The frame is stripped

I won't bore anyone with a narrative of how I stripped this bike down. Suffice to say that I did it the wrong way. I had every intention of doing it all methodically, sorting and labeling each nut and bolt, etc. Well, I did do it in a sort of organized fashion and separated all the stuff out nicely in a big cabinet. But when the bike was about 95% stripped down, I moved. All my organization went out the window. So at that point I had a bona fide basket case of my own making. Ugh.

C'mon, I was really just making this project more challenging!

Anyway, at this point, the frame is nicely degreased. Believe me, nearly 50 years of grease, gunk, and dirt do not come off easily. I used a whole can of Permatex gasket remover. That did the job adequately, but didn't work as well as I thought it would. The only bits left to come out are the upper and lower head races. I was a little stumped about getting these buggers out. The suggestion from the BritBike Norton board is to use a punch and slowly go around the perimeter. Sounds logical, so that may be the plan for some night this week.

For now... a picture of the degreased frame and the gas tank. Once the aforementioned head races are out, it's on to the paint stripper, and then to fix those screwed up oil tank and batter box support tabs. Sorry about the flash reflection off that license plate (that's the tail end of the Velocette, by the way).

As for the gas tank, there was much more bondo than expected. I dread the metalworking cost that will entail to make right...