| Author | Message | ||
     Ilikehotchicks |
I know the polished frame questions have been posted on here Alot! But i have a couple more. Im going to pay someone to polish the frame of my bike; I work two full time jobs and dont have the time to do it myself. How much Should i expect to pay someone for this task? Also How Much of the bike is needed for me to take apart for it to be polished? Im just having him do the swing arm and the frame. Also If i need to take apart any of the bike; Any advice on doing so would be helpfull. Like Draining the swing arm first and how to remove the wheel corectly w/out bending the belt. Ben | ||
| Wyckedflesh |
For the disassembly spend the money for the manual. DaveS or Buckinfubba can help you out there alot. Oh and get the parts book to as has been pointed out you can get expanded blow ups of the parts that can make things easier. | ||
| Ilikehotchicks |
i have the manual, just not the part book. i really just need to know what needs to be removed and what i should expect to pay. Also does anyone know "for sure" if polishing the frame voids the warrenty? ben edited by ilikehotchicks on March 04, 2004 | ||
| Court |
>>>>Also does anyone know "for sure" if polishing the frame voids the warrenty? I can assure you that it does. | ||
| Darthane |
Pretty much anything done to your bike not done by an authorized HD/Buell dealership technically voids the warranty. LOL Good luck finding one that will polish your frame! | ||
| S320002 |
Pretty much anything done to your bike not done by an authorized HD/Buell dealership technically voids the warranty. Not true, even though some dealers would like to make you believe it is. The last issue of Sport Rider had a pretty good article on the subject. | ||
| Buckinfubba |
yes what s320002 said abotu the warranty. but the big question your asking is this. you will have to disassemble the whole bike if you expect to get it polished correctly. yes you will have to drain the swingarm and the frame of its fuel. and if you are not that mechanically inclined I would not attempt this by yourself. I don't know you so I for all I know you are. But yes as court said it will void your warranty in a heartbeat!!!! no if and or buts. hell it don't matter if you found an authorized dealer to do it(which you wouldn't) but if you did it wouldn't matter. its voided. sure as hell. hell buy back your scratched frame from your wreck and ploish that first to see if who you find to do it is anygood. | ||
| Captainplanet |
If your going to have someone else do it. I would suggest sending them a raw frame and swingarm. That means pretty much a total disassembly. I did mine with the bike together. You can get to most places that are seen when the bike is assembled. The few area you have to disassemble the bike for is the front area where the triple tree attaches to get to the frame head and the swingarm. The only reason I did not disassemble mine is that I wanted to still be able to ride while I was doing it. It would have been way easier to do it all apart. On the swingarm after you drain the oil and remove it, you can use duct tape on the fittings to keep any oil from dripping. You also need to decide what you want to do with the welds on the frame. Some have smoothed them out. I wasn't comfortable with that so I just blended them a little so the weld was smooth but still very much there and then polished. If you decide to do it yourself, plan on spending many hours to do it right. I love the way mine turned out. I think it is easier to clean now. | ||
| Blake |
Before you take off and go to polishing your XB's frame or swing arm, let's be sure you understand a few very important aspects of welded aluminum structure. But gee Blake, I've seen guys with polished XB frames that are holding together okay... To which I reply... would you want to be the guy who finds out that after a time what appears to be adequate might suddenly sprout a leak or even break in two? But how could that happen? Consider loading... Have you ever actually subjected your frame to peak design stresses? What might induce such design governing stresses? Hitting a pothole at 60 mph? Landing a wheelie REAL hard? Taking a curve, scraping the pegs and hitting a solid bump? Jumping off a high curb? Riding two-up at max GVWR and clamping on the front brake for all she's worth? You wanna proof test the theory that grinding down and polishing the welds flush to the frame won't matter? Try some of the above and let us know how it turns out. And that's not the end of it. Aluminum alloys are fairly strong, some are amazingly strong wrt their density. Some heat treated wrought aluminum alloys while having roughly one third the density are over twice as strong in yield strength as common structural steel. Even some heat treated cast aluminum alloys have tensile yield strengths well above that of common structural steel; A201.0 T7 for instance has a tensile yield strength of 50 KSI. That's 50,000 pounds of tensile strength for a one inch square section of material, meaining that a 1"x 1" square section rod would support 50,000 LBs in tension before the onset of any plastic deformation (permanent stretch/set); that's 25 tons, or to put it in relavent terms, 110 XB9R's! Strong stuff! It's one reason why aircraft don't fall from the sky when they hit ferocious turbulence. But when you weld an aluminum