Welcome to another RRC Restoration. This weeks video is a bit different as its not my bike im working on its a customers bike i have been asked to do a few little jobs on. So the motorcycle itself is a Ducati Monza 160 junior made in 1969 and has been laid up for a few years now so the owner has asked me to restore the fuel tank back to factory spec and give it a good service and going over to make sure the bike is in good condition to hit the streets again.
So the first job on the list is to remove the fuel tank, but in order to do that i need to remove the seat unit first this is done by remove the two bolts at the rear of the seat and then it just lifts off. The tank was also drained by using my siphon pump so that i didn't end up spilling fuel everywhere. I then disconnected the fuel lines running to the fuel taps and undone the two bolts holding the front of the in place, then it was simply a case of flicking a spring off and lifting the tank clear.
I then took the tank to my workshop and gave it a good inspection and formed a plan of attack. I started by stripping the parts off of the tank this only consisted of the fuel cap and the two fuel taps both of which aren't original or matching but its not my machine so i cant really say anything. Once stripped it was back out to the spray booth for a liberal coating of my super ultra lethal paint stripper to remove the seriously bad paint work.
While the paint stripper was working i stripped down the fuel taps so that i could clean them out and get all the flaked off paint and rust out of the system. This was done with the ultra sonic cleaner and cleaning solution. While that was doing its thing it was time to jump back into the booth and remove all the old paint that the paint stripper had wrinkled up nicely, it did take two coats but eventually all the paint was removed and the tank was ready for sand blasting the remove any remaining paint and all of the rust that had formed under the paint surface.
After blasting you can see I'm left with a pristine clean steel tank, at this point the tank must be primed to stop any flash rust forming due to moisture in the air or on my hands. The bare steel was etch primed and then given a few coats of high build to even out the surface. While that was drying i reclaimed the fuel taps from the sonic cleaner and rebuilt them and sat them aside till the tank was ready to receive them. I also stripped the fuel cap inners and put them in deox c to remove the rust and also gave the chrome outer cap a nice buffing up with a wool wheel and black emery compound and it came out looking as good as new.
The fuel tank was also filled with deox c at this point and left over night to eat all the rust from inside the tank, the next day the tank was drained and flushed with plenty of clean water then dried out thoroughly before coating the inside of the tank with a sloshing compound so that the inside of the tank doesn't rust again in the future.
While the tank sealer was curing, I re-plated all the parts i removed from the cap The zinc coating turned out perfectly although i did make the mistake of leaving the parts in the passivate for too long and they went a bit dark although its nothing to worry about as its not seen and the corrosion resistance isn't affected so i just kept it dark.
Then it was finally time to move onto the final steps before getting thank into paint, the main step being wet flatting the primer to leave me with a defect free and perfect smooth surface for my base and clear coats. It was a case of silver, mask up, red,mask up again, gold, de-mask, apply decals and finally a good clean down and a few coats of scratch resistant clear coat and that was that job done.
In the next episode i will be putting the tank back together as well as getting all the mechanical jobs sorted out and if the weather is agreeable i might even be able the get it out on the road but don't hold me to that as i haven't even been able to get the 916 out yet.
As usual i really hope you enjoy this series of videos and leave a like and a comment to let me know what you think.
Enjoy
RRC
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RRC Restoration
52 Year Old Fuel Tank Restoration - Ducati Monza 160
7 окт 2021
