An Extremely Productive Day:

Today I took the fenders off of the bike. I set up the bike in the driveway and proceeded to unscrew tons of nuts and bolts to get parts off. The front fender came off with no problem. However, the back fender was a little harder to get to. The back wheel needed to come off. The back wheel is a quick release so I didn't think it would be extremely difficult to get off. I turned the rear spindle and it came out like it should but the wheel was extremely stubborn and didn't want to come off. I had my dad help me figure out why the wheel wouldn't come off. We came to the conclusion that the grease had hardened and the splines were stuck together. Splines are the spikes similar to gear teeth (look at the first picture). All we had to do to get the rear wheel off was give it a quick beating to knock the hardened grease off of the splines. After that the wheel came off fairly easily. Once the wheel was out we could take the rear fender off without any dificulty.

This picture will remind me how to put the fender stay on in the correct orientation.

This picture will remind me how to put the fender stay on in the correct orientation.

Now I'm going to strip the tank from all of the fasteners and rubber bits so we can send it in to the painter and also get it sand blasted. I will also bang the dent out of the front fender so that the fenders will also be ready to paint shortly after I get them cleaned up.