Been slowly working on the front side of the old CT90 bringing it back to life. The goal is not a restoration by any means. The old bike is pretty rough and missing some key, expensive parts, to make that happen. The goal is a nice looking resto-mod bike that is fun to ride around the neighborhood. I also plan on playing with the option of 3D printing various parts or accessories for the bike to make it either look better, or work better.
With the in mind, and with the front headlight bucket being trash, I decided to go with a different look up front. Open springs, amber headlight with the rock guard, and killing the top shock covers should clean it up some. Since the boot covers for the springs are not going to be used, I used red in the notches for the ends for accent. With new front fork seals hopefully the front will stay cleaner than it was.
The rims on this bike are pretty bad with quite a bit of surface rust and some rust that just will not come out so another plan was needed. Originally I had thought of a nice glossy black, but with the rust level it really needed to have some texture to it so my old standby, Rustoleum Bed Liner paint. I’ve used this stuff for undercoating, rear end housing, suspension parts, and more. It’s super tough, dries super fast, and is easy to touch up as needed. I’ve painted bicycle rims before, and the worse part has always been taping off the spokes. Or more precisely the worse part was taking the tape OFF all the spokes. I tried the aluminum foil method this time and it was much easier.
The bed liner paint is tough, but not tough enough for the edge of the rim. The edgers were in good shape as well, so the added chrome stripe should look good. While it was all apart I polished up the bottom fork tubes and cleaned up the brake hub. Still need to do some clean up on the spokes but much better than rusted chrome.
As I noted above, I wanted to play with some 3D printed options for this build. The top of the fork tubes were pretty rusted from collecting moisture under then and even after sanding and cleaning they weren’t very presentable. I threw together some “for tube sleeves” to cover that up. A simple 27mm tube that slips over the forks. That matches up with the headlight clamps that hold the fabbed up headlight brackets.
Part of the 3D printing application on this build was the concept of some small blinkers. It really doesn’t need blinker as it’s not going to be legalized, but it does have the wring and switch for blinkers so they won’t hurt. There will be some 3/4″ LED indicators inside the blinkers. The fender is going to be cutoff or ‘bobbed’. There are holes already in the rear fender here so it’s perfect for turn signals.
So yeah, it’s like lip stick on a pig, but it’s a start. The forks have been rebuilt, the lower tubes and top triple tree and handle bar mount cleaned and polished, 3D fork covers done, headlight brackets fabbed up, and the front rim cleaned and painted along with an new horn. As soon as I get some button head allen bolts to final mount up the headlight, mount the front tire, and drop in the new brake shoes the front end will be done. Next off to the back wheel, swing arm and shocks.
