The Paint Job

Basically my bike is the wrong colour. I had replaced the tank and side panels and what should have been green, according to log book, was now blue and grey. I want to get a proper paint job done professionally but when I do that I also want to strip everything and get the frame powder coated. At the moment I just don’t have time and I want to get back riding it so decided to slap some paint on myself ahead of MOT.

Having stood in Halfords for an hour studying colours I decided on a metallic British Racing Green and some grey undercoat. I needed a petrol resistant lacquer and opted for some from eBay. Its advertised as being machine polish-able in 24 hours and highly scratch and petrol resistant. It also has a skull and cross bones and a spec sheet which has five pages of close typed A4 of mainly don’t’s and not many do’s. How bad can it be!?

I sat down in the sun and started rubbing down. All I can say is my hat goes off to people who do this for a living. To get anything like a good finish is just plain hard work. I didn’t do it as well as I could/should have done as my arms were dropping off. I was impatient to get the paint on so out came the spray cans. Its not bad but could have been better with more time spent. For my own self satisfaction and to prove to myself I can do it if I try I might rub it down and have another go latter in the year. One thing I have learnt and this is probably one of those tips that every0ne else already knows, but when you spray the grey primer it shows up marks very easily. What I should have done was have another rub down at that point to get it really smooth but I didn’t.

The spray went on really easily and I followed the various Internet guides I had downloaded and did lots of thin coats.

Then it came time for the lacquer. A fried advised me to get a proper mask as this stuff “can kill”. The last word made me pay attention and I purchased a chemical and spray paint protection mask from a vehicle paint suppliers. It was a relatively cheap item really and probably not sensible to take the risk.  I also purchased some protective gloves to go with it.

I wasn’t sure whether to rub the tank down before lacquering or not. A bit of Internet searching seemed to suggest a  rub down so I used some very fine wet and dry and gave it a rub. I waited for a very calm day. I cleaned off the dust with some paint wipes from Halfords and then set to with the lacquer. It sprayed on really easily. The bit that amazed me was how it really brought the colour out. I left it to dry in the open for a while and then moved into the garage and left it to really harden off.

I haven’t done any real cutting back or polishing yet but the finish even now seems pretty good. This is the bike fully assembled

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Next the exhaust.

 

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