The International CBX Owners Association

Its hard to believe but I do ride other motorcycles other than my CBX. With all of the restoration knowledge in the CBX community I figured you guys could help out. What I have is a 01 Suzuki GSX1400 that I am restoring due to corrosion. Both the brake and hydraulic clutch resevoir need to be refinished. Both have the small circular sight glass in them. They are yellowed over and are soft. I want to powdercoat the resevoirs because my CBX resevoir came out great. Obviously the the sight glass would not make it through the oven process. Does anyone know of a replacement for these or some other solution? I was thinking of replacing it with a soild metal plug that is pressed in. Please let me know if any of you dealt with this before.

Lee, last weekend I disassembled my 80 brakes for storage, and when I pulled off the dust seals I found that the small amount of brake fluid that had made its way past the seals had removed the powder coat beneath the dust seals and turned it into a hard gritty substance. I personally no longer think its a good choice for brake components. I did the 1100f calipers with the VHT caliper paint and they look great, seem durable, and resistance to brake fluid is claimed. The coating is also thinner so it doesn't look so 'melty', it cost the price of a can of paint and some masking tape, and I can touch them up in the future.

YMMV, I will be painting these in the future myself.

N.

I had one of my front calipers leak after powder coating and it too peeled up. But I'm still happy with the finish and day-to-day durability of powdercoating. Regradless of it is painted or powdercoated, brake fluid is nasty stuff. I still need to do something about the sight glass regardless of the coating.

I did a careful masking job of all the machined surfaces of my calipers with good-old blue painters' tape and a nice new xacto blade and that worked perfectly. Bet you could do the same on that sight glass. I'd be too cowardly to try and R&R it.





Just another point of view. I know your own experience is quite well-founded.

N.

I'm with Nils on this. I have been looking at my powdercoated parts and will not powdercoat in the future. It's so thick that I had to strip the handlebars and re spray them. I couldn't get the switches to fit or the throttle tube to slide on

I used VHT caliper paint on the Travesty and like it much better. I can control the amount of paint.

Powdercoat on the frame doesn't look real black...more of some hazy gray/black??

My next frame will be something else other than powdercoat.

Mike