| Author | Message | ||
     Reepicheep |
First, a huge thanks to Steveford, for donating a scratched up pulled CityX airbox cover for testing. Steve, I have your card at work, but in the meantime, can you remind us what dealer you are with? The "if you want to advertise you must become a sponsor" clause should not prevent us from recognizing somebody contributing parts to the cause. The issue we are trying to mitigate is the fact that splashing gas on the translucid covers can etch them pretty badly. It sounds like an easy enough thing to avoid (don't pour gas all over your bike), but in practice, pumps are always burping or dribbling at all the wrong moments. My baseline is an airbox cover with normal wear and tear. I hit it with the Novus #2 everywhere, just polishing the thing up. This is at least the third time that particular box has been done with the Novus, and prior to the novus it has had at least two applications of Harley plastics sealer glaze. I think it goes faster the more you do it, not unlike polishing exhaust headers. The first time takes forever, but shining them back up only takes a few minutes. So after a good cleaning with the Novus 2 to establish a baseline, I took a crayon and drew 5 boxes on the airbox. I tried the following sealers: 1) Rain-X (just for kicks) 2) Meguiars #26 High Tech Yellow Wax 3) Mothers Carnuba Wax 4) Meguiars #6 Cleaner Wax 5) Harley Glaze Polish Sealer After applying thick, letting dry, and polishing off, I took a paper towel and some gas laying around in the garage and drew a line across all four boxes. Historically, this would have "frosted" the airbox cover immediately. But this time, it didn't. Not much anyway. None of the boxes (nor the spaces between the boxes) showed much of a mark. So one of the following things happened. I will try and work out which over the next few weeks. 1) The gas that sat in the garage that I used had outgassed whatever nasty substance is causing the frosting, so instead of etching my airbox cover, it is deposited in my lungs. 2) The fact that this cover has already had at least two applications of the Harley Sealer Glaze has a cumulative effect and has indeed started to seal off the plastic. So I will keep trying. In the meantime, a realization is creeping through this thick brain of mine... The Harley Sealer Glaze may have a cumulative benefit, and the 9SX owners manual says "put on the sealer glaze". I think I may see a pattern here... So I will keep digging, but in the meantime, I highly recommend 9sx owners get some good sealer on the tank. All the ones I tried above seemed to do a good job, the Harley stuff was honestly probably the best. As a side note, between the Novus 2 and the sealer glaze, you can take a cover from a significant patina to a great looking liquid gloss without a lot of work. Its a nice material to work with. | ||
| Steveford |
Glad to see that cover is getting some use aside from collecting dust. Here's the place it came from: Schoch's H-D/Buell in Stroudsburg, PA (570) 992 7500. We're in Eastern PA over by Joisey and as of this writing, you won't find XBs cheaper anywhere and that's no lie. | ||
| Cataract2 |
Do you have any before and after pics of this? |
