Project started (finally)

Winter has been stubborn about going away, it was barely 30 degrees today and snow still covers everything except the streets. I figure I might as well do something to the bike for the season. As mentioned in the previous post I want to get rid of the gold coloring on the rotors. After getting the front wheel in the air, the calipers were detatched and the axle was removed.

The wheel should slide right out - right? Wrong.. I didn't have the front end up in the air enough for it to clear the fender...doh. As it stands, the bike is super stable on the center stand and jack stands. I don't want to risk the bike falling over by having it only on the back wheel and jack stands. After removing four screws the fender was free and came out along with the tire. It's been a while since I cleaned under there anyway....

I've never taken a rotor off before and after really leaning into the six bolts they broke free. To ensure these bolts never come out unintentionally, the factory really loads them up with lock-tite on the threads. Here's a picture of the rotor right after removing it from the wheel - as you can see it needs a little TLC.

After about 10 minutes with some degreaser I got most of the junk off them - they actually don't look too bad when they're clean. After I was about done, I realized I could have blasted all of it off with some brake parts cleaner.. oh well. That stuff is a bit nasty in a non-ventilated garage and really dries out your skin. Here's the result of a little elbow grease:

That's it for now - hopefully I'll be able to get some paint on these suckers soon. Of course I have to clean the other rotor too.