Do on to Others

And they will do you a solid back . My friend Sgt. Carter wanted to change the color of his bike and asked if I would make the change for him. I said sure, what are you looking for. He said he would just like a change from the black his ‘83 XS 650 Heritage Special. He kinda wanted a gunmetal grey, I told him I have a qt. of HOK PBC 100 black sparkle pearl left over from a tank I did. It looks grey until you take it out in the sun, then the paint really comes alive with color. He took a look at the Sportster tank I painted with the pearl and was smitten. This is way nicer than the color I was looking at, when can you paint it. I told him we would have to wait till the temperature out side made it into the sixties, but we could start the prep work now and get it out of the way.
Any good paint job starts with the prep work, do half ass prep work = half ass paint job. I don’t care if your using a rattle can or $500.00 a quart designer paint. He had four dings that need fixn’ so I took the tank to the media blaster, removed the old paint and covered the whole shebang in etching primer closely followed by black epoxy primer. Now we want to pay attention to those pesky dents. You can use your filler on top of the epoxy. Once your filler cures, it is time to take it down using several different grades of sand paper. I start with 240 or 320 grit depending on the size of the repair. Then graduated grits up to 600. After you get the result you were looking for you would want to cover the shooting match with a high build sandable primer. Hit the top coat with 600 and if everything looks good( no seems, bumps or dips) you are ready to shoot color. Remember to use tack cloth and sanding cleaner before you spray and color, (use should use the sanding cleaner every time you sand). You want to use wax and grease remover before you spray your color. As a rule I use tack cloth between evey color an inter coat clear pass I make. This cuts down on the contaminants in the paint.
(please excuse the image quality of the tanks in primer, cell phone cam)
We have the body work done on the old Sergeant’s tins, now all we have to wait for is warmer temps to finish the job. All I ask for in return is that he helps me out rebuilding my carbs. I could do this myself, but truth be told, I am not nearly as good of a mechanic as Sgt. Carter is. After he is done with my carbs, they will be better than new and my bike will be purring like a cat on a window sill in June. We all have our strong and weak points, and we can help each other out swapping skills with our friends. This way we get to spend a little more time together doing things we both enjoy and learn something to boot. Not a bad deal any way you slice it.


Till Next Time..............