Hello all,

I have a second set of tins for my softail and intending to paint them myself.  The spare set will be in matt black and the existing set fitted to the bike will eventually be cream.

The tins I have are 2008 vintage with decals under the top clear coat.  Before I get ahead of myself re painting, I would like to know the best way of sanding these tins back and cleaning them.  I take it the existing decals will need to come off and the decal glue removed with prepsol or similar?  I have done similar work with Yamaha Vmaxes in the past and used fine grains of wet and dry sand paper but not sure how recommended this way of doing it is.

As a reasonably naive novice, any tips on preparation would be great.

Cut around the decals with a sharp blade and use a heat gun.
If your only going Matt Black, you could leave the Decals, and just flatten the whole thing with 800 W&D.
Plenty of good books out there on painting.

 Personally - if I had a spare set of Tins I would leave the stock tins stock. Might be nice to have two custom sets but to be able to put the bike back to "stock" would add value for resale or interest as a collector. For what it's worth . . . 

 

Philthy

Matt black is pretty straight forward as mentioned, but if the cream one is gonna be COB I would recommend getting a qualified guy to paint it for you (you do the prep to save bucks). Seen too many full of pinholes/ pits and shrinkback around stonechips (silicone from old polish and cheap or improperly mixed/ cured bog) and deep orangepeel. Try wet blocking the orangepeel out for a glass finish and its rub through time from uneven coverage... back to square one. Not trying to be a downer but there are plenty of ways to waste time and cash with COB, but if its solid or matt things are a lot simpler.

Do you have experience/ access for painting in a pro setup or just garage with heaters job?

SJ

This dude cracks me up but he says it in simple terms. He does a heap of other vids also. YouTube is great for this stuff

 

Thanks all for advice, ideas and feedback - keep it coming.

A good mate of mine and I spray painted his Yamaha Vmax in a metallic navy using decent/high-end brand aerosole cans.  The (primer and) clear coats were also sprayed on using aerosole cans.  As a complete novice but with plenty of perservereance and effort with multiple sanding and coats, the job came up bloody good and people thought it was a professional job.  There were no pin holes or blemishes whatsoever.

I started doing my Vmax in a candy/scarlet red using aerosole cans too but changed my mind and wanted something brighter.  As I was running out of time, I ended up taking the tins to a panel shop and had them painted in Ford/FPV citric acid (see pic below).

As the citric acid is not metallic, we thought our aerosole spray job in the navy blue actually looked like a more professional job.  I'll try and get a pic of it.  Having said all that, I'm sure there are professionals that may be able to pick things out of good novice paint jobs that lay people like me would not be aware of.

As I'm going to paint one of my sets of tins in matt black first, I'm going to use aerosole cans again.  I had planned to put clear coats on top of the matt back but above posting suggests this may not be necessary or right?

Also curious where I can get custom house of kolours paint made up into aerosole cans?  This could change things altogether as my choice of colours was perhaps going to be limited to what was available in the aerosole cans discussed above that are sold at autobarn and super cheap auto.

There's probably no need to use HOK, most dedicated Auto paint shops will mix up any colour you like in a can.

There is another method that works quite well if you want to use the spray can method:

http://www.ppc.au.com/access_minisprayers.htm

Here is the decal I will be using on the sides of my tank that I will paint in matt black (note it doesn't include the HD bar and shields on either side - just the skull and writing above and below). It's coming from America and is about 4 inches square from memory. Still wishing to confirm with somebody that knows painting that it's ok to clear coat on top of matt black (why wouldn't it be ok?!). The fenders for this paint job will be plain matt-black with no decals, patterns, striping etc.





And here are the decals for the sides of the tank I will be painting in cream. Still deciding on what cream colour to use as there is great variation. From memory these decals are about 11.5 inches across and 4.5 inches tall or something like that. The front and rear fenders for this paint job will have some subtle orange pin striping too for matching of the orange on the HD bar and shield logo..

No problems with clear over Matt, but you will need to add a flattener to the clear, or just buy a Matt clear.

Thanks for tips thus far.

Am getting closer to starting now.

What sort of sander is recommended? American bloke in above videos suggests a dual-action sander which I'd never heard of. I can easily get my hands on an orbital sander or normal flat sander but want the right tools for the job!

Would like to know what would be best and easiest to use, including the size of the sander head.  As I was intending to sand down to the factory primer, what grain sandpaper is recommended?

Once the tins are sanded back, I intended to clean with prepsol and then sand by hand using the finest grain of wet and dry in between coats the of paint.

Start off with 400 w/d used wet and see how hard the paint is.
Just flatten the gloss down to give the primer a key, then hit it with some primer/surfacer.
Use 400 again, more primer, then 800 or 1000.
Spray a giude coat of Black then sand back with 1000 and look for any low spots or scratches.
Then blow over some top coat, and if it's matt, your done !