Tag Archives: Honda C70 Passport Restoration

Cheap Fake Cad Plating & ABS Plastic Repair

Posted on by motopsyco

 

There are two things that are commonly found when working on old motorcycles, one is cadmium plated parts that are faded, rusted or discolored somehow, and the other is broken or cracked mounting tabs on plastic parts such as air boxes or side covers. Today we’ll learn how to do a reasonably good job of creating cheap fake cad plating with spray paint. Then we will tackle a minor repair of some ABS plastic parts. Most of the black plastic parts on motorcycles are ABS and on some such as early sport bikes such as EX250 or 500 Ninjas the bodywork is also.

Cheap Fake Cad Plating

Passport steering lock to get cheap fake cad plating

Let’s start with this steering lock that goes on my 1982 Honda C70. In the picture it doesn’t look too terrible, but this was after washing it in the parts washer with a Scotchbrite pad to get rid of some light rust.

Duplicolor adhesion promoter

Once it was dry I taped off the key slot and sprayed on a couple of coats of adhesion promoter.

chrome spray paint for cheap fake cad plating

After giving the adhesion promoter about 8-10 minutes to dry I gave the part a couple of coats of metallic “chrome” paint. This paint doesn’t really look like chrome but it really is a very bright silver.

Passport lock with chrome paint

After allowing the chrome paint to dry thoroughly, take a can of the metallic “gold” spray paint and from 18-20 inches away lightly fog the gold paint over the chrome. Just do one or two light coats. the idea is to lightly tint the part with gold but not to completely cover up the chrome.

gold metallic spray paint for cheap fake cad plating

It’s really best to do this in a well lit place so that you can see when there’s enough gold on the part and stop spraying it.

how to cheap fake cad plating

Here you can see my cheap fake cad plating next to one of the well sheltered original cadmium plated brackets from this same motorcycle. Naturally if you plan on having a 100 point national show winning motorcycle, real cad plating is the only way to go, but for your average rider or local bike night hero this is a nice inexpensive way to get a clean authentic look to parts that should look cad plated.

ABS Plastic Repair

A major source of aggravation are cracks in plastic parts and or mounting tabs broken off of them. But since since a lot of these plastic parts are made of the same ABS material as sewer & drain pipe there really is quite a simple solution. Glue them back together with common ABS cement that you can find at any local hardware store. The air box on this little C70 that I’m working on had been reinstalled at some point in the past without the metal spacers that are normally used to secure such parts to the metal frame without damaging it. The result was that one mounting tab was split & the other one was broken completely off.

fix motorcycle abs plastic parts

To repair the cracked side was simple enough, it jut needed cleaning up and having plenty of glue applied. For the other side that was completely broken out I put a standoff with a washer in the hole & gave it a good coat of cement, permanently attaching it to the air box. You can also buy ABS plastic sheet & use that to fabricate repair patches, replacement tabs & even custom parts that can be glued together using ABS pipe cement. Once you are done & the glue is dry it can be filed, sanded or even painted over just like any normal plastic.

Hopefully these two tips about cheap fake cad plating & abs plastic repair will help someone out, until next time.

Peace Y’all

 

 

Honda C70 Passport Restoration Part 1

Posted on by motopsyco

Honda C70 Passport Restoration The Beginning

It all started out innocently enough with me picking up this little diamond in the rough. It obviously hadn’t run in a while and was very weather beaten. Initially I had no plans to do a complete Honda C70 Passport Restoration but you know how these things tend to snowball.

Dilapidated Honda C70

With a little help from my beautiful assistant it was soon running like a top.

Pretty lady spinning wrenches Honda C70 Passport Restoration

Initially I had no plans to do a complete Honda C70 Passport Restoration but you know how these things tend to snowball. Let me go ahead and be perfectly clear from the start, this is not intended to be a 100 point purely stock restoration. The goal here is to produce a very nice looking scooter to use for transportation at larger events like the Barber Vintage Motorsports Festival or the Destination Eustis Motorcycle show & swap meet.

After cleaning the carbs, adjusting the valves, changing the oil etc. I took the little thing out for few a test runs and am very pleased with how it runs & drives despite the fact that it had dry rotted and mismatched tires on it. So I started ordering the pieces it was missing such as the chain cases. Where the original equipment stuff is available for a reasonable price I’ll use that, when not there are plenty of reproduction parts available on the internet from Thailand and other countries. The quality of the reproduction parts is all over the map, so be prepared to ship some things back or tweak them to get everything working and looking good.

C70 reproduction Chain case

Then one evening a few days ago I lit a fire in the heater and started pulling it apart.

In My Happy Place

One of my favorite things to do as I am pulling a bike apart is to take lots of pictures. Thanks to digital photography it is now easily affordable to document every nut & bolt that you remove if you want to. On older bikes like this that use a lot of bullet connectors it is a great idea record every single wiring connection. Sometimes there are different colored wires that attach to each other that you may not remember otherwise. There are also incorrect wiring diagrams in some service manuals for some machines so every bit of extra information helps. Plus when you put it all back together & it works right the first time, your friends will think you’re a genius!

Yes I really do use Shorai batteries for damn near everything, They’re especially great for motorcycle collectors who often let their bikes sit without running and there’s no acid to boil over and ruin your shiny new paint job. Last year I wrote an article for the Vintage Japanese Motorcycle Magazine detailing the pros & cons of using lithium batteries in motorcycles, that article will probably show up here on the blog in the near future.

Motopsyco sandblasting a Honda Passport C70 Restoration

Since there was quite a but of surface rust & some light pitting the frame & forks were taken down to bare metal by sandblasting. Since I did not remove the fork from the frame I very carefully sealed off the bearing cup areas to keep the sand out.

zinc dichromate primer

After it was completely stripped, it received a few coats of zinc phosphate primer for maximum rust protection.

Ford blue engine paint

Since this is to be a parts runner and not a show bike instead of buying an expensive urethane paint in the original Honda Angel Blue I opted for 3 cans of Duplicolor ceramic engine paint in Ford blue. These paints are very durable & hold up quite well to gas and oil spillage.

Honda C70 Passport Restoration Starting the Assembly

Motopsyco Honda Passport C70 restoration

After getting all of the little bits painted it was time to move on to reassembly.

Wiring Honda Passport C70 restoration

All of those pictures I’ve taken are really coming in handy to reroute the wiring harness.

fake cad plate

Figured out how to create a reasonable looking fake cadmium plate using spray paint, will do a step by step post at a later date.

engine kill switch

The switch gear was scrubbed clean and the taped off so the kill switch and starter button could be painted red again. All of the black buttons & switches still looked good so those were left alone.

rebuilding my C70

I had stopped at this point to do some much needed body repairs to my truck and should be getting back to it next week, so be sure to subscribe below to receive regular updates.