I See My Red Bike and I Want it Painted Black

I see my red bike and I want it painted black. No colors anymore I want to turn my bike to black.

I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes I want to wet them down, with my garden hose.

I see a line of bikes and they're all painted black and I picture my bike with a red stripe down it's back I see people turn their heads and quickly look away Like seeing my new black bike might some how ruin their day.

I look inside myself and see my bike is black. I see my red bike, I must have it painted black. Maybe since I dropped my bike I have had to face the facts. It's not easy facin' up when your right side fairing is full of ugly cracks.

Some people thought I should paint my red bike in a deeper blue. I could not foresee my bike painted in this hue. If I pour enough black paint in my Sata gun. My bike will be painted black before the mornin' comes.

  I see my red bike and I want it painted black. No colors anymore I want to turn my bike black.

I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes. I want to wet them down, with my garden hose. I wanna see my bike, painted black, black as night, black as coal. I wanna see my paint gun coat my bike until the paint is dry. I wanna see it painted, painted, painted, painted black Yeah!



After I dropped my Viffer in the garage and cracked the mid-upper fairing I knew finding a replacement would be a needle in a haystack affair. The slug said, no problem, you’ll be able to track down a replacement in no time. The Slug isn’t a sport bike guy, he is a Harley guy. Finding Harley parts is a no brainer, they are everywhere. By his reasoning, people buy perfectly good sport bikes and break them down to sell. I had to explain to him this simply is not the case. Sport bike breakers buy crashed bikes and sell off the good parts which do not include the broken fairing parts. Or you will see an ad for a “street fighter” on craigslist, this is what happens when sport bike fairings make contact of an unmovable object. When a VFR of my vintage ‘94-‘97 hits the ground, the first part to make contact is the part I’m needing. I told him because of this, finding a replacement would be an exercise in futility. He didn’t believe me


Well after searching for four months I finally tracked one down. A reproduction part for sale on eBay UK. David Silver Spares had a beautiful left side in red like my bike, but alas, wrong side. So I was just about to pull the trigger on the eBay find when I noticed He doesn’t ship to the U.S. I tried to contact the seller, but he had disabled anyone from the states contacting him through eBay. I was thinking I would never be able to pick up a replacement when I remembered I have friends across the Atlantic in the U.K. specifically one of my partners in the TX/XS500 Forum Crouchyuk. I had barely contacted him and he had already purchased the part and was making arrangements to have it arrive at my door in the shortest time possible. That is the best part about being member of the motorcycling community, we all go out of our way to help another rider out.

This brings us to me wanting to paint my bike black. I have a thing about black. Most of the cars I’ve owned including my current one have been black. Just about every bike I have owned, if it wasn’t already black, I usually wound up painting it black. With the exceptions of my ‘85 FJ1100, ‘92 GSXR750, ‘83 CB1100F they were too pretty to paint black. I really like the red paint on the VFR, but it cost a wad of cash just for a pint of it. And you need to get two pints, one base and one top. That equals $269.40 for paint and that doesn’t include clear coat. The fairing cost me just short of $200.00 US including shipping.
 
Being the cheap ass I'm known to be, I am not about to pay more for the paint than I did for the part. The only place that seems to carry the pearl red paint for my year Interceptor is ColorRite, so there is no comparison shopping. It’s a good thing that I love black bikes, because it only cost $53.73 for a quart of House of Kolor BC25 black base coat. That is more than enough to paint my whole bike, not just a 2'X2' part. And since I use a lot of HOK products, I already have inter coat clear, reducer and final clear coat on hand saving me even more money. So it looks like I have some sanding in my future.