The winter is approaching, and all of us are busily making our maintenance and modification plans. Mine includes repainting my bike from blue to silver. One of the POs painted the bottom of my tank black, and it looks like crap.
As a side note, I cut off about four inches from my exhaust canister last weekend to get rid of some road rash at the leading edge. I think it came out well, and it is not noticeably louder. I like the look, shorter, but not stubby.
Nevertheless, I found some excellent information on SVR, and some other sites about painting motorcycles. The writeup below was from from 2008 by JBSWEAR. It's very informative.
So, you want to paint your bike?
This youtube does a great job explaining the steps.
Professional quality paint job for under $100
And this in-depth writeup is painfully detailed.
How to paint a motorcycle without a compressor & spray gun
I am going with Silver Ice Metallic from GM on the tank, fender and side panels. I saw the color on a Chevy pickup, and I like the looks. My plans are to sand the tank and do some light bodywork, prime filler, prime sealer, color coats with Dupli-Color, then clear coat with Spraymax 2K.
Before I begin, I have a few questions for the members.
1. Has anyone removed their factory tank stickers. I read here that they lie under the clearcoat, but I have not read of anyone removing them. My thoughts are to just sand them out, but I don't want to run into any issues. I was hoping not to sand to bare metal, because a lot of the paint is in good condition, and would make a good base coat. Ultimately, I plan to install new factory stickers on the tank in black.
2. I have only a little body work experience. My tank has a few dings, not much deeper that 1/16th on an inch. Can I simply use spot putty to repair the dings, or am I going to have to resort to body filler?
I will post pictures and steps along the way if anyone would like to follow along. Thanks for the assistance.
-Geo
As a side note, I cut off about four inches from my exhaust canister last weekend to get rid of some road rash at the leading edge. I think it came out well, and it is not noticeably louder. I like the look, shorter, but not stubby.
Nevertheless, I found some excellent information on SVR, and some other sites about painting motorcycles. The writeup below was from from 2008 by JBSWEAR. It's very informative.
So, you want to paint your bike?
This youtube does a great job explaining the steps.
Professional quality paint job for under $100
And this in-depth writeup is painfully detailed.
How to paint a motorcycle without a compressor & spray gun
I am going with Silver Ice Metallic from GM on the tank, fender and side panels. I saw the color on a Chevy pickup, and I like the looks. My plans are to sand the tank and do some light bodywork, prime filler, prime sealer, color coats with Dupli-Color, then clear coat with Spraymax 2K.
Before I begin, I have a few questions for the members.
1. Has anyone removed their factory tank stickers. I read here that they lie under the clearcoat, but I have not read of anyone removing them. My thoughts are to just sand them out, but I don't want to run into any issues. I was hoping not to sand to bare metal, because a lot of the paint is in good condition, and would make a good base coat. Ultimately, I plan to install new factory stickers on the tank in black.
2. I have only a little body work experience. My tank has a few dings, not much deeper that 1/16th on an inch. Can I simply use spot putty to repair the dings, or am I going to have to resort to body filler?
I will post pictures and steps along the way if anyone would like to follow along. Thanks for the assistance.
-Geo