Issue link: http://trailridermagazine.uberflip.com/i/1525821
36 Trail Rider www.TrailRider.com My plan was to keep out of pocket costs to a min- imum on this project. Since me wasn't much of a concern, a decision was made to strip the frame in the backyard and paint it with spray bombs. Looking back, sending the nasty, brush-painted frame out for sandblas ng and powder coat would have been much easier and looked be er. Over the years, I've found Goof-Off's Graffi Remover to work very well when cleaning up old bike parts that have been spray-painted. It also did a decent job of stripping off this brush-painted frame. Unfortunate- ly, it wouldn't even touch the silver coa ng on the smaller parts. What I found that does an incredible job of cleaning and stripping the smaller parts was an ultrasonic tank filled with Totally Awesome, another very cheap Dollar Store product. –Heat and ultrasonic mo on work wonders. With a hand sanding of the frame on a sunny a ernoon, the frame and swingarm were ready for paint. Yeah, I know ra le-cans are considered pure hack by the restora on experts, but this was no resto, and ra le-cans would be just fine on this resurrec on. As for spray paint, my bomb of choice comes from John Deere. Yup, tractor paint. J-D's gloss, medium-gloss black, and muffler paint are of very high quality. Their muffler paint is a perfect match for Yamaha "Sa n Black". Striving for perfec on, several coats were laid and le to thoroughly dry outside in the sun. The assembly process was a treat once all was clean, and with the frame and other individual parts painted. Yamaha's are always fun to build. They're well-engineered and simple to work on. Being a fana c for fresh hardware, all bolts (as many as we could find) were replaced with new repro bolts. Vintage Yamaha fans have eBay seller motodad24 to thank, as this guy offers many hardware kits that make a build like this pop for short money. Even with being a dirt bike, there are s ll quite a few chrome bolts on the early 70's Yamaha's. Thank you, Motodad! Since we like to actually ride these old relics, the original 53 year old Dunlops had to go. Amazingly, the tubes s ll held air! We chose Kenda Klassics front and rear along with Kenda Tuff Tubes.