Huckleberry's new skin

I'll post pictures tomorrow. I am almost done. I have to put the exhaust back on to the R100RS and then it is complete.
If you read the sidebar from December 28th then you'll know where I'm going with this one.
I got Huckleberry several years ago and we have gotten along just fine except for his mismatched, faded, cracked, damaged, chipped, red-smoke paint job. I am not big on pretty and I rationalize that if it was really nice paint I would have to stress about taking care of it. Still, where is your pride, man?
Gilera is poised to get the well preserved Polaris Silver paint set from the swap meet which frees up her tank, fenders and side covers. You saw the attempt that I made in the sidebar to justify mixing that with the RS fairing. The picture looks better than real life. The nice silver paint brings out every flaw in the RS fairing.
Yesterday, 12/30, my daughter Beth, her faithful puppy, Maya, and I drove to Indianapolis, about 5 hours. We got there about 12:30 EST and went to work on this 1978 R100RS that this fellow intended to cafe. He had the luggage mounts off already but the fairing was all my job. I thought that I was well prepared with the floor jack and special tools but I got caught by a couple of snafus. One was that I forgot that the split lowers didn't come along until 1979 with the original RT and I did not have a header nut wrench; the headers have to come off to remove the lowers. That ultimately was accomplished by having the cafe wannabee buy a good channel-lock pliers and I very patiently, carefully worked on the header nuts until they loosened up. They suffered only minor damage from the pliers; blemishes that could be Dremel'ed out. As a last resort I was prepared to offer this guy a used set that I would send to him if we needed to break these ones off. The reason that I didn't need to is because this was a NEARLY PERFECT MOTORCYCLE!!
OK, let's get into that, let me vent. This guy is not an airhead. He has a newer BMW and got it into his head that he wants to build a cafe airhead project. More money than ..., oh, don't say it again, please? There is nothing wrong with a cafe project but the whole spirit of cafe is to take a well used mount and make it as efficient and mean as possible. Someone had told this guy that an RS would make a good cafe bike. Why? It is essentially the same as any other model except for the fiberglass and that is all that he did not want. So, he found this 1978 R100RS for $2500 and figured that this was the one. It is actually a hill of a deal. I am really curious about the history of this one because there was obviously a whole lot of care, labor and dollars invested in this bike and it seems that it was done recently. So, why was it going for so little $money? I wish that I was there 1st. The paint is brand new. I doubt if it has ever seen a bug on the highway yet. Lester mags, dual-plugged, electronic ignition, Corbin seat, ... this thing was built. It looks like somebody's baby. I took the RS fairing and the Krauser  luggage with the factory mounts and Beth, her dog and I hit the road about 4:30 EST. I searched out an Asian dinner to reward Beth for being so patient and we continued on getting home about 9:30 CST. I was kidding to Beth about betting if I would jump right in on swapping the paint set out in the morning or not.
I did jump right in. It took all day to take the old red smoke off and get the silver on. I have it all back together except for the exhaust system which, because of the 1978 non-split lowers, I want to get prepped really well so that they will be easy to remove and replace the next time that I want to get the right lower off to change the oil filter. The silver paint is remarkably well matched to the Polaris Silver, I might judge better in good sunlight, but it looks great to my tired eyes in man-cave night time fluorescent light.
Pictures tomorrow ... or next year sometime.
addendum:
It was 55° here at about 9:30 PM on New Year's Eve. The temperature is now finally falling and will continue to drop to a predicted high of 21° tomorrow. I will predict that I will test drive the new Huckleberry tomorrow in the teens. None of this global warming for me, thank you!