Respray - Metallic Yellow
Ever since I bought the bike it came with a rather deteriorated paint job, it's not standard either which was the reason for me buying the bike. Up close the paintwork was not perfect, some area's also needed a respray, this meant that the whole bike would need painting. The first step was to asses the paintwork, I was really hoping that I could just sand it back a little and not go to bare metal. Unfortunately when I removed one of the stickers it pulled off the paint, surprisingly easy.
I started by scraping some of the paint away to see what the undercoat was like, there was none in some places and even the original paintwork in others, it meant that I would have to go to bare metal. I bought some paint remover to try and cut the work out.
The paint remover looked like it was doing its job, but it only took off the yellow and black, not to original paint underneath it. Instead I used the grinder with a wire brush.
It was very messy work and time consuming (2 hours in total) but I got there in the end. Using some de-greaser I prepared the tank for undercoating.
I undercoated the tank with about 3 layers, then after 24 hours I sanded it down to a smooth finish.
I built up layers of paint giving 15 minute intervals between coats.
After I finished the tank it was left another 24 hours in which it was then sanded and painted with the correct colour this time.
Another 24 hours passed, it was then sanded to a very fine finish.
I coated it with a glitter spray and waited another 24 hours, partly because I had no petrol resistant lacquer.
I sprayed a total of three layers of lacquer, a coating of glitter after the first coat. The lacquer came out very well with minimal orange peel, it would be quite acceptable to not even polish the tank.
A close up shows the slight orange peel, unfortunately the tank now has to be left for a week for the lacquer to harden. I made a very big mistake by fitting the tank and not allowing the lacquer enough time, on some of the edge's it has pulled the lacquer. Luckily I can touch this up afterward's, but the main point is that it's going to be covered by a rubber trim running around the bottom of the tank. The purpose of the trim is to stop me damaging it when I removed the tank, its very easy to do so as the frame is very close at the front.
A couple of days after painting the tank the lacquer was still soft, a few months and it started to crack. I had feared that It could react with the glitter spray, their aerosol bases were different which did lead to the laquer never setting. I do plan to paint the tank again but will leave out the glitter spray this time, although before I do I thought I would have a little play. I sprayed over the tank in a black gloss paint and then covered it with cling film, after a few minutes I peeled it off and then left it to set. I'm really happy with the result, I'm not going to lacquer it as I would rather start again if the laquer beneath keeps cracking.
About six months ago I painted the tank, the start of 2016 I decided I was moving to Canada so over the space of a few days I repainted almost everything on the bike as it needed to be sold. The finished article is on the previous page.
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