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My Wood-Panelled Track Bike

13K views 41 replies 38 participants last post by  Jbaltus666 
#1 · (Edited)
I get bored at work and have stupid ideas.

I've had my 2008 675SE for almost 2 years now. I went to the track a few times last year and loved it, and felt that living in downtown Toronto was wasting my bike's talents. A brand new set of Hotbodies track plastics fell in my lap for next to nothing, and I bought a nice 1976 Yamaha xs650 which cut my insurance rates, so I uninsured the 675 and decided to spend a lot of time at the beautiful Calabogie racetrack this summer. I might put it back on the street eventually.

I lack the time and patients for painting, and I didn't feel like spending hundreds on a real paint job, so I decided to go with vinyl. It couldn't look any worse than the rustolium-roller or spray-paint method, and it only cost me $75 for materials. Aaaaaaand I figured as long as I was working with vinyl I could do something you can only do with vinyl, so…

BEHOLD: The world's fastest station wagon; my wood-paneled 675.

The before shot!


The Concept!


The Materials!


First day's work!


MY ASSISTANT!


First track day, no stickers yet. Pretty close to the concept.


Fine booty:




Moved to Calabogie, Stickers. (7.38 is Euler's number squared)












Had a little low slide, everything held up well. Little crack in the fiberglass:


Info:
2008 Triumph Daytona 675 Special Edition
Woodcraft rear-sets
Pazzo folding levers
Tech-Spec tank grips
Two-Brothers Slip-on
Sato no-cut frame sliders
Street Triple R OEM rear hugger
Hotbodies fiberglass bodywork

Dry vinyl application with 3M Blue squeegee and 10A heat-gun on low setting.
Vinyl purchased from my local Proveer Sign and Graphics www.proveer.com :
Avery SF-100 Cheyenne Teak ($14/yd)
Avery SF-900 Metallic Black; Bright Gold Metallic ($8/yd)
Avery A6 White ($4/yd FAR too thin and stretchy, I couldn't find better plain white. I wouldn't recommend this stuff)

Decals purchased from www.doityourselflettering.com
"Daytona" (In Edwardian Script) about $6 each.
Numbers hand cut.

Total work time: 14 hours.

(And if you were wondering: I'm an engineer for a solar power company, the concept drawing was done in Microsoft Paint on my lunchbreak, and I've never vinyled anything complicated before but I'm extremely skilled with my hands thanks to a childhood of playing with Lego)

NOTE TO ASPIRING VINYL WRAPPERS: I must impress upon you the importance of alcohol when working with adhesive vinyl. It is essential to prevent frustration and diffuse perfectionism.

http://stayawakeatwork.tumblr.com/
https://twitter.com/StayAwakeAtWork
 
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#4 ·
Looks pretty badass! I'm a fan.
 
#7 ·
That. Is.

AWESOME.

Seriously, I love it. Looks great. I assume it's sort of tongue-in-cheek, so I find it hilarious, but at then same time it does seriously look great.
 
#14 ·
At first the concept sounded horrible, but you pulled it off really well. I like it a lot.

If materials were only $75, I am going to have to do vinyl on mine also. I really didn't want to spend the time to paint it. Do you have a hook up with the guy or is that the going rate for the material?
 
#22 ·
Thanks for the kind words, everybody. I like to be a bit different, it's nice that other people can appreciate it.

At first the concept sounded horrible, but you pulled it off really well. I like it a lot.

If materials were only $75, I am going to have to do vinyl on mine also. I really didn't want to spend the time to paint it. Do you have a hook up with the guy or is that the going rate for the material?
As I mentioned in my first post, I got everything from my local Proveer www.proveer.com They're a sign/graphic material company with a lot of locations which will sell by the yard or roll, i don't know if they do small orders for shipping. But most cities have a graphics store that will carry 3M or Avery vinyl.

http://www.metrorestyling.com seems to have the best selection and prices if you want to order online.

The key to it being so cheap was that I designed it so I could use 15 inch wide vinyl, and I only needed 2 yards of each colour. (4 of white)

The wood vinyl wasn't the stretchiest. If I wanted it to look better or for the street I'd spend more on the 3M DINOC vinyl. and the White I used was TOO thin and stretchy, I just couldn't find higher grade plain white.

Awesome job bro the creativity is amazing!! It looked fairly simple using the vinyl.. Was it?? Do you have any do's and dont's advice to give??:cool2:
Do's and don'ts:

Expectations: If you've never done it before, go into it realistic expectations. I expected it to look 80% flawless from up close and 95% from a few feet away. Which I think I achieved.

Mentality: It IS simple, but requires a lot of patience, and you have to know its limitations when designing. It's a hard material to work with and at some points you have to accept that certain pieces won't look perfect and trying to correct a slight mistake can ruin an entire section and 30 minutes of work. I recommend liquor to quell frustration.

Design: It's much easier if you design for small vinyl pieces. i.e. the white number-boards on the nose of my bike aren't there because I wanted it to look like a killer-whale, it's because I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to vinyl the rounded nose section and the windscreen area with one piece of vinyl. Parts like the tail would be absolutely impossible to do in one piece (maybe a pro could do it, or if you used top quality vinyl) So design to have your seams and pinstripe along complicated bends/edges, so once you've reached the complicated feature you can just cut away. Much easier than struggling and stretching.

Environment: Get your lighting right. You can think you're applying well, but you're just looking at the wrong angle and actually have a million little bubbles. I think it's better to work at night with directional lighting.

Preparation: If you are planning on using vinyl to cover cracked fairings, you probably still need to patch, bondo, and sand because cracks will still show through. But you could just patch over a crack and I think it would hold.

Edges: I'll have to report back on how heat affects the edges, I couldn't decide if I should wrap around the edges, or cut along the edge (next to the engine cases, etc) There seems to be some fraying, but I'm afraid to cut along the edge in case it starts to peel away.

That's all for now. I'll let you know how the vinyl holds up after a few more track days, and patching over the cracked fiberglass from my lowside.

Thanks again.
 
#17 ·
i just got an idea to cover up my thrashed plastics...
 
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