How to Judge the Soundness of Frame, Fork and Handlebars

[leomags]

A while back on a previous post I spoke of the rust and pitting on my 1934 VL. A wise reader said that before I invest in the restoration of said pieces I should make certain that the rust I'm dealing with has not compromised the integrity of the metal. OK, how does one go about doing this inspection process?

[ricmoran]

Weight of new part versus old part would give you the loss of good material substrate.

Handlebars can be viewed inside with a borescope.

Get a good quality rust remover that only goes after the rust, immerse the parts in a bath.

CORTEC Corporation manufactures rust removers with rust inhibitors that can be diluted 50/50 with water that protects cleaned metal up to 30 days against flash rust. Once the corrosion is removed weight the parts and if you have the original weight of the part and see a reduction of more than 30% you can bet that I personally would not be using the part on a machine.

The 30% is a guide used by structural engineers for steel loss on something such as reinforcing steel for structures and that 30% to me seems outside of what something that has an engine and faces roadworthiness is quite liberal as I would think if there is a loss of 25% overall material weight that is enough to say no, I am not using a frame, front end or handlebars.

Sheet metal is another matter, but even with a 25% material loss, vibration will cause rapid fatigue due to the material loss & age & then the result is stress cracking.

You could ask a frame guy what the limit is for stress testing as I would believe they would have information the use to determine what is good or not good, but for an item like a handlebar, they are inexpensive enough to replace because what price do you put on your personal safety? And that question sums it up.

[Sargehere]

Here are the U.S. Military standards for corrosion of most "all" types, including the vocabulary and what is represented by what you see.
Read through this, and you'll get a pretty good idea of what you are working with:
http://namis.alionscience.com/conf/t...f/AM025907.pdf
Hope this helps!

[ricmoran]

While the link provided by Sarge gives information regarding the stages of corrosion, this has been superceded & updated by a new standard that soldiers can easily relate to, which is categorization of equipment condition by not only corrosion but also coating fatigue and failure.

How do I know this?

I had worked and still currently work as the GoCo manager for the corrosion program at Schofield Barracks. I've managed the program over the years, started in 96 before the programs were fully funded. Full funding occured in late 2000 and the 1st CPAC (corrosion prevention and control) center opened in April 2001 to the use of a new standard of thin film rust inhibitors and by the way the produc works wonders on parkerized and all other steel and aluminum parts used on motorcycles.

It just so happened we also distribute the products used by all branches of the miltiary as well as DOT and various other governemnt agencies so becuase of this I am around corrosion all day every day.

With that, the new standard for rating the system starts at category 1 being a new piece of equipment with out any cororison or coating damage.

Cat 2 is a piece of equipment that has some mild corrosion, basically fasteners that show red oxide and small areas of coating chips and peeling not to exceed 1 sq ft.

Cat 3 is corrosiont hat has attacked sheet metal that has caused moderate loss of substrate with chassis cororison seen that also has caused moderate good material loss.

Cat 4 is a piece of equipment that requires what is known as re-set within the circles of DoD, basically the equipment should go to upper depot repair for component replacement and chassis work to correct corrosion that has not taken more than the 25 - 30%( I beat around the bush with this in the prior posting, but with the actual assessments performed by team members this guidline is accepted and used as a red flag for the corrosion assessment performed daily on all wheeled equipment in the Army and USMC inventory where chassis and major chassis components become quesitonable with their integrity) previously posted and that is limited to areas such as main chassis , cab sub frames, fueler tank support rails etc.

And finally cat 5 is deadline/redline and is required to be sent to DRMO which is the military's way of saying so long your not worth fixing.

DRMO is an auction of used and expendable equipment and a place where some deals for machinery and tools can be found.

Have a biz acquaintance here who pretty much built his commercial machine shop from equipment and tooling let in auction through DRMO to the civilian sector.

