helpless paint..

I think not! Check out how bad my tank is. I'm almost positive the whole thing was rattle canned. And on top of that, the PO took some SUPER rough sand paper to it. I'm not going to re paint it right now, but I can't stand looking at something so shitty. I'm working on it right now, and I'm going to report back in a bit with some progress.

 

Yeah, that looks pretty bad. I would want to make sure you get that all smoothed down before repainting it. Might even be a good idea to have the outside of the tank media blasted down to bare metal so you know what is underneath that mess. At least the you know where you are starting with for a base, just in case someone just tried to bondo over a dent as opposed to fixing it first.

it almost looks like unfinished fibreglass, though I would doubt the bike has a fibreglass tank cover.

 

nah, its just shitty paint, that's been sanded. And I'm not re-painting it, right now anyways. Im going to wait till I get new plastics.

I'll upload pics soon.

 

I managed to destroy a gixxer once (and some of my bones as well) and considered vinyl wrap when I saw how expensive Tupperware is.

 

Geez man, for such a non-chalant statement, that sounds like one hell of an accident. lol. Glad your ok though. Im just going to wait till I see a part out on CL. A lot of the mounting points are cracked on the side fairings.

 

Thanks hey. Let me know if you need me to look for parts in my neck of the woods. I'll be happy to buy them and ship them to you. No finder's fees, no hourly wages, and no commissions to pay, just the parts and shipping. lol.

 

Here are the pics. I only did the top half of the tank because that was where it looked the worst.


This is when I just started sanding. The right side of the pic is what it first looked like. Left side of the pic is where I started with 600 grit. Then the bottom of the picture (NOT TANK) is where I started polishing.





Part way done with the left side of the tank







All done.

 

Very nice! What did you use besides elbow grease?

 

What you might have there is "alligatoring" aka "crazing" aka cracquelure. Looks like ya got most of it by polishing it out..

The cause is paint drying too fast over a slick surface. Slick here can even mean ussanded or even waxed..

Best guy for paint IMO in the area is Russ Foy a few miles North of Black Diamond.

Lots of poop here on fixing ABS fairings. Grain of salt on some..

 

Have you thought about spraying it with Plasti-Dip?? Plasti-Dip results look pretty good and if you don't like it you can just peel it off and start over.


Rollin

 

I just did this as a rush job to see if it was worth saving, so I did everything by hand. 600 grit, then 1200. I just started my small detail business , so I had just bought some new compound/polish/glaze so I tried about 8 different things, just to experiment lol. Only took an hour though.


Badbilly- Thanks for the tip. Are you from Seattle? I bet the PO rattle canned it, immediately knew that he fucked up, started sanding... then said fuck it and stopped part way through lol


Rollin- Plasti-dip was my initial thought, but the paint was in too rough of condition. You wouldn't be able to peel it off nicely.

 

I had a tank like that on my Bandit Project. I used a liquid paint stripper (the stuff that smells like orange) and I stripped it to bare metal. I did a lot of prep work with wet/dry paper and gave it a nice rattle can paint job. It looked pretty good but it took a lot of time.

I like how your tank turned out with a bit of elbow grease.

 

Thank you. The big can of liquid stripper is expensive as hell. Was it aircraft stripper? I just buy the aerosol can, which has lasted me quite a while.


I did the front fender today, just couldn't get the big cracks in the paint. Also did the wind screen, and some of the upper side fairings today, too. And polished the rear tail section, no sanding, just so the back half of the bike doesn't look dull.

 

No, Just used an aerosol spray I got at Lowe's. Used it with good effect to strip all kinds of paint. It slow but effective.

 

I looked it up. I used a product called Citristrip. I had used it to strip old varnish off my kitchen cabinets and thought "what the hell" as I had very little to lose on my Bandit project. It worked great on the tank. The paint was so crappy and applied so badly it just fell off. I later used the product on plastic, testing it on nonvisible pieces and it didn't harm the plastic. It did strip the paint and I was very happy with the result. It's messy as hell and I used heavy rubber gloves and plastic scouring pads to get the old paint off. On the plastic parts I only did small sections at a time and I didn't let it sit for long.

I have painted many bikes with rattle cans. It can look great but you have to be clean and patent. I always wet sand between coats and let each coat dry at least two hours, more as I get closer to my finish coat.

Your bike is looking great!

 

Any of the strippers will have MSDS info available. Techhy type reading but as one example, the Citrustrip in the rattlecan is flammable with a low flash point. This is from the propane propellant. The smell good stuff is just more chemicals in the mix. The stuff in the jug is non flammable but can give off some rather nasty fume when burnt. Same deal...both are solvent base. They do not have a fraction of methylente chloride but I sure would do some serious testing before trying to use the stuff on ABS plastic. Best to test on a piece of ABS plumbing pipe first. grind off some or saw through a piece and drop the shards into some of the stripper of choice. It the shards go soft or dissolve . it's an indicator to go another method.

So Jim how many rattlecans of Citristrip did it take to strip your kitchen cabinets.? Sounds like a really small kitchen if you had enough left over to do a bike tank..

Never wet sanded Bondo mself. How good does that work?

Got any hot tips for the rattlecan rangers on brand names to paint their bikes?

Citrene is the smellgood stuff in the stripper About the same stull as in smellgood dish detergens and maybe even the official Texas non-alcoholic beverage called "Big Red" Jim may know that too.

 

I did the front fender today, just couldn't get the big cracks in the paint. Also did the wind screen, and some of the upper side fairings today, too. And polished the rear tail section, no sanding, just so the back half of the bike doesn't look dull.





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Very nice job. I'm amazed you were able to get the sanding marks out of the tank without going through the paint. Good luck with your new detailing business. Some pictures of your bike showing the before and after results would likely help show perspective clients your skills at polishing.

 

If you don't mind my asking, which compounds did you use. I have used products from both 3M and Farecla. The Farecla is nice stuff but a tad expensive compared to the 3M line and can be a bit messy.