50th Anniversary Classic - Chapter 3

When I took the front fender and braces to get powdercoated, the guy took one look at the fender and said, "That paint looks pretty bad." He suggested that the best thing to do would be to sandblast the fender back to bare metal, mount the braces, and then powdercoat the whole thing. And he quoted a very reasonable price to do it. So that's what I did. He couldn't rivet the braces to the fender so he used cap screws with a cap nut on the outside so as to maximize clearance for the tire on the inside of the fender. When I picked up the fender from him, it was a vast improvement over the previous paint job.

Unfortunately, as I started to mount the fender yesterday, I found that the cap nuts protruded too far on the outside of the fender to squeeze it between the fork legs. So I ended up disassembling the braces from the fender, bought new stainless cap screws and cap nuts, and reassembled the braces to the fender after positioning the fender between the forks.

So here's what she looks like with newly painted/powdercoated tins:

50th Anniversary Classic - Chapter 2

Since my last post I got the tins back from the painter. The paint job was OK but it just proves the adage "You get what you pay for." I went for cheap and that's basically what I got. Definitely not the high gloss that Harley paints bikes at the factory, but maybe with a high quality polish, it'll look almost as good. On the advice of the painter, I've waited about three weeks for the paint and clearcoat to cure. This afternoon I applied the '57 tank emblems and put a chrome license tag mount and frame on the rear fender to replace the original that got bent up last summer. Then I put the fuel pump back in the tank, and various wiring harness and hardware back on the fender. They're ready to put back on the bike tomorrow, minus the front fender. The painter recommended against trying to paint the chrome fender braces, so I'm going to see if I can get them powder coated next Friday and riveted to the fender. Then I'll mount it on the bike.

Here are the tins, ready to mount.