Another item I can check off as complete is the complete rebuild of the master cylinders for the front brake and clutch. The master cylinders were two of the parts I sent out to be powder coated, and they look fantastic. One minor issue though is that the heat from powder coating required I remove the sight glass before that process, and unfortunately they both broke upon removal. They were in bad shape any an needed to be replaced, so I figured that would be easy, but I found out different. I have yet to find anybody who makes just the sight glass but I did find several sites talking about using watch crystal glass for this, so that is what I did.
I used an inside micrometer and measured the hole, and then went to a supplier to order what I needed. I ordered from Otto Frei www.ofrei.com and the product I ordered was Mineral Glass and I ordered 2mm Thick glass. The size of the opening is about 18mm so I ordered 17.9mm round glass that would easily fit. Once I had the hole cleaned up and ready for glass I used a clear epoxy to secure the crystal in place, and it fit very well and tight. The epoxy set up in 4 minutes and is oil proof, so hopefully this is a fix that will last. Several websites and blogs recommended this fix so we'll see. You can see the glass just before installation below.
Lastly just a couple of pictures of the finished parts I did for the engine covers. These were in bad shape to start. All of them were scratched up and scuffed and dirty and essentially unusable in their current condition. I decided to refinish them as i had tried to buy new but these are just unavailable. I began by stripping the finish off all of these parts using an Aircraft stripper - serious stuff. I then began the process of removing the scratches and gouges.
You may not believe this looking at the pictures below, but the clutch cover had a deep gash from the rear brake pedal - the same one you see in almost all of those covers. With the help of a random orbit sander I was able to grind down the face of the cover to remove those scratches. I began with a 120grit paper and then to 220 and then to 400. Once I had it back to fairly smooth I used hand sanding to get all of the nooks and crannies and then finished by using buffing wheels and compound. I purchased an aluminum polishing kit at Harbor Freight and it had three types of compound and several wheels. I basically did this same technique for all of the engine covers.
Once I had them stripped and repolished I needed to seal them. The clutch and pulse generator cover both have a black inset Honda on them so I had to paint that first. To accomplish this I first masked off and painted the Honda inset in black. Once that was dry I used steel wool to clean off the excess paint and reveal the logo - I used 0000 steel wool for this. I then did another quick polish and clean up and then sealed with high-temp clear. This worked great and as you can see from the parts they turned out great. One difficult part was the black outside of the clutch cover. I accomplished this by masking off the flat part and then running a very new razor blade along the edge of the circle using it as a guide. I then painted the high-temp black used on the engine, and that was it. A great match.
The Valve Cover was very challenging as well. There are many curved areas and I spend a few hours sanding and polishing on that part, but overall the result was very good. There were several deep gouges in the top of the cover as the engines were stored upside down by the prevoious owner. As you can see they are nowhere to be found now, so very successful.
