Again, it's been a while, but here's an update. My mojo for the X5 & anything bike related has been out of the window of late, but decided to get my backside into gear a couple of weeks ago & source some paint.
BS Supplies in Stoke on Trent are a brilliant company to deal with, they are so helpful in anything paint related, I've always used them for my rattle cans.
This time however, I was venturing into the world of spray guns, thinners, hardener & paint. I was going to get my mate to spray the panels for me, but decided to have a bash myself as you can always sand it down & do it again. I have a small, cheap compressor & an even cheaper spray gun which came in the obligatory free tools kit that came with it, so went to B. S. with an old panel for the paint match. It was all sorted within about 20 minutes, the assistant told me how to go about mixing 2 pack & that if I had any problems, give Matt a ring as he's a whizz kid on anything spray related.
So, the hard work started with removing old decals & paint (This is where the Wife's hair drier came i very handy
)
So, with it all de stickered, the hard graft of sanding, smoothing, priming & generally tidying up the surfaces ready for the top coat.
Once I was happy with the primed bodywork I had to wait for a decent day as my shed is like a collander & I also needed some heat to get the paint to harden. I was talking to a friend, who said, "You need to be careful with that 2 pack paint it contains cyanide". Well, that made me start to worry &, reading posts on websites of people having to be
resuscitated after using it, I started to panic &started to think about going back to my trusty rattle cans. After more reading &, more importantly, reading on the health & safety website that the paint "had the possibillity" of giving you Asthma & wouldn't kill me, I bit the bullet & set things in motion for the next nice day.
That turned out to be yesterday (Saturday). I woke up very early (4am), took the dog for a walk, had a brew, then waited for a half decent hour to turn my compressor on. I brought the panels into the back yard, hung them on the line, mixed the paint & started to spray away
"Hmmm, this 2 pack paint is rather good" I thought, you don't need lacquer once the paint has dried, so once the panels were all painted with about 30 coats I left it to bake in the lovely sunshine we had.
It was then that disaster struck. The wire holding the tank on the line decided to give up the ghost, the tank fell, hit one of the sidepanels on the way to the floor, then roll across the yard, I was mortified. So, it was out with the sand paper, filler & paint again to cover up the mess
Next job was to flat & polish the paintwork. I used 1200 grit sandpaper very lightly across the tank's surface with lots of water, then used a colour restorer as a polish.
After about 3 hours of constant sanding & buffing I ended up with a very shiny tank, it's not perfect as it has some small blemishes, but I am really impressed. The next step were the Decals. I had bought a full set from Retrodecals on the net & hoped that this stage would go ok as they cost a small fortune ( in the great scheme of things), but the quality is top notch & period correct, so I'm not complaining. I had taken measurements of what went where before I stripped the tank, so got my tape measure out, placed masking tape at certain points & put them on. Wow, what a transformation, I can't wait to get the sidepanels & tail piece done now to show off the full bike......... Watch this space......
