This weekend I had some free time to start painting the brass colored parts. I unfortunately ordered too little paint to cover all the parts I had, so I made it stretch as far as possible and tried to get at least a middle-weight coat on all the parts.
The metallic paint was a lot different to work with than the red though. I don't think it's meant to be applied directly to sealer so it ran a bit. However, after evening out the coats the parts had a kind of oxidized look which came out pretty cool.
Here's some process photos showing the actual paint process. I'm using all AutoAir colors, starting with Dark Red, which is cut with 10% Flash Reducer. The reducer is a thinning and reactive additive that lets the paint dry faster and flow a lot more smoothly. The first step was a few coats of straight red.
After a solid red coat and 24 hours of curing in my hot-box shed it was time to add the magic - a blended, wine-colored shimmer paint combined with the red. Here's the paint being mixed.
Once I put a few coats of the shimmer paint on it was looking really purple, like a pimp moped or something. But after a few hours the brightness faded in to the base color, just as I had hoped, and produced what I call "Shimmer Blood." My low-quality iPhone camera and the poor lighting in the shed doesn't really do it justice, but the glittery maroon is going to look so awesome with the brass accents - I can't wait!
After the primer, I had to seal all the parts with either light or dark pain sealant. This fills in the gap of the primer and lets the paint bond to the lower layers more effectively. It's also kind of tacky so the paint should stick extremely well to the sealed parts.
For the maroon body parts I used the dark color and the lighter color for the parts that will be painted with the brass metallic color. When I start painting, I'll bag up the parts that are not being painted, then switch when I switch color.
After painting all the parts with my gray automotive primer, I had to sand down the rough texture with 1000 grit sandpaper for a really super-smooth finish. Most of the parts had very few dings so I think the finish should be fairly even. When I did this step, I had to make sure to wear gloves while sanding and handling of the parts. Any oil from my fingertips could affect how the final paint adheres to the frame so it's pretty important.
Here's a photo (just to prove to myself how much of a pain in the ass this was) showing all the parts in separate bags to keep dust and oil off them, ready to be sealed.
It's been a while since my last update, but that certainly doesn't mean I haven't been working. Last weekend I finished stripping and prepping the second set of smaller parts for paint including the chain guards, shocks, seat bars, etc. I finally got everything set up in the shed and got to it.
I'm using a mini-HVLP spray gun for all of my painting since the area of each piece is relatively small. I'm trying to minimize my overspray since this stuff is pretty expensive. It took some experimenting to see what my best material/air ratio was but the most important thing I found was that running thinner through the gun after every cup of material (and soaking it after use) kept it operating without any problems. I'm using a 1mm nozzle at 40psi for anyone who's curious.
As you can see, the shed out back of our house is the perfect place to hang parts. It's still about 90 or so during the day here (+10 in that sweatbox at least) so I shouldn't have a problem keeping the temperature above 72 for curing.
The next step for these parts is sanding with ultra-fine paper to remove any surface blemishes. The final paint will show anything that stands out so at the very least I need the body, tank and fenders as smooth as glass. Then it's sealer, then paint, then clear. It starts to snow in October so the pressure is on to get everything painted before then!
Here you can see the tank with some high-strength epoxy/paint remover on it. Crazy stuff. Whoever painted the bike before I got it used pretty low quality paint to so that layer was eaten off pretty easily.
A few coats of stripper, a razor, and some sandpaper made short work of the decals and the surface turned out to be pretty smooth. It's really handy that Snark's have detachable tanks.
Next I started with the frame. Layer after layer was slowly removed and scraped away, the crevasses and welds in the frame being the biggest pain in the ass. Luckily, the most difficult spots are located up underneath the frame so the blemishes will be minor.
It turned out kind of odd how the original color, the darker red under the old paint in this photo, is very similar to the new paint color I'm going with. It was obviously higher quality and took 6-8 coats of stripper to finally remove off the frame and fenders.
Here's the nearly finished pieces. There's still some gunk in the seams which I may pressure-wash to ensure they are as clean as possible, but other than that just some light sanding and I'm ready for primer!
With my paint on the way I've started to breakdown all the parts I added to the bike over the last three months. I've spent about 3 hours so far, and I'm a bit farther than these pictures show (down to the frame and wiring) so I should finish up the teardown tomorrow.
I've been putting all the parts, screws and custom parts in ziplock bags to try and keep everything as organized as possible. I just hope I can put it all back together again!
One more small addition I made to the front end is a set of sleeves for the gauges. These will help protect the wiring connections on the back of the gauges and give them a more finished look. I have only one more small piece to install, a tube that will hold some spare 2-stroke oil and then construction will be complete!
The solution I finally decided on is fairly low-tech, but proved to be the most effective in producing the loudest sound. I simply attached some rubber tubing to a valve I installed in the whistle and made a simple holster allowing me to pull the tube out and blow in to it to make the whistle sound.
he whistle itself is mounted behind the seat which actually ties the whole rear end together quite nicely. It's not advanced as I originally wanted, but I think it's a good idea. I have a trumpet mouthpiece coming from ebay to finish this section off.
I tried using steam from the stove to see if my boiler idea was going to work. Unfortunately, it seems that the power of just the rising air was not enough to make the steam whistle. I used the weights to make a seal between the pot and the wood and attached the tube over a small hole to funnel the steam. No joy. I also tried using the air compressor with various nozzles with a variety of success, but I think I'm going to need a simpler solution.
