Vespa PX Steering column

I'm still working on painting the wheels, but that is winding since I started painting the top coat of silver today. I thought next I'd take a look at the steering column.

I would say this looks in pretty good shape.

I don't know how they are made, but it looks like the metal is poured? Leaving mold lines and a metal gate?

So I know this may be unnecessary, but I'm going to clean it up for a couple of reasons. One, I'll need to smooth everything out in order to get the old paint off. Two, bit of a perfectionist thing, but I'd like everything to be as clean and smooth as possible.

Here we can see a bit of rust on the lower part of the column by the wheel. It'll be nice to get rid of this rust and repaint everything. That means I'll have a bit of an adventure getting the suspension arm bearing and bolt out (half visible on the left side). I think I'll have to get a gas burner to heat the thing up before pounding out the old bearing.

As can be seen here, SIP sells the complete suspension arm bearing kit, and it doesn't cost too much, so I'm not going to be concerned about damaging the bearings in removal. Considering my philosophy, I'll try to recover one of the bearings and see if I can get a pair of SKFs.