I’m just not a fan of the mirror polish. Now I do understand that a little chrome and an odd shiny bit are fine, but in moderation. One of my pet hates is over-egged finish on restoration projects; it’s usually a consequence of expedience or laziness. Why? I’ll give you an example. Faced with a box load of assorted shabby bits our restorer sets to with flap wheels and wet-n-dry. After a couple of hours he gives up and drops the lot off at the chrome platers. A week or so later he retrieves a torque arm, three engine mount plates and an assortment of brackets, nuts and bolts, all very shiny, but all totally wrong! The nuts and bolts should be cadmium (back in the day, now zinc plate due to H&S constraints) the brackets would be painted and maybe, just maybe, the torque arm might be chromed. Likewise aluminium bits, like fork yokes and lower sliders frequently flop into the ‘catastrophically over restored’ category. Mr Super Enthused proceeds to mirror polish the unsuspecting Aluminae to within an inch of their very being. Couple of things here, the factory finish here is rarely mirror polish, it’s generally ‘sisal’ which is a slightly ‘knocked back’ effect, but critically the finish never extends to every part of the component. Take a look at a NOS fork slider for an indication of where, and more importantly, where not to get busy with the buffing wheels. Material removed here destroys definition and crispness, and you can’t put it back! Paint is a similarly contentious area, overdone paint jobs appear to be the norm; generally because painters can produce a better finish than that which was applied back in the day. But doing this usually involves piling on multiple layers of base coat followed by much two pack lacquer. The resulting ‘show quality’ finish sadly bears little, if any, resemblance to the stuff that came out of Japan in the 1970s. So what’s to be done? Well, I’ve never had many friends and I’ve probably got even less now, so here goes: the frame, the core of any bike, by all means blast and repair rot and snap damage, but would I powder-coat a frame? Never. The manufacturers didn’t do it and if you still want to see welds and frame numbers as crisp as nature intended then you might think to ask the bod tasked with applying the finish to your frame to go easy with the paint, after all it’s not going to live outside is it? Is it? Not only does excessive paint/powder look wrong (in my humble) but it also causes aggro on many fronts, mainly where stuff bolts onto the frame, the thick crust speltches and prevents a good connection between engine/swingarm/stands etc. and the frame. I mentioned bolts earlier and this is where I might need to leave the country, I don’t care for stainless steel bolts on bikes. Why? Well, the blokes who designed your bike many years ago did so with a few parameters fired at them by various factions, including the accountants, but the sophisticated manufacturing processes at their disposal allowed them to design fasteners which were perfectly suited to their application, the 10mm x 1.25mm pitch bolts used to attach calipers to many bikes are things of beauty, generally with reduced 14mm hexagons and integral forged shoulders these high tensile beauties are a perfect combination of aesthetic correctness, strength and pragmatism, all at a price that’s very acceptable, they don’t snap and will usually resist any attempted abuse of the ‘massively ham-fisted’ type. Six mill cover screws can be a bit of a pain, usually caused by incorrect screwdriver bits, but there’s still no necessity to resort to stainless, if you must change them, just buy a bunch of new plated cap screws, cheap, tough and look nice. I am genuinely sorry if I’ve offended anybody here, as I realise that some of you will have spent fortunes on stainless bits, I just don’t like ’em, end of.