Here's today's adventure in sanding. The switch pods and controls started out looking like this, which is pretty common on older bikes:



This is after going over it with a fine grit disk in my pneumatic grinder, followed by a ScotchBrite disk:



That got the corrosion off, as well as some of the sand cast texture, but it left sanding marks, so it was 220 grit hand sanding time:



About half way through I considered bagging it and just painting or powder coating the pods black. But I plugged along, and now everything looks like this:



It should be easier from here now that the rough surfaces are gone.

Later that day:

Hi there  I'm a newbi here and I'm restoring an 87 savage and was wondering how u took the switch gear apart more to the point the starter switch  

... always the tricky bit... ...

Would you mind telling me what are you using to clearcoat the forks an the engine covers. I'm going to sand the parts and polish them.

I had worked a little before on smoothing out the welds on the front Y. I went back at it today with a file.



Then I went over it with a sanding disk.



By the time it's sand blasted, it should look pretty good. I'm not going for show quality, just cleaner looking.

A quick and dirty coat of black just to see how it's going.

I got out the triple trees to see what I need to do to refurbish them. They weren't bad, just some dull spots. It would be a lot of work doing everything just for some small spots, particularly on the chrome. Then it hit me: the triple clamps on vintage bikes were black. I'll just powdercoat them. Problem solved.

Man, those little sanders use a lot of air. YOu either have a good compressor or youre spending a lot of time waiting on a compressor to get air built up.