alloy, especially a heat treated aluminum alloy, the story changes. Aluminum welding material is relatively weak stuff compared to heat treated wrought and even cast alloys. Where the parent material comprising the XB frame may have a tensile stress allowable (an allowable stress includes a factor of safety and rigorous statistical considerations) of over 20 KSI, the weld itself may be good for 8 KSI, sometimes only 5 KSI. That is only 20% of the strength of the parent material! How can that work well? Use more weld! BUT... The parent material of the frame that is within 1" of the weld (the heat affected zone), due to losing it's heat treatment during welding, may be good for only 10 KSI. So do you really wanna be grinding the XB's frame welds flush to the surrounding surfaces? Not if you want your frame to stay in one piece. AND... There's another MAJOR concern related to welding aluminum structure and the sizing of welds, fatigue stress failure. When a part is welded it is turned into molten metal and allowed to cool. When the heat affected area is heated, it expands, a lot, and then when it cools it tries to contract to its original form. Of course the molten parts don't have any trouble conforming to the expansion, they are liquid and simply go with the flow. But as soon as the molten material solidifies, it resist any further change in geometry, just as if it were under load and were resisting the load. As the weld cools it wants to shrink, but the surrounding parent metal doesn't want to shrink any more; it has cooled down already, cause it didn't get quite so hot. So the two push and pull against each other, sometimes so severely that the welded joint will crack and fracture right in front of your eyes with absolutely no load applied. That stress that is induced by welding and subsequent cooling is termed a "residual stress" cause it is left over most often after a manufacturing operation and continues to "reside" within the unloaded part. Residual stresses occur for other reasons too, like from cold working, but the residual stresses from welding can be especially severe. A welder who knows what he/she is doing will take precautions to avoid excessive residual stresses, but there will always be significant residual stress in a welded joint. There's no way to avoid it. So what? Enter fatigue. Fatigue failure happens when tiny imperfections are exposed to cyclic (repeated) stresses, like from a motorcycle encountering bumps in the road or starting and stopping and starting and stopping for its entire design life. If the tiny imperfections, and there are ALWAYS some imperfections, are exposed to enough cyclic stresses whose peak magnitude exceeds a certain limit (engineers call it the "proportional limit) , then those imperfections turn into cracks that grow into bigger cracks until the structure either fails catastrophically or the stresses are reduced. No problem, the structure is designed to stay below that level of stress right? Yes. But if you grind away a weld, not only are you reducing its strength and thus significantly increasing its operating stress, you may also cause an increase to any residual stresses therein. Remember the frame and weld pushing and pulling against each other. Make the weld smaller it gets weaker, its residual stresses can increase. Not good. Stresses in the welded area may increase enough from being ground down (reduced in section) so that just sitting on the bike causes the stress level in the weld to exceed its proportional limit. Fatigue failure commences. From then on every bump or perterbational load making its way into the frame may act to propagate a potentially catastrophic crack. So you can see why the welds on an XB frame are generously heaped well above the neighboring parent material. They likely have significant residual stresses; they are nowhere near as strong as the surrounding parent material, and they are darn sure subjected to cyclic fatigue loading. Buy yourself a set of carbon fiber protectors instead.  edited by blake on March 04, 2004 | ||
| M1combat |
Thank you for the explanation Blake. I didn't know exactly why, but I've always been told by some very smart people that if strength is any concern at all, don't even breath wrong on a weld once it's done. If you don't like the way it turned out, start over completely. I've been told that the absolute worst thing you can do to a weld from a strength standpoint is grind on it once it's done. Now I know why. | ||
| Blake |
Steel isn't so sensitive. Cause in mild structural steel the welding rod material is near twice as strong as the parent material. You still get the residual stresses, but when the weld is so strong, it's not as critical. But you are right, grinding on a weld is not a good idea anytime. To be honest I should also add that there are treatments to help eliminate residual stresses. One involves a controlled heating/cooling and the other (your gonna think I'm nuts) involves vibrating the heck out of the part at high frequencies; shake those damn residual stresses right out of the part. So there you have it, do you want your residual stresses, shaked or baked?  Either approach is an expensive proposition that manufacturers of mass produced products try to avoid at all costs. | ||
| Captainplanet |
