Motorcycle Tank stripping
by Hedonist666 on May.06, 2009, under Repair & Restauration
Before you can even begin to consider painting or even priming your bodypanels, you need to make sure they are in a good state. Since I had bought a cheap tank from eBay for my Honda CB500, I’d pretty much set myself up for a fair bit of prep work. The tank looked pretty reasonable on the picture with the eBay listing, but unfortunately upon receiving it I found a whole lot of rust, dents and bubbling paint. Now I’m extremely stubborn and wanted to prove to myself (and others finding themselves in similar situations!) that with a bit of reading, and some cheap tools and materials from Halfords and High Street, I can restore this bodywork and make it look great after paint.
So as you can see, the tank looks decent (on a picture, not in real life!) with the paint still on. But some of the paint is bubbling, indicating that there is rust underneath it which will sooner or later cause it to peel off. Therefore I cannot paint over the existing finish.
In that way the state of the tank pretty much decided my next step; which (power)tools to buy! I impulsively went ahead and bought a Black & Decker Multisander from Argos (it was on sale…). It’s a random orbital sander which comes with a triangular base as well as a round one. However after trying to sand some of the paint off, I found that although it could do it (eventually), it eats up the sand paper way too quickly.
So today I went on another shopping spree and bought a little 600W Draper Angle Grinder. I know it’s not the most powerful one out there, but that’s OK; I’m not particularly strong (and for those that aren’t aware - I’m a girl) and the thought of having to wield a huge 900W angle grinder was not very appealing at all. I also bought a poly carbide abrasive disc to go with the grinder.
As soon as I got home and unpacked my stuff, my husband couldn’t contain his curiosity and immediately assembled the grinder, putting on the abrasive disc and taking it to the same tank. Turns out (in spite of its relatively low wattage) 
this grinder is actually quite effective. Have a look at 5 minutes worth of paint stripping:
We figure it will probably take 30-45 minutes to do the whole tank.
However, the rest of the body panels are made of plastic, instead of metal. So they will need to be sanded down with the multisander and by hand, which should take a fair bit of elbow grease.
UPDATE:
So last weekend we felt like making a mess as well as a whole lot of noise… The tank is now fully stripped, eating up the entire grinding pad. It took about an hour, but the result is not bad:
Note the big dent on it, well there are plenty more on this tank, so the next step will be trying to get rid of them somehow…
13 Comments for this entry
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May 28th, 2009 on 11:19 pm
Hey, Nice to see you’ve gotten started on those skins! It has been several weeks now….lol Got those dents fixed yet?? (I am ready to see some paint)
Ride Hard!!
May 29th, 2009 on 6:36 am
Ha! I’ve been really lazy lately… (well in my defense, not only did it rain a few weekends in a row, also we got busy fixing the car this time.. With too much attention being spent on the Honda, the car got jealous I guess!)
Will try my best to fix those dents this weekend, and hopefully prime everything as well…
June 2nd, 2009 on 5:21 am
HA…. so Jealousy is the problem..
I spend so much time with my Iwata, that my car, bike, and girl are desperate for attention. (lol) Post them when their Primed!!
(think i’ll see if i can get my girl to give me a ride in my car over to see my bike….lol)
June 4th, 2009 on 4:17 pm
Dents repair on hold as we tried doing the rest of the panels first.. Looking at what spraying equipment to buy, as our initial idea of using spray can primer kind of backfired on us (literally, as it dripped and spluttered all over the place!). So now we have two almost primed side panels, which need another coat, and a can of primer which somehow has no more air in it but still feels heavy.. Which leads me to believe that the cans are probably crap quality to begin with. (We did shake it for what seemed like forever before use, so that shouldn’t be it).
Have you ever tried using an HVLP spray system for this type of work? http://www.mptools.co.uk/products.asp?partno=HV3000 I was thinking about this one… Read on some car restoration forum that people have used it successfully for automotive paint, however without trying it out there is no way to be sure of course!
June 30th, 2009 on 1:01 am
Hey girl,
For primer, the type of gun you use really does not matter. It is just protective layer, that you are gonna have to sand the crap out of so that it is smooth!!! The gun you would use for your base coat, that is a different story.. (sorry such a long wait for response, for some reason I can’t get your comments to update me???)
later n good luck!!!
July 8th, 2009 on 8:47 am
Hi!
Sorry I didn’t respond earlier - work has been hell!
Anyway, I was just considering my options - ideally I would like something that can handle all the coats… Anyway, I’ll probably just give the HVLP system a shot and let you know what happens. If it’s crap, I can always just use it for other DIY stuff I guess.
BTW, same thing for comments on your blog.. I don’t really know how it works either way…
August 8th, 2009 on 1:57 am
Hey Girl,,, Come on now, Hell, can’t be as bad as Work…! You got any paint on them for me yet??? LOL, your as slow as I am…
Later.
August 23rd, 2009 on 12:36 pm
Actually, I’ve been burying my head in the sand for a while … the bike kept giving us trouble so we had to get rid of it
I’m still going to to paint the spare bodywork I got as practice, and then sell it on ebay or something.. But I guess there’s not going to be a custom painted bike on our drive any time soon…
September 3rd, 2009 on 8:18 pm
Well,,, that does suck…
Mine is still not runnin’ and I still have not painted it yet…. but right now I just want it runnin’… I am dieing to go for a ride, and I wanna ride while the weather is still nice.
Sorry to hear about the bike!!
September 9th, 2009 on 9:22 pm
I know, it’s not just frustrating when the bike doesn’t run (or doesn’t run properly) - it’s painful! Hope you get it sorted before winter sets in..
December 10th, 2009 on 6:21 am
So,,, the economy sucks, and I was layed off from my full time job…. Now all I do is airbrush, to make a few dollars.. However, got the bike runnin today!!!! WOW, this thing sounds great! Now we will take it apart so I can get her painted.. Hopefully finished, just in time for Christmas…. lol, hope all is going well in your world!!! Talk to ya soon!
December 10th, 2009 on 6:22 am
Also,, don’t know why my avator no longer shows up on my posts….????
February 16th, 2010 on 12:31 pm
Hmmmm I don’t have the slightest idea why I never got an email regarding your comments! Sorry about that ,have been hugely busy with other stuff and happened to look at my pending comments today finding yours in there!
Sucks about the job, hope you get a new one soon, or make enough with airbrushing which I guess would be the best solution!
And congrats on getting the bike running, will have a look around your blog to see if you’ve finished it yet
BTW your avatar won’t be showing up because you’re using a new email address from before (wordpress shows avatars for visitors by the email address they input)