Here are a few photos of the SRX600 with its new “European” blue paint and Russian taillight.
The original tuning fork emblems have been reattached to the tank. The “Yamaha” emblems that goes beneath the tuning fork need be restored or replaced. Because new ones cost over $30.00 each, I’m going to try restoring them.
The finish on emblems with the word “YAMAHA” were damaged either before I got the bike. I would have replaced them if new ones weren’t so damn expensive. List price for one of these plastic emblems is $55.00 (or $36.00 mail order).
I decided to try refinishing them and came up with a technique that works pretty well.
The European style taillight inspired me to paint the SRX600 blue like a European model.
Here are a several pictures of blue SRX600’s that I found on the srx600.net website.
I’d been looking for the stock taillight and rear fender for my first SRX600 for about a year. When one came up for sale on eBay, I bought it. The seller was in Russia. I didn’t notice it at the time, but this is a European style taillight. The American taillight is larger and shaped differently.
Since I needed to paint this bike. I decided to move the American taillight on this bike to my red SRX600 and put the European one on this bike and paint it a blue, a color found on European SRX600s.
The gas tank of my first SRX600 was rusty. I eventually got all of the rust out using electrolysis and some phosphoric acid rinses. This took several weeks and lots of intervention. The electrode had to be moved, cleaned and periodically replaced. Also, I burned up a battery charger running it for days on end.
With this gas tank, I used rust911. When I started working on the tank, it only had a couple of pin hole leaks. As rust was removed, more pin holes opened up. I taped over these to keep the tank liquid tight. After a new pinhole opened up overnight and several gallons of rust911 leaked out, I stripped the outside and submerged the tank in a large bucket. The bucket was just big enough to immerse half the tank. I rinsed and flipped the tank every 24 hours. It took about a week to get all of the rust from the tank. I replaced the rust911 solution 6 or 8 times.
According to the instructions rust911 works best elevated above room temperature. I purchased an aquarium heater with a maximum setting of 93 degrees and cranked it all the way up to keep the bath warm. The higher temperature helps considerably.
Acquired another SRX600. This one only has about 3000 miles and is in really good shape except for the gas tank. The inside of the tank looks like a dank rusty cave.