I completely agree with Blake about the welds. Let me restate that in doing my polishing, I did not grind down the welds. I basically removed the paint from them and polished them. They still have the bumpy appearance that they had before. | ||
| Evil_twin |
Blake is right. I have been in the metal business for quite a few years... He is right on point. Did more than my fair share of welding and sheet metal fab.(that's how I got into the business) and now I process raw steel for Fords and GM. Aluminum is a very finicky material when it gets heated or cooled improperly. A high carbon low heat flame can turn aluminum to butter. Welds on steel can be ground *but* you will reduce the structural integrity of the weld. But, as Blake stated, the welding materials usually have a higher PSI rating than the parent material. I really don't need to say all of this. Blake already did a very good job. Rich  | ||
| Jim_witt |
Blake mentioned: To be honest I should also add that there are treatments to help eliminate residual stresses. One involves a controlled heating/cooling ... I 3rd Blakes statement, They preheat and postheat (stress relieving i.e.) welds all the time on high pressure critical piping systems (like the main steam lines on a Power House the Alaska Pipe Line, Gas lines and so forth). They can introduce heat electromagnetically too instead of using heating blankets with heating elements, which we typically use. A stress-relieving session of high pressure pipe "might be" ...... to heat to about 600 to 800 degrees, then a controlled temperature rise to soak it approximately 1,200 degrees. After a specific hold time, the pipe is control cooled to between 600 and 800 degrees. A temperature recorder logs all the data for QC. Of course specific procedures are required depending on the the material being stress relieved. Gotta get all those molecules in the right position ya know. -JW:>  | ||
| Bud |
 <!--Text--> Ooops, I forgot the texts I hade plan’s to powder-coat my frame , but I did not go through with it because off the baking process where the heat will destroy the stiffness off the frame gr,B edited by bud on March 05, 2004 | ||
| Darthane |
Not true, even though some dealers would like to make you believe it is. The last issue of Sport Rider had a pretty good article on the subject. <~~S320002 Aw, yer no fun. I was gonna tell him next that changing hihs own oil with anything other than H-D Brand 20W50 or Synth would void it, too... | ||
| Rocketman |
Bueller buys new XB whatever. After 6 months of ownership he notices the frame is cracked. It's only a minor crack but to rectify warrants a new frame. Dealer takes care of frame replacement under terms of warranty. Bueller has XB returned and is more than happy. Remainder of warranty is still intact. Tell me I'm wrong? Bueller buys new XB whatever. After 6 months of ownership he decides to polish the frame. Customer is specific in allowing only authorized dealer near his XB. No tools other than a polishing mop will be used in the process, welds remaining untouched except for a light buffing over the top of them, which is common practice when polishing alloy beam frames. Dealer takes care of frame polishing. Bueller has XB returned and is more than happy with work done and the polished finish. Remainder of warranty is still intact. Tell me I'm wrong? Now before some of you go harping on about frame welds, please explain to us under what legal terms cosmetically enhancing your XB frame would void the motorcycles warranty? Please don't answer unless you can prove said legal terms. Rocket | ||
| Court |
There is a very good reason why polished frames are not legal in some racing and, at least the way it was explained to me, this is directly related to structural integrity. The frame is the "backbone" of the Buell. Anybody, even Wille G, touches that thing, your chances of perfecting any legal action ("warranty" is a word for a legal 3 party contract) are zero. And dats a fak, jak Court | ||
| Captainplanet |
I think one point that has been made here is that heat can change the strength of aluminum. No need to argue that point. That being said, some people think to polish aluminum that you must create a lot of heat, so they run a polisher or grinder with a polish wheel at a very high speed and get the frame so hot that it will burn your skin if you touch it afterward. However, you DO NOT have to polish that way. Using wet sanding in rougher to smoother grit will get the same effect without the heat. It takes longer, but you will get there, as can be seen by my bikes results. The final step after the wet sand with 2000 grit is to use mother's metal polish. Very little heat was created in polishing my frame. The frame gets much more heat from the engine than it did during my polishing process. Just food for thought here. | ||
| Buckinfubba |
because it flat out says it in writing not to do these things to the frame. very strong in the legal world...things in writing ,that is | ||
| Bomber |
