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First Time Painting Fairings - Armour Bodies

5K views 16 replies 8 participants last post by  William Duc 
#1 ·
After purchasing some Armour Bodies from RD, I was trying to figure what avenue I wanted to take for getting them painted. The quotes I had from a few painters were in the $500 + (and shipping) range. I knew that when you include quality materials in the mix, this actually isn't that bad of a price, but I still decided to paint them myself. I understood that going this route would likely cost just about the same or more as a professional, but then I would have a lot of the tools and start to develop a new skill as well. This is not a high-quality how-to, just a journal of my experiences. For the record, I have never painted anything automotive (or much else…) in my life. Heck, I'm not really even artistic.


Contents
· Rendering
· Materials
· Spray Booth
· Painting
· Results


Rendering
A couple months ago I started putting together some ideas for what I wanted the paint scheme to be. I took about an hour and created a custom layered image to use as a base for different designs. It's a PIXLR image (free, web-based Photoshop knockoff) that has a picture of a Daytona 675 with all of the fairings as independent layers. This way you can change colors and such quickly without altering other pieces or the frame of the bike. If anyone wants it, I can email them the file.



I ran these and a few other renderings.






I ended up settling with the following, partially because my tank is red, and I didn't want to have to bother with painting the tank.





Materials
I'm afraid to add up everything I spent to do this project. I tried to find my personal balance of quality and doing things rather inexpensively. Here are a few of the big items.


Paint - eBay. $200 total. Purchase from The Coating Store (Kembase). Bought two motorcycle kits - Rocking Red Pearl and Tahitian Black Pearl. This includes all the reducers, clearcoat, and activators you need.



Fresh air system - used from eBay. $200. I decided after a lot of reading about the hazards of basecoat/clearcoat painting (if you're thinking about a project, do some reading on isocyanates!) and decided that I wasn't going to use a respirator, but a supplied air system. This has a 40 or so foot hose which grabs fresh air and pumps it directly into a mask. Purchase a Hobbyair unit.



Spray gun - $50. I originally purchased two of the Harbor Freight purple guns, but after some testing, both of them leaked fluid through the fluid tip without the trigger being pulled. I exchanged them and ended up purchasing the Harbor Freight "Professional" gun (nickel finish). It's still HF, but it is much, much better than the purple gun. For a noob, it shot pretty great. It has a much higher CFM requirement of 15cfm, but my 7 or 8 cfm compressor kept up fantastic with this small job.


"Bucket System" - Since moisture in the air lines can be an issue, I was inspired by some reading online and created a custom system for reducing water getting to the gun. I forgot to take a picture of the final product, but here's a crappy 'shop I did to visualize it. The idea is the air from the compressor goes through copper coils in the bucket, which is filled with cold water, and then through the bottom of the bucket. At the bottom is a water/oil filter. Then you connect your regular hose to the end. I had to do this because I need it to be portable.



Assorted pieces - Sandpaper, Tyvek suit, 3m fineline tape, 3m pinstriping tape, 3m masking tape, masking paper, mixing cups, filters, box fan, duct tape, tack cloth, etc.


Spray Booth
Where I live, there was no way I could shoot in my garage and avoid fumes or overspray inferring with the neighbors. I went to my parents, who live out in the country with plenty of distance from any other house. If you're in a suburban area close to other people, DON'T do it!



I set up a temporary booth using PVC pipe hung from the garage ceiling. I then draped .3mm clear plastic (Home Depot 400ft x 12ft) around the whole thing and taped it up. Used 2mm plastic for the floor.



Ventilation was a weak spot in this setup, but I didn't have many options. We used an air filter taped to a box fan to blow air IN. I then had a small hose to vent the air out.



You can never have enough lighting either. I definitely needed more…

 
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#2 ·
Painting
The only practice I had before shooting my fairings was about 10 minutes of practice using cheap Home Depot enamel on some old busted fairings. It at least gave me an idea of how to shoot and a general reference for setting up my gun. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous.


I used Prep-all (Can buy it at Advance Auto) as my wax and grease remover. I was pretty happy with it for getting off fingerprints and dirt marks on the paint. I used it before sanding (600 grit dry, just a scuff) and then immediately after to get the residue off. I then gave it one more shot and wipe down a few minutes before painting. Immediately before painting, I gave them all a good wipe with the tack cloth to get any leftover particles.


First layer of red going down:



Taping up for putting down the black. This took a couple hours due to the complicated (for me) design.





Some ugly goon after putting the black coat down.





After the black was done, next was doing some pin striping (sort of). I used 3m striping tape, with the intent to use it as an accent (and to cover any imperfections between the red and black) and then clear over it.







The last step was just clearing over everything!
 
#3 ·
Results
In the end, I'm pretty happy with how everything turned out. Yes, I could have spent the same or maybe slightly less money and had a better quality job, but I really enjoyed the whole process. It's pretty satisfying to have been responsible for everything from design to final completion. We'll see how everything turns out, and in the end it's just a track job anyways.


I had one decent run when I did the clear, but I'm not going to be too hard on myself as it was pretty hard to see in the booth and it was 55 degrees out. The only other problem is that in a decent number of areas the pinstriping tape scrunched up. It's designed to be able to be cleared, so it was probably my fault on the application.







 
#4 ·
Looks good man, its always fun to do these types of projects. In the off season, the track bike will get another paint scheme and seeing your thread gives me hope it can turn out real well!

How big of a compressor were you using?

good job!
 
#5 ·
Thanks :)

We bought it used over the winter. It's a discontinued Craftsman 30 gallon oil-less. Supposedly 6hp, but since it just runs on 110v, I think the actual output is limited to 2hp or so. With the gun having much higher requirements, I was impressed with how the compressor handled things.
 
#6 ·
Looks great- thinking about respraying my Daytona this summer as well. I did my old bike last year and it turned out OK, but I got a good amount of orange peel that I had to buff out. Did you end up thinning your clear at all? Mine was really thick and didn't seem to atomize well, so I might reduce it this time around.
 
#7 ·
I did not thin my clear at all. My test spray wasn't atomized as well either, so I upped the air pressure a little bit and backed off the fluid a touch as well. Seemed to work well enough. There's still a little bit of peel, but it isn't terrible.
 
#9 ·
Not sure about that yet. I'd like to get some of those imperfections out, but it's going to get beat to heck on the track anyways. Isn't having fresh painted in good shape bodywork bad juju? :wink3:

Still waiting for the clear to cure before I start mounting. Once they're good (probably tonight, maybe tomorrow) I'll post pics of it mounted up.
 
#10 ·
I forgot to mention this in my original post, and I can't seem to ever be able to edit those huge posts...


I ended up using about half the can of red and a little less than half the can of black (and proportionally with the reducers). Although I didn't do a tank, if you were just doing one color you would only need to buy one "quart kit" and you'd have plenty. Had about a 1/3 of the clear left.
 
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