Thread: Painting started second time around.

I've stripped all the metalwork of old paint, bogged the dents in the tank and sanded it nice and straight, plus undercoated everything. Late this afternoon I hit the smaller items with top coat, tomorrow I'll flip the parts over, spray the other side and start the spraying the tin wear.

Frame will be getting blasted again, not keen on sanding that, given the amount of tabs and things the Yamaha butcher shop has tacked all over the frame, geezus wept the thing is rough.

No Iwata, Devilbiss or Star gear in my shop, just a $39 suction gun and a bargain basement priced HVLP touch up guns, the touch up gun being used to spray the undercoat and the top coat on the small parts. I do have a bigger HVLP gun but the nozzles are 2 and 1.7 so far too big for this job. The bigger suction gun has a a 1.2 nozzle and did a good job last time, so I may use that for the tank, guards and seat, but I'll try the touch up gun first as it has a finer nozzle.

The only problem with the bargain basement guns is parts - no such thing. So when the seals and what not fall apart I have to dig into my O ring and fibre washer collection. So far I haven't come across any problems I can't fix though, I did replace a couple of O rings on the touch up gun before starting. Both the HVLP guns are closing in on 10 years old now, not too bad for a $59 purchase price.

I'm keeping the acrylic lacquer thickness as thin as I can because I intend clear coating the tank and guards, and possibly the frame with iso free 2k. Yeah, yeah, not ideal I know, but shouldn't hit any problems as long as I keep the acrylic lacquer reasonably thin. I did have to layer on some spray putty on the tank though as it wasn't real straight, we'll see how that pans out.

The pic of the tank, done in acrylic lacquer last time was how it came off the gun, never compounded or polished. If you look closely, there's a little pin hole just to the right of the cap hole as the tank curves down over, never noticed before hitting it with top coat. I later filled it and touched it up.

There were two small dings on the right hand side, one on top, two in front of the pin hole and two largish dings just below and behind the curve downward I had to fill and smooth over last time. Unfortunately, the larger dings resulted in the area around it being distorted a little, but I think I managed to cover it up reasonably well. Hopefully I did as well this time around.

the tank looks good in laquer , are you getting the frame powder coated or just painting it ? i have more success using my old wagner beaver than my conventional spray guns !

I used a CIG Little Beaver for years, similar to the Wagner Spraytech and great for putting down lots of paint very quickly. Ozito also make a similar system. The CIG was great, sprayed lots of bikes and other stuff with it. Cheap as way back too, much cheaper than a wagner.

Unfortunately the paint was delivered in big blobs rather than finely atomised material, resulting in orange peel. You could reduce the orange peel by using more thinners, but a proper spray gun and compressor, deliver much better results. I imagine that's why panel beaters and the like use them.

Wagner's and other similar type units are great for painting most things, things like trailers can be done very quickly. A little further back, before the advent of the Little Beaver, a lot of vacuum cleaners came with spray guns.

A mate painted the Holden he was given by his father using a vacuum cleaner gun.
Choose a nice orange colour.
Looked amazing but really needed a twig and a few leaves to complete the effect.
H.