what I've not seen mentioned (If it was, I missed it and apologize in advance) is that "polishing" is a broad term, meaning many things to many people . . .. Rocket's use of the britsh term polishing "mop" can be translated into murican by saying wheel. Some wheels are very stiff, indeed. Some "polishing" compounds are very course. With your 8 inch diameter polishing wheel spinning at 3600 rpm (or 3 furlongs per fortnight, in avoirdupois measurements) a great deal of heat can be generated . . . .enough to make you drop the part . . . . and burn right thorugh your guitar calluses polishing is, at the core of it, removing material from the parent part -- there's no way that's going to happen without SOME heat being generated . . .. . now, a guy with a tube of semichrome, an old Buell t-shirt, a weekend, and a king hell case of tennis elbow at the end of it is likely not gonna do alot of damage to a frame . . . but no one in their right mind is gonna do an entire frame that way .. . . . Rocket's right, in that some may be able to polish their frame without causing any stress or damage, but the factory ain't gonna know how the polishing was accomplished, or wheather damage occured without extensive (read, expensive) testing . . . .. | ||
| Aesquire |
When Cannondale started making Aluminum frames, they were famous for the "saggy" tubes. The bikes looked like they'd been left out in the sun & part melted. This was due to the way the racks held the frames in heat treating after welding. Gotta line up them mole-cules! They improved technique & changed racking, and they lost the distinctive look. Aluminum also has a limited fatigue life compared to steel, but I wouldn't worry about it on a XB, I know Buell beats the daylights out of prototypes to make sure. One thing for sure, 4 years from now, if/when the polished frame cracks, the dealer will be happy to SELL you a 2008 Buell. | ||
| Ilikehotchicks |
yeah, i decided not to polish the frame; Due to the warrenty issue. I had no idea that polishing a frame can cause that much heat. I wanted to do it Org. To take scratches out of my swing arm; That were put there when my friend dropped it on its side. Im guessing that i will have to live with the scratches now they are not too bad. i just sanded the scratches out of the plastic and now it just needs some good buffing. Thanks for all the help full answers im glad i asked before i had the guy polish it. ben | ||
| Rocketman |
What a load of crap! The only thing it seems that voids your warranty, if you polish an XB frame, is the dumb lawyers. Heat, my arse! Rocket | ||
| Dynarider |
Ok forget polishing it, what if you broke out a can of spray paint & did the frame that way? Still void your warranty? | ||
| Buckinfubba |
I bet a rattle can job is just fine. it wouldn't void the warranty...atleast thats what I think ...no heat involved in the drying | ||
| Blake |
Rocket, FYI... In the latest draft release of the Buell warranty there is a clause that states "The terms of said warranty enumerated herein shall be rendered wholly and completely null and void for any Buell motorcycle owner who utilizes the pseudonym 'Rocket'." | ||
| Rocketman |
FACTS Blake , FACTS? Bubba if I'm not mistaken is a Buell dealer. In his post he makes reference to the disassembly of an XB in its entirety as the reason for voiding the warranty - even if carried out by an authorized dealer. Well that's crap in my opinion! Like I said previously, you can't tell me if an XB had a frame replaced by an authorized dealer the warranty would be void. Court offers no reason as to why polishing an XB frame voids your warranty but he can assure us it does - apparently. Very informative that one. You conjured up heat theories being the reason Blake. Well you might have a valid point there but where are your facts? I'm not talking about metallurgical study, I'm talking legal documentation from the motorcycles manufacturer. Put simply, if polishing an XB frame were a dangerous thing to do I'd expect the integrity of said product to be somewhat floored. Could you imagine riding one of those motorcycles around the United Arab Emirates. Man that would be so dangerous in all that sun. Hell maybe the frame would melt. What do you think? Man we are talking about a polishing mop here and a little bit of elbow grease! Rocket | ||
| Wyckedflesh |
Polishing on metal causes centralized heat. How hot do you think that spot the mop is spinning across gets? Think that rouge is just there to help polish the metal? Its there as a lubricant to keep from burning the fabric. You example of riding in the desert doesn't work because that isn't centralised to one spot it covers and heats the whole expanse of metal. The polishing mop is heating a single spot at a second and then letting it cool. The metallugic study IS the fact of the weakness of the aluminum. If you notice structural parts made of aluminum are not polished unless they are THICK. An XB frame isn't thick at all, not like a control arm for a car suspension. It falls under the same problem of welding aluminum because the metal reacts to heat so strongly. If your talking your basic hand held drill and a polishing mop then the heat factor may be reduced enough that its not a problem. But does the FACTORY know you polished the frame that way? So when a weld fails or a crack appears in the frame that comes to them polished, and they know from the metallurgic standpoint that polishing thin aluminum can cause structural weakness then who's fault is the crack? Can you say to the FACTORY without a doubt that the crack is actually a manufacturing defect? | ||
| Wyckedflesh |
Oh and the polishing frame deal isn't just Buell, I know of 3 seperate racerep bikes that had polished aluminim spar frames that cracked while still in warrenty, have to be replaced by the owners due to the polishing. |
