Fuel tank swap for BD3: TRANSMigra early works Pt III

Our Canadian client sent us this picture of the softail fuel tank from the custom Harley Davidson FXR Black Death 3 replica:

 The S, O, and N of Davidson were scuffed at some point between shipping, unpacking, and assembly by our client's mechanic.

He is clearly still very happy with his purchase. You can also see he is a big fan of the shiny, as he had the distributor / dealer slap on some brighter-than-heaven chrome pipes in place of Jay's true-to-the-movie dark matte. Looks damn hot either way.

At any rate, he decided if the tank was going to travel all the way back to us, why not have us build a brand new shiny tank, minus the creative defects Jay intentionally worked into our original? Once again, Jay was fond of his original weathered piece, so we agreed to another swap out. Jeremiah was happy to push it to the next level and seek a truer representation of the replica.

You can imagine our dismay when the good ole USPS delivered a box that looked like this:

Well, they probably had to drag it behind a team of horses through muddy gravel to make sure it wasn't a bomb . . .

 Truth is, we weren't at all surprised to open it and find this:

Clearly this tank was carrying some bad juju.

Images of the tank rebuild from a classic softail tank:

(pretty little FXRs all in a row)

(brand old softail)

(stripped down softail takes a test ride)

(above you can also see the fender rebuild just before painting)

Again, painting be upon us.

 Stenciling this time was in yellow and brushed on. We have the same 85% accurate font issue, but gave more space around each letter to apply corrections, seen in the black outlines below

 

 This time painting was over clear, which adds drying time and requires painting in thinner layers. Avoid this at all costs. The emblem is outlined with paint marker before covering with 1-Shot enamel paint.

 That is not orange juice.

 The rough-in is rough as it gets roughed in.

 With lettering complete, the emblem can be fleshed out.

 

Wait, fleshing out a skull? Oh, never mind.

After applying the final clear coat, the happy fuel tank basked in the mid-afternoon sun.

 And again, with a sexy chromed dash assembly.

Back in the workshop, it was very hard to pack this thing away, even after the final clear coat. How do you resist the urge to put just one more brush mark here, or maybe there?

(these are the penultimate pics with the crappy camera)

It was packed very well this time with foam scraps from a kayak mod we had performed several weeks prior, plus we opted for an insured shipment via FedEx. And off went the black space egg into the far northern reaches of icy Canada, where we hear they treat packages with far greater respect.

the end