Well it was a big day in Street Tracker world.   I have finished painting the tank and I'm letting the paint/clear go off before I buff the orange peel out (hopefully).  The paint is far from perfect - blems, color sand-through, imperfect tapelines, but, I love it.  The claret metallic red really pops out in the sunshine.  I'm digging it. 
So I went to mount the tank and yet another piece of the RYCA kit needed to be shaved down to work.  You can see in the pic above that the tank mount was too wide to even fit into the grooves.  The opening to get it in was narrower than where the mount sits in the tank receptacles.  So I had to grind down the mount and the rubber ends to make it slot in.  Now it's wobbly when installed, but, fits.  I'll make it work. 

Some things I've learned painting:  the key to rattle
can success is many, many coats with heaps of sanding in between, to perfectly smooth the surface.  When it comes time to clear coat, that baby needs to be like polished granite.  I must have spent 15 hours sanding, painting, cleaning, etc.  And it still could have used more work.  The rustic finish suits the bike, in contrast to the bike in the foreground...










Tomorrow I hope to get it close to being able to fire up, though nothing has gone according to plan yet.  I'm not holding my breath. 

If this garage was attached to my apartment, I'd be up all night working on the this thing.  It's an obsession at this point, the bad kind, ha ha. 

 Long, lean and not too far in between...

I'm looking for some wide, #24 flat tracker bars, but, the killer is the 1" switchgear and risers, which will have to be shimmed to work with a 7/8" bar.  I'll cross that bridge after she's running.   I also dropped the seat off yesterday to John of J's Upholstery in Shoreline.  I'm going for the old school look all around.  He was super cool and has a bobber himself, so it's all in good hands.  Cheaper than the shops around town too.