A few years back when gas was reaching for $5 a gallon for the cheap stuff I decided to buy an old motorcycle to commute to and from work to save money. I figured an old motorcycle would be just the ticket, cheap and easy to maintain. I was
naive to say the least. The bike I bought was a 1973 Honda CB500 in pretty decent shape for $1000. In
retrospect, I really should have tried arguing the price down a wee bit, it needed a little work but nothing too major. Since it was my first motorcycle and I'd never ridden before, I didn't know the things to check.
I fought with that bike for a few months, mostly due to my own ignorance and lack of knowledge about motorcycles and how they work. I replaced a lot of things that probably didn't technically need replacing, but I'm a tinkerer so I did it anyhow. I loved riding around on that bike, it was fun. I eventually decided to buy a second bike to try and fix it up. The original thinking was I'd ride the 500 around while working on the other bike. As you'll see it didn't quite work out that way.
December of 08 I bought a 1980 Honda CB650 for $500. When I went to look at it she wasn't running, but I did hook a battery up to her and shot some starter fluid into the air filter and she coughed and tried to start. This told me two things, the most important was that she wasn't seized up, and the second was with a wee bit of work she'd likely run. I'd found my new project bike!
Originally I'd planned on just doing a quick
rattlecan jobbie to touch her up and then start riding her. I figured it would take about $500 to touch her up and make her more presentable. In addition to being an addicted tinkerer, I'm a dreamer. I habitually make things more involved and complicated than they have to be, but that's okay, since in the process I tend to learn a lot of stuff.
Over the course of 3 or 4 months while I thought about what I wanted to do to the 650 I started doing a lot of research. One of the things I found was
rattlecan paint doesn't hold up well to gasoline spills. This was concerning to me since I really didn't want to spend the time to do a nice paint job only to have it erased by that all important liquid. I started looking into other types of paint, mainly the catalyzed automotive paints the pro's use. As a warning to anyone thinking of using these types of paint, do your research they have some health hazards that
rattlecan paints don't, namely
Isocyanates. I'll let you look up and read about them.
So about April of 2009 I started
acquiring the things I'd need to do the job I had finally decided on. To minimize dust in my paint, and
over spray on everything else I built a
paint booth.
I put the fan on the intake side so I wouldn't have to worry about fire hazards due to the flammable paint hitting the motor of the fan. In retrospect that's probably not that big of a hazard, but I'll keep doing it with the fan blowing in just to be safe. I'm really not interested in my one claim to fame being some byline in a news article reading "Stupid Do It Yourselfer Blows Himself Up."
I proceeded to dismantle the 650 and bagging and labeling the parts. Anyone who decides to do this, use a TON of ziplocks and labeled the stuff like you are sending it to someone who has never seen it before. I didn't do as good of a job as I should have and it came back to haunt me later.
As any good painter knows, it's all in the prep work. You will spend at least 4 hours prepping a piece for every 30 minutes you spend spraying, just be prepared. The reality is though, it's all worth it when you end up with that gorgeous paint job you've always dreamed of!
I'd decided to sandblast everything, it sounded faster and easier than sanding or using a paint removal disk to get everything. This was true and wasn't all at the same time. Sandblasting with a small pot (like the ones you can get at Harbor Freight) is a tedious process. However, you can get into all those nooks and crannies that you just wouldn't be able to otherwise, and frankly a well sandblasted part is a thing of beauty. Again a warning, sandblasting is an abrasive process and if you don't pay attention you could cut through your metal. I've also read that sandblasting sheet metal ( such as fuel tanks or body panels on cars) can cause them to warp due to the heat generated by the sand bouncing off the metals. I sand blased all the frame pieces, but I opted to use a paint removal wheel for my fuel tank. If you are going to sandblast, buy a sandblasting hood, wear heavy gloves, pants and long sleeved shirt. If you don't it will hurt VERY bad.
I built a sandblasting booth out of some old wood I had laying around, and used a couple of 5 horsepower shop vacs to keep it as dust free as possible. If you choose to go this route be prepared to blow the filters of the vacs out frequently as the sandblasting dust breaks down into frighteningly fine particles. The advantages to using a sandblasting booth I found to outweigh the drawbacks. I was able to reuse the sandblasting media many many times over, whereas if I'd been blasting just on the patio I wouldn't have been able to as easily. There was also the pleasant benefit of not having the sand come back and hit me which is very very uncomfortable. I spent many many hours sandblasting my parts, I was pretty meticulous about it.
Once the sandblasting was done I started painting. I've only used rattlecans up to this point in my life, so I was a bit nervous to try using spray guns. I did a Ton of reading, some of my favorite books were by Joanne Borless, she does just amazing work and her books on motorcycle painting were written basic enough that a complete noob like me could understand.
I tried to think through everything and anticipate problems, but as with all things, I couldn't anticipate everything. No problem, half the adventure is trying to figure things out, and I have enough experience in life by now to realize I'll never get anything perfect the first time around (or the second, or the third....)
To test out my painting prowess I sprayed my friends old Craftsman snowblower, it's a pretty solid piece of work that was beginning to rust, so it was a good test subject. I must say the paint has held up surprisingly well.
I did a lot of reading about different paints and manufacturers. It seems like a lot of custom painters swear by House of Kolors paint, and I'll admit they have a fantastic selection of products. However their pricing was way outside my meager budget. I was looking online at a place called TCPGlobal and they have a line of paint called Kustom Shop that seemed intriguing. I did a google search for them to see if I could find reviews. I was unable to locate any information on them, good or bad, which I took to be a decent sign, lets face it nothing spreads faster than negative news.
I ordered my paint supplies and proceeded to travel down the path of learning how to paint with these professional paints. One caveat about ordering paints online, the price was good and they shipped them pretty fast, but it was a pain in the butt when I needed something today. If you can't find any good paints locally then by all means order them online, but if you have a local paint store I'd advise checking them out. They can help you out when things go wrong and it's always a good idea to try and spend money on your local economy.
I made a number of mistakes while I learned and removed the paint from the fuel tank a few times.
After a few restarts I ended up with a pretty nice paint job. There are a number of things I wish I would have done differently and things I will do differently in the future, but thats part of learning.
Right now I'm just waiting on a few more parts and the bike will be ridable.
If you own a Honda
SOHC 4 cylinder motorcycle I recommend visiting
http://www.sohc4.net/ Without this site and all the fantastic members and information on that site I wouldn't have been able to do any of this.
I used POR15 tank sealer so it takes 96 hours to cure before I can fill the tank up. So now it's just the waiting game, once it's cured I'll try and put the tank on and ride the bike!!
