Painting plastic Acerbis fuel tank (Aprilia RSV)

[MarkJ]

The track bike fairings are pretty much ready for painting. I also have a fuel tank I want to incorporate into this (it's black at the moment, colour scheme is going to be orange/white) but it's a plastic Acerbis job.

I've searched around a few places because I know normal paint can crack/craze when painted on plastic, but a lot of the offroading forums which use aftermarket Acerbis tanks have said you just can't paint them because the petrol gasses seep through the plastic and peel the paint off.

Now I'm not sure if the RSV tank is the same as the aftermarket offroading ones. Long shot, but has anyone ever painted one of these, or even know how to find out the material it's made out of? If it's not possible to paint due to outgassing, would wrapping it in vinyl even work or would that peel off too?

The tank:
https://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f186/markjackson13/DSCF1061.jpg
You can see it's been painted in something, but no idea if it's a special paint or not.

It's only a track bike so not wanting to spend a fortune on painting it (already got a compressor and spray gun to paint it myself).

[clancy]

looked on google, you can get petrol resistant paint, and halfords to petrol resistant lacquer aswell.

thats probably just for direct petrol exposure, but you could try..

petrol resistant lacquer
then primer
then few coats of paint
then petrol resistant lacquer again.

not how your ment to do it but should work in theory, petrol fumes shouldnt get through the bottom lacquer then. worse ways round if it dont work you shouldnt of sunk to much money into it
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KLX 300r

[tutton]

Bloke above is incorrect,
RSV tank will be fine, just key it up dont go mental and take it back to bare plastic.

Certain tanks do indeed let out fumes such as CCM tanks of certain years which makes them very hard to paint, the way to ususally spot a tank that has issues with fumes coming through the plastic is check the stickers if there is any, if theres a vapour release issue the stickers should have lots of small peforations in them to allow vapour out and not lift the sticker.

Using the petrol resistant laquer is ok, but thats only a sealing clear coat when youve primed, based and then ready to seal it all down. Using a real 2k laquer is also petrol resistant.
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Past: '05 Peugeot XPS '99 Aprillia RS125 '94 FZR600R
Current: '02 ZX636 A1P '51 CCM R30

[clancy]