this last weekend i met a guy who has a lot of cb77 bikes and parts laying around, after visiting with him he gave me this early cb77 speedo
IMG_0844 by beatboxer89, on Flickr
He let me have it for free because of its obviously terrible condition, but the one thing i noticed was ok about it was that the needles had decent movement when i spun them, so i decided to take it apart and see what i could do to see if it was at all salvageable. I recently rebuilt as speedo i bought from ebay a few days ago (which is how i met my new friend who has all the cb77 super hawk parts) and that one had an oil stain from being stored face down of which i cleaned while rebuilding it this weekend. i used a light citrus based degreaser to remove the oil from the faceplate, so i decided to see what that degreaser would do to this extremely dirty/broken one he gave me.
and what i noticed was that the more time i spent rubbing the faceplate with degreaser (with paper towel) the dirty sun bleached paint would wipe away revealing a newer cleaner layer of paint beneath itself. this is what it looked like after using the degreaser.
IMG_0846 by beatboxer89, on Flickr
after being really excited about how well the degreaser rubbed away the sun bleached layer of paint, i took to the needles, which looked like this
IMG_0848 by beatboxer89, on Flickr
I sanded off the old burnt paint off of the needles down to the copper, keeping track of the sand paper to not scratch the chrome. then i taped off the chrome with painters tape and painted them with fast drying matte white spray paint.
IMG_0852 by beatboxer89, on Flickr
then i grabbed a can of nice deep red oil paint and dipped the needle tips, as well as repainted the redline on the faceplate
IMG_0853 by beatboxer89, on Flickr
IMG_0851 by beatboxer89, on Flickr
i was really happy with how they all turned out, so then i went on to the Odometer, and that thing was glued together SOLID with old grease, so i dismantled it, cleaned all the wheels and lubed em with very light weight oil,
IMG_0857 by beatboxer89, on Flickr
took me about an hour to figure out how to put em back together right! but when it was all said and done, i put the parts back together and this is how it looked
Screen shot 2012-03-19 at 11.03.09 PM by beatboxer89, on Flickr
thought i'd share, and i wanted other to try the technique of using Citrus based degreaser on the face plate, rubbing it with paper towel vigorously for a few applications just took off that old sun bleached paint.
cheers
-hill
