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Painting frame need to take Bike Appart

3K views 25 replies 11 participants last post by  JSJ28 
#1 ·
so i broke my arm snowboarding and cant ride my bike for a few weeks. rather than just sadly look at it sitting in the beautiful weather ive decided im going to take apart the whole bike and paint the frame black.

my question is how much work is involved in taking the bike apart? i plan on leaving the triple tree, rear subframe, and tail section intact and just take them off the bike. the engine looks like it should just unbolt and come out intact to. is it possible to just take this stuff off and leave it in a relatively assembled state?

i have painted cars and this bike before, so painting isnt the worry. its all the work going into taking the bike apart and putting it back togeather again that im worried about.

any insite would be appriciated.

thanks,

jeff
 
#3 ·
if you have the castle tool to take off the locking nuts its not problem.

Remove tank, airbox, carbs, exhaust, wiring harness and the bolts that hold the engine and radiator on.

Then you can basically put a jack under the front wheel and lift the bike off the motor. Do the same to put it back on.

It's much easier to take off the forks. Then you can have someone lift the frame up from the front and you can pull the motor out from the bottom. This is how i just put my motor back in my bike.
 
#4 ·
what about the rear subframe and tail sections, is there any special tool or something that i need to use to remove either of these?

how many hours should this take me disasemble the bike? am i lookin at a saturday afternoon or a whole weekend?

thanks

jeff
 
#6 ·
a few hours isnt bad at all, i was hoping it would only take and afternoon. that gives me more of a chance to take my time and mark everyting to where it needs to be replaced.

thanks for the insite and help, i will have to post pictures once i finish

jeff
 
#10 ·
+1. Also, sort fastners into zip bags. Last time I didn't because i have a pretty good memory for such things but then ran into a problem and then a trip, which together delayed me for several weeks. Memory faded a bit. :(
 
#11 ·
i will be sure to sort all of the various nuts and bolts.

i normally work on cars and trucks, so i know all about forgetting where the certain bolt or nut went. its no fun trying to figure out where that stuff goes.

this is just my first dive into any modifications on my motorcyle besides repainting a damaged gas tank, and i dont want to skrew it up.
 
#12 ·
Working with 1 hand, it would be a real pain! Seriously, only if you had decent help I wouldn't suggest doing it now.

It will be more work than you think - guaranteed.

If you do go through the trouble to disassemble it all, spend the money to have the frame powder coated, not painted. Paint sucks compared to powder coat (I've done both). By the time you have it all back together you will have scratched the s!#$% out of the paint.

Even if you do paint, you will need to prep the frame really well. With powder coating, most of the time the part is stripped bare by media blasting, which gives an excellent "profile" to the metal that really improves adhesion of the coating.

Top-notch paint materials aren't cheap, and by the time you are done the cost difference to powder coat wouldn't be that big - especially considering the advantages on a part like a frame.


Jay
 
#13 ·
Working with 1 hand, it would be a real pain! Seriously, only if you had decent help would I suggest doing it now.

It will be more work than you think - guaranteed.

If you do go through the trouble to disassemble it all, spend the money to have the frame powder coated, not painted. Paint sucks compared to powder coat (I've done both). By the time you have it all back together you will have scratched the s!#$% out of the paint.

Even if you do paint, you will need to prep the frame really well. With powder coating, most of the time the part is stripped bare by media blasting, which gives an excellent "profile" to the metal that really improves adhesion of the coating.

Top-notch paint materials aren't cheap, and by the time you are done the cost difference to powder coat wouldn't be that big - especially considering the advantages on a part like a frame.


Jay

one of my friends is gonna help with the disassembly and reassembley so that isnt a worry.

as for paint vs. powder coating. i would love to powder coat the frame but i dont have the money to drop on that right now.

i already all the equipment and paint i need to paint the frame. so it is a free mod for me, and im just doing this for fun because i cant ride the bike with a broken arm
 
#15 ·
If your trying to go on the cheap, Id paint it. I painted mine with some semi-gloss rustoleum from wal-mart, just thinned it out and sprayed it. It works great, I've had it on for over a year and a half now and have had one scratch on it. I just touched it up with a spray can and thats all it took, usually it just kind of dulls the paint if you scratch it. Its the next best thing Ive found compared to powder coating, if your on a budget.
 
#19 ·
I used a floor jack to drop the engine out from underneath. It almost seemed too easy. However, I don't think leaving the rear tail together will end up saving you much time, since the wire harness and rear brake reservoir hose snakes through there--you will end up removing a bunch of junk anyhow. It's a similar situation up front. Other than that, I say go for it. It's not rocket science.

BTW, I find that taking them apart goes much, much quicker than putting them back together.
 
#23 ·
Anything's possible, but I've never heard of anybody doing it that way. I don't know if it would save much time, because of all the masking that would have to be done, and the results would probably be inferior. It might be suitable for a quick-n-dirty job that only needed to look good at 50-feet, though.
 
#26 ·
me and my one arm have failed. i started taking everything apart, and decided that it was way to much work to be done in front of my house in west philly. after i got the tail off and the electrical system removed the task at hand just started to look daunting.

i have since decided to change the color of everything else to match the frame better. going with a metallic cherry red with a silver triple stripe as close to the frame color as i can match it.

i think i will look sweet, or at least better than the blue and silver i currently have. i will post pictures as soon as im finished. just got done the first coat of color yesterday.
 
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