Spraying/Painting Bike Parts

[JonnyFoxtrot]

Hi all,

So I pick up the GS500E from Wales this weekend from my Dad's mate. Happy with the sale, its a good price and he's the only owner and I know its been treated well. The whole time we spoke about it I was under the impressions it was red (to be fair I think this was from one passing comment from Dad guessing the colour and so I didnt bother to ask again). Well I did a vehicle check last night and turns out its not red..............its purple. Great.

I picked up a GS500F style fairing on Friday which is in white and I'm thinking I might get the original purple stuff sprayed to match, so front mudguard/fender, Tank, rear tail fairing. Anyone have much experience getting stuff sprayed? How much am I likely to have to pay for those 3 things? I'm tempted to do it myself (i'm not completely inept) but haven't properly sprayed anything before (though I do know the technique) so there's a big potential to balls it up so I'm keen to get it done professionaly. Anyone know of anywhere locally in the South East (Essex) area thats any good? I don't mind travelling if I know the work is good!

TIA
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'89 Honda NS125F (SOLD) -> '92 Suzuki GS500E (SOLD) -> '03 Kawasaki ZX6R B1H (SOLD) -> '96 VFR 750 RC36 (SOLD) -> '02 Honda CBR1100XX Blackbird

[pits]

Who ever you take it to, make sure they have/can spray bike parts, slightly different to cars, I did a mates Tyga kit for his VFR, he later binned it and as I have no workshop at the moment he took it to get it sprayed at a local car shop, cost him a couple of hundred quid for the whole lot, but found the tank wasn't masked up properly, breather blocked with paint, another blocked with paint etc.


You can do it yourself, but you will need the kit to do it, compressor, gun, paint and materials probably set you back around £200-how ever much you want to spend.

Getting a good finish though is all in the prep work if you do it yourself, you need to thoroughly degrease everything first with a good detergent.

Don some rubber gloves and get the panel wipe out, and wipe everything down that will be painted.

New gloves now everything is degreased, and start rubbing down, you can use sand paper or scotch pad, up to you really.

Then you will want a plastic neutraliser coat/primer coat for plastics, this will stop any of the plastic and paint melting into each other and causing a reaction.

Mask everything up, remembering that if it doesn't get masked it gets covered in paint.

Next panel wipe everything again again, sand anything that might show up in the paint, runs, nibs, dust etc and panel wipe after.

Spraying is next, you want thin coats building up the layers, follow the instructions for the paint you are using, don't lacquer the paint on, and always keep at 90 degrees to the panel, don't arc your gun as you spray otherwise you end up light on the edges and heavy in the middle, keep that gun level and straight on the panel.

Remember where you are overlapping paint, overlapping paint means runs if you aren't careful.

For a bike though, unless you have the gear already, just give it to someone else to do, probably cost around £500 for a really good job as there is so little to do on a bike

HTH

[chris-red]

Spray point in South End get a thumbs up from me At a guess I would say that lot will set you back £250 - £300
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