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Frame was blasted, sprayed with PJ1 gloss. Used brass swingarm bushings, tried to use factory fasteners wherever possible. Economy and Yambits helped with the rest.

You certainly have a lot of elbow room in your shop! That place is huge

Unfortunately its not my shop, but I'm very fortunate to be able to use it for my projects. The overhead crane is handy!

Used Quick-Glo to polish the chrome, the stuff doesn't smell and gives great results. I get the "fine" grit that can also be used to polish glass. Works good on the tach/speedo glass.

Teardown and starting to re-hab parts.

Hears an excellent trick for the rusty inside of the tank. Go to home depot and look in the paint/cleaner section. Look for a product called prep n etch. It's for concrete prepping. Its basically a phosphoric acid solution and it will eat the rust out in no time. It will actually eat the whole tank! It's easy to use though,  just plug your tank holes, put about half the jug in and shake it! I left my tank sit on one side for 10 mins, then the other, and so on. Vigorous shaking helps, you will see the bare metal come through.  Make sure you neutralize the acid with a baking soda/warm water mix afterwards. I had excellent results! Good luck

I've already got the tank done, but that's a great idea. I have a few other tanks I'll try this method out on. The bike is about 90% done, I thought i'd post my progress from the beginning up to now. Worked on bikes for years but this is my first full blown "restore", and it's been a great learning process. If anything it's tested my patience!

Nice bike! I would love to have a '75 250 some day, love those colors.

My current project is similar to yours, completely redone except for paint and chrome. With a full restore including paint and chrome you would (probably) never see your money back, so it's all a matter of enjoyment and personal taste.

 

Sorry if these pics aren't the greatest, they were just for my reference. Grass in the slide was one reason I'm glad the PO didn't run it! Parts of the harness and frame were spray-bombed black decades ago.

Fuel tank would be a challenge:

Leave the apes and sissy bar then hard tail it. 

That's always an option! 

More pics as I got it, not bad overall:

Yes, that's exactly the way it came! I still have the bars lying around. The cables were longer than stock but they had stretched the switch harnesses out of the headlight bucket.

I picked this up about a year ago, a little work has turned into a "restoration" that is still in progress. Not a OEM restoration but it will look stock with reliability upgrades. I took pics for my own reference but I can post them here if anyone is interested. The story was that it sat for 20-30 years in the basement of a NAPA store before it was bought from the guy who sold it to me. He left it as it was, and I'm glad he did as I would find out later. This is the condition as I found it: