The Prime of Life

The Rapido's life that is. The weather was rather ugly yesterday but not near as bad around here as was forecast. They were calling for 5-8" of snow but we only got about two. It never warmed up much more than 40 but I turned on the heater in the shop to warm it up enough I could finish priming the rest of the pieces. While waiting for things to warm up I polished up the brake lever. I put it on the buffing wheel but the compound didn't want to load up on the wheel. They carry that at the hardware uptown so I might hazard a trip. I'll probably check with Eastwood or Amazon first. I'm in no hurry for that.

I cleaned up the chrome on one of the shocks while waiting as well. It cleaned up surprisingly well, so I'll mask off the chrome and bead blast the rest of the shock body. The swingarm is pretty funky with dirt and grime from the chain oil. I'll see how that looks after a bit of elbow grease. Since I'll have the shocks off it wouldn't take much more effort to take the swing arm off. In which case, blast, prime and paint. Then with the back end looking good, I'll probably have to do something with the headlight bucket and the fork. If my blast cabinet was big enough I'd just go whole hog and strip the whole bike down right now and repaint the frame.

Surly sent me some info on some new wheels for this little girl. Price is real decent but then I'd have to get spokes, new tires and tubes, and the time involved in re-lacing the wheels. I might give a call to see if he's got everything in house and if so, get a quote. Knew it was going to happen.

Supposed to be near 60 today. Good day to paint the primed parts and start cleaning the frame.