Soemthing a little peculiar is I had worked with Handsy when we opened the 1st Army Corrosion Control Center funded by TARDEC/TACOM for the 25th ID and as a crazy side note, Handsy picked up the nickname of Trashman for throwing McDonalds trash in one of our corrosion assessors collectable Mustangs when a trash can was steps away. The guy is pretty weird and happens to be very smart (you know how this works, smart as all get out and no common sense) but is no longer involved in the nitty gritty day to day CPAC project although I am sure that some one has to pay him some due for his early work.

The CorPro person was paid to write the paper as they are certified by NACE so this gives them the recognition for being able to be contracetd to write what is known in the CPAC circles as white papers on corrosion.

So the Army has dummed it down because it was too hard for desk jockeys who do too many tasks to remember what day of the week it is. Yea, they have budget problems too, so people are doing the jobs of 8 or 10 people and along the way it is amazing how much some can remember and then how much some can forget!!

If I were to get a barn find, the first thing I'd do is discover the weight spec of the chassis.

Instead of bead blasting it I would use rust removers as posted prior becuase you do not want to take any good metal off the frame and one can with bead blasting, specifically if the wrong media is used.

If one uses the correct media, this woudl be 100% better, but the problem here is getting the internal tubulars free of scale.

While some are fully closed off due to welds, if one were to weigh prior to cleaning and then after, you could easily factor in the loss of material weight from the exterior to about what would be removed from the interior tubulars. With that I would be confortable to add an additional 15% to the total number to insure that what I am calculating would leave some room for margin of error.

With this factoring, what comes into play is, depending on how bad the tubular condition was prior to welding, then, through the years of heat/cool cycle with condensation that occurs, severe damage can occur inside tubulars that no one can see, unless of course small holes are drilled for a borescope or perhpas fiber optics.

There are engineering firms who can help out with this and a call to any structural engineer may be able to guide you to a lab that can conduct these types of tests where what they do is non destructive. But you have to weight the cost option out obviously

While I would not want to drill holes out of hand in any chassis or early springer tubulars, I would want to be certain that where I could get a glimpse inside a cavity to see what is going on is done, if at all possible.

Not being able to do this I then would have to consider is it worth my skin to use the part? And if this part were the last part on earth, I would then consider non destructive testing as in figuring out what the weight capcity is at failure and reducing this to a 8 - 10% factor as if you go full bore you will destory the part.

As the final choice to take the assembly apart to use th eborescope to it's full advantage after removal of any corrosion, as I would want to see inside what it is I would be considering using on the road.

Otherwise I believe that gambling is best left on the tables at Vegas and not on the highway.

[leomags]

Guys, Guys, thank you all but I do not feel qualified for conducting these elaborate tests. Maybe someone could recommend a restoration shop in my proximity (New Jersey) where someone who does this for a living could check things out, I also need someone to determine that the frame is square (not bent) before I start to restore it. Again thank you all for your detailed input.

[T. Cotten]

Leomags!

Have considered having the frame blasted?

That usually displays problems quickly, and it is usually pretty necessary prior to repairs anyway.

....Cotten

[leomags]

Cotten, yes I plan to have the frame media blasted before I begin. There is a place in Milford Conn. called American Dry Stripping, real nice people, they did my 1930 Model A coupe body. They blast with many things but what they used on the car looked and felt like corn starch, it cleaned everything off right down to the metal.......

[Tom Lovejoy]

Is the machine together? does it run? if so, I would try to take it up and down the road abit. See how it tracks, if it roles straight and true - or atleast feels so.. If not maybe just get a push up and down the block, see how it feels. If theres much wrong as far as true, you will probably feel it real quick. Probably pull to one side or the other, put a staright edge up against the tires, see how things line up - flouresent bulbs are good for that. I would get a manual, my manual for my Sport Scout has details about checking the frame - hopefuly one on a VL will too and check out Jerry's Cannonball post on his 25 Harley, hes just about done with his frame. Probably could use some of his tactics, good luck.