Johnny´s MC-lackering did it again!

Last day of vacation ended up being the perfect ending for a motorcycle restorer's holiday. Not much done on the bike for the last two weeks, merely a few communications with my friend, Johnny Tarp at Johnny´s MC-lackering in Kristinehamn, to get things correct on the paint job. He finished the job a couple of days ago and today I spent my last day of vacation in the car to pick up our TWO body sets... Mine and Janne´s. It isn´t every day you get to handle 50% of the total amount of H1R bodies ever imported to Sweden through Floeter. Makes you think for a while!

I drove the odd 300 kms to Kristinehamn and met up with Johnny at his shop out in the woods outside town. There they were. The two body sets painted and ready to go back to Stockholm.

Johnny Tarp putting the fairings together for transportation.

 Johnny told me he had spent more than two full days just prepping the two fairings for paint. No one knows if these fairings are the original ones or if they have been changed during the course of racing. I know mine has been sitting in a barn for at least 40 years. But God knows the guys racing these bikes back in the seventies crashed quite a few times and I believe the fairings took a beating every time...

The master painter at work....

 We tried to secure the stability of the fiber glass parts as best we could. I didn´t want anything to happen to them during the way back to Stockholm. Luckily I have quite a big car with a total of seven seats. As can be seen below, Janne´s repainted tank had to travel up front with me. Coffee and a vanilla bun takes the boredom out of driving!

Pleasures during driving....

 Getting home after the three hour drive. Janne is away for a few days so I had to store all the paintwork in my small garage. Really crowded with 2 (!) H1R:s in here! Here we have the two complete body sets finished paint wise. You can tell Johnny did an excellent job! The two main fairings are very different in shape and size. Mine is shorter, probably cut in the rear part at some point in time. That makes my "number plate" almost circular compared to Jannes´s that is (maybe...) more original in shape and thus a more "stretched" version of the number circle. There was no other way to deal with these differences than the way Johnny handled them. I´m extremely happy so far!

Lots of H1R paint...

You can also see the black inside of the fairings. I was a bit worried that wuld come out bad, but I think it looks just great. Since I´m after a slightly used look on my bike I like the slightly rugged texture of the flat black paint. Just perfect! I may have to soften the gloss on the outside of the fairings to make them look ever so lightly used. We´ll see about that later on! I´m also looking for the kind of sponsor decals "Esso" used on his bike. I know he had a "BP" shield on the sides of the fairing and also "Dunlop" stickers plus a "Champion" sticker. I also need to figure out how to deal with the slightly cursive lettering at the rear of my seat saying "Esso Gunnarsson" in a very special design. The hunt is on!

There are quite a few pictures of "Esso´s" bike with a black belly pan. I´m not quite sure when it was changed from green, but I know it was green during the early season of 1970 and that is the time span I´m looking to reproduce with the look of my racer. The picture below shows my belly pan fastened temporarily with plastic screws and nuts. Note the "circular number plate" on mine compared to the more oval one on Janne´s fairing further back on the floor. It´s going to be interesting to see them together again when we both are done...

H1R fairings and engine.

 Space is a commodity that is very scarce in my garage so everything has to be stored as tight as possible in order to fit everything into the small room. Tomorrow is work so it´ll have to sit for a while until I get back and can deliver Janne´s parts to him. Below is a picture of the stuff piled up to make space for my son´s bike when he gets back. Crowded is the word!

Cramped up!

 We used my tank as a "color match" for the complete paint job. I was determined to use mine as it was, just cleaned up and polished. Janne had his tank painted a while ago but changed his mind when he saw the color of mine and decided to repaint his. That way we will hopefully be able to recreate a few of the pictures from the very first races 1970 when these two bikes raced side by side. And they will look the same! Not a small feat to accomplish.

Janne´s tank and my fairing.

 In the picture above is Janne´s tank and my fairing. We had a couple of pictures from a magazine in May1970 where Hartmut Floeter poses with these two bikes outside his business. In those pictures it is evident that my tank has been repainted at some point. The "Kawasaki" text is placed differently and the "fuel gauge" strip on the right hand side has been painted over. Above you can see Johhny placed Janne´s text correct according the pictures with the "Kawasaki" reaching behind the curvature on the tank side. Mine is as it is...

My tank and seat.

 Since I was determined to use my tank as it is, Johnny had to color match the paint from a used, 40 year old paint, that was torn and pale in places etc, etc. We had a discussion about it a week ago  when Johnny found a spot where the clear coat had vanished just in front of my gas cap. I wanted the color I polished up at the rear part of the tank. Johnny said the paint beneath the damaged clear coat probably would be more correct but there was no way to get it out on the whole tank. It had to be the more aged, yellowed tone on the bigger part of the tank. Look at the picture above. The color match is great! I think he is one of the best painters we have here in Sweden when it comes to matching old colors with new paint. I´m SO pleased with his work!

Seat with rubber grommet and set cover.

 The striping of the seat became just right! He nailed it. I´m so pleased that my old battered seat cover works so well with the new paint. I might just have to weather the surface of the new paint a little bit to match it even better in the future. We´ll see...

Two H1R seats.

Remember I talked about my old, dry, rotten tires last time....? Well, I got them back! Jean-Francois Balde of France is a magician! can you tell which pair of tires in the picture below is new and which is restored (my old ones...). I kid you not! It is virtually impossible to tell unless you know. The two on top are the new ones and the two at the bottom are my old ones! 50 Euros per tire to clean and restore is a bargain! To be honest I haven´t driven on them  yet, and maybe they will tear down quickly, I have no idea! I think I´ll put the new ones on and use them when testing the bike and then (maybe) put the older ones on for display. That is a question to be dealt with much later. For now I´m happy to have two sets of usable tires for the bike!

Racing tires x 4.

This has been a long and wonderful day in many aspects. It´s always great fun to meet Johnny and have a chat. He makes good coffee as well....

As I said before, tomorrow is back to work. The bike sits for a few days and when I get back I´ll have to continue working on the wheels and also start  putting the frame, swing arm and front fork back together. All very fun and inspiring work!

Until then, stay cool in the summer heat, keep the front wheel down and have a cold one!

Your´s truly.

/Per