F2 Engine coating removal ?

[Grewth]

Today, I have acquired a CB750F2, 1978 vintage.
It was cheap.
For a good reason,  it's a total wreck.
47 years of British weather have not been kind to the black coating that Honda applied to the engine unit, it's festering and lifting off in places, and TBH, I think natural alloy looks much better anyway.
From my experience with Yamaha's,  it's an absolute pig to get off.
I'd be interested to know if anyone has successfully stripped an F2 engine back to bare alloy with a presentable finish  ?

[Grewth]

Forgot the photo

[Bryanj]

oooh PD carbs with pods have fun with those.

as to the black coating how about nitro-glycerine?

[royhall]

When I did mine it had to be bead blasted as nothing else would shift it. But mine was being repainted so the bare metal finish was not an issue. That finish is as tough as old boots to shift, even the bead blaster guy was complaining about how long it took. If your building a special, convert your carbs to K model units as those PD's are a royal pain to get right.

[Laverdaroo]

This was the result of vapour blasting and then clear corrector over the top. I think it looks ace but each to their own.


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[Laverdaroo]

To that


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[Grewth]

Thanks for the replies.
I was sort of hoping someone had found a miracle solution to stripping the stuff.
Oh well, it looks like my wallet will be taking another hit.
I'm not keen on those late type carbs either,  I'll hopefully be moving them on at some point.
I've found the early ones a cinch to work on.

[Johnny4428]

That’s a lovely transformation on that engine Roo! Interested to see how you get on with yours Grewth.

[Grewth]

I'm honestly thinking that I might just have the F2 head bead blasted back to bare alloy.
Worth in to keep those big valves
With the barrels and the crankcases, it's probably going to be cheaper to swap in F1 or K model items, especially if I'm going to re-shell the crank anyway.

[SumpMagnet]

I have an F2, and I just rubbed back the bad bits and re-painted in satin black VHT paint.

As far as removing paint goes, I used to have an XS1100 1.1S with a black finished engine. I was able to remove that by...er...washing the bike. Honda finished their engine cases a little better.

[Laverdaroo]

That’s a lovely transformation on that engine Roo! Interested to see how you get on with yours Grewth.

Cheers Johnny, I saw it after basting all the bits and kinda liked the blue ‘hue’ it had. Clear corrector to fix it and ta da! It’s a huge difference to the 550 which I did in a silver but this finish kinda suited what she, (who shall remain nameless) wanted. Still live it though.


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[Grewth]

All that fuss, and then I found out the coating can be just rubbed off with a stainless steel pan scourer - one of my favourite tools.
It did occur to me for a moment that someone had sold me a F1 or K series head just painted black ( I haven't had time to check the valve sizes yet), so I tried the pan scourer on my other F2 engine with exactly the same results

[royhall]

Good luck getting it off between the fins.

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[Spitfire]

Got rid of a lot of paint from both my F1 and F2 engines with my Dremel, wet and dry paper of various grades, Brillo pads and Solvo.
To get into the fins I used lolly sticks and stirrers from McDonalds with the aforementioned wet and dry wrapped around them.
Lots of sore fingers and broken nails and it was not fast but I was retired.


Cheers

Dennis

[K2-K6]

For identification purposes, doesn't the F2 head have notably extended top fin arrangement on front fins of head ?

That's in comparison to previous iteration.