Hey painters,

I'd like to give a shot at painting my Harley myself. I've watched several videos on prep, prep, prep, and more prep as well as the actual painting part.

This is my general plan and I'd love to get some feedback on if this is viable or not.

I'd like to end up with the marble effect that you see on bikes that is gotten by using a light primer over a dark primer that is then partially removed by quickly applying and removing seran wrap.

Since the current paint is not bad I would like to use the current paint as the "dark primer" and then ( after prep ) apply the light primer and the final color for the marble effect.


Heres the bike atm.

my tank has a pin stripe around the sides of the tank and a HD sticker that has been clear coated. There is nothing wrong with the paint on either side and ID like to preserve the pin stripes \ sticker \ and paint on the side.

So what I can hopefully do is
lightly ruff up the clear coat that is over the side and the stickers with a 3m pad or fine grain wet sand paper.
Mask off the sides with fine line body tape and paper.
Sand into the primary color on the rest of the tank.
spray and seran wrap remove a white primer on the rest of the tank.
spray the final color
remove the masking and then clear coat the entire thing.

How does this sound to you?

I can afford to have this done but I'd really like the satisfaction of doing this myself. I'm not in a hurry and I can put in the time to appropriately prep \ sand \ paint to get a good result and Im not looking for perfection.

Thanks!

 

First off, I'm not a pro at painting, but have done a fair amount of it on my own bikes, and cars. I would recommend using a 1000 grit wet sand over everywhere on the tank first. Then make sure the tape you are using is a "fine line" tape so you have no bleed through.
Other than that, just take your time, make sure you have a warm, ventilated area to paint.
I have never used paint as my primer before, but if you're not filling any scratch's, it may work fine.
Good Luck!

 

Sounds like you got it figured out..or at least a good plan.
Something I have done a few times is to trace out the image you want to protect on
Actual trace paper then transfer to a blank sticker/vinyl page used for printers , cut and
Cover. Works great. Prep prep prep..keeps us posted

Cheers

Support ur Local BFMC

 

thanks. I wrote to a house of color supplier to ask about paint \ primer combos. If they think this will work I have a spare fender that I'll do a test run on and post some photos

 

I do mine a bit different. I spray the base color, and do the marbling in the next base color. Here is a pic of my wifes, I think we are talking about the same thing. On hers it was based blace, then a light blue pearl and marbled, then a blue candy over that...and when you marble anything be prepared to use plenty of clear to cover up the texture!