I'm not back five minutes from shipping out the tank and fender to Austrailia when I get on email and send the tracking number to the new owner. I check my eBay auctions for the day real quick and whattyaknow? There is a tank, sidepanels and fender for a 1969 750s... and they included the correct fuel cap and sidepanel hardware! It's labeled for another brand of motorcycle and no one is bidding on it. Since I was operating at a profit now and getting cocky, I went for it and laid down a high bid to assure a win. I won the auctions for way less than I had put in for and still had around $100 bucks left, even after shipping! Damn, I musta now used up all my good luck for a long time? Or maybe not! Two days later, someone had the headlight ears, brake pedal and other assorted bits, and offered them up to me for $100. I had $100 left in the budget, so sight unseen I went for it. When they arrived I was pleased to find that they all had been bathed in flawless new chrome! So now I am dead-even on the project money wise, and a whole lot closer to having all the right parts. They don't call me Even Stephen for nuthin', apparently. On projects like this it can most often take months or even years to find the right parts. This time it's been about a week and I am most of the way there! Now, if I can just find a complete front wheel!
The pics on the left show the tank and sidepanels essentially as they arrived. Then, on the right, a shot of them midway in the process as they were getting stripped to bare metal for inspection, repair and primer. The tank had a couple very, very small dimples and the sidepanels had virtually nothing to repair. The sidepanels are black in the right picture due to an application of an Eastwood product, a converter / sealer that I am testing prior to priming. So far, it looks like it is going to do a fantstic job.
