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…

Many people who own older bikes may have thought to themselves – why not have a go at repainting the bike at home.

Well I’ll admit, I’m one of those people. And I have taken matters into my own hand, with those around me being extremely divided about the topic. I am going to repaint my bike, and because I’m inherently a bargain hunter, I will attempt to do so on a small budget (yet aiming for the best possible finish!). So following my usual approach for everything, it will take a lot of work, a lot of time, and perhaps a bit of luck.

Repaint Strategy – in order to minimise risk I am going to paint replacement bodywork for my bike. Luckily, because my Honda CB500 is a very common motorcycle, used bodywork is readily available on Ebay and not very expensive. Below find a step by step guide I’ve set for myself:

Step 1. Purchase replacement bodywork;

- Tank

- Side panels (2x)

- Tail piece

- Mudguard (front)

- Tank shrouds (optional – as I haven’t been able to find any yet!)

Step 2. Repair and Prepare; all body panels will be sanded down thoroughly, any rust removed, dents and scratches repaired as far as possible. Once this is done (I’ve set myself a timeframe of 3-4 weeks to do this, since I’ll only get time in the weekends, and I’m quite lazy really), I will prime all bodywork with a rattle can of grey primer (Halfords – 400ml for £5.99 I think). Two to three layers should do.

Step 3. Design; Now my husband keeps insisting I’m doing all this the wrong way around, but after prep work, or during, whenever I get spare time with a graphics software, I’ll have to come up with a design for the paint work. Keeping in mind I’m a total novice to custom automotive painting, I’ll have to keep it fairly simple, or practice like mad in order to find out where my limitations are.

Step 4. Equipment; Depending on what design I’m going with, I’ll have to get painting equipment. At the moment I’m inclined towards using an HVLP spray system for the bulk of the work, and airbrush the detailing. So I will need to buy the HVLP system, a compressor and perhaps another airbrush (the one I have is very basic).

Step 5. Materials; obviously only if I’m totally sure about the colour scheme, I will need to purchase some paint. Considering I don’t have a professional spray booth, or even a garage to my disposal, I would like to use water-based paint, minimising any health risks I’m exposing myself to.

Step 6. Execution; actually paint the bodywork. I’ll have to do this outdoors in the garden, so will need to pick a few weekends with good weather forecasts… All bodywork will need to stay outside for drying even!

Step 7. Installation; the big swap over from old body to new… Like changing the bike’s clothes! Before I do this I’ll need to make sure the tank I’m currently using doesn’t have a whole lot of fuel in it, because I doubt my landlord would appreciate petrol spills on the driveway.

Step 8. Finishing touches; maybe the custom fever has gripped me so much by then, that I’ll want to do a whole new host of things to the bike, like paint the rims or something crazy like that, change the seat cover maybe? I don’t know… I’ll see once it happens.

Throughout this entire process, obviously I’ll keep posting updates and pictures of how I’m getting along. If you’ve got a project of your own which you’d like to share, please do let me know. The more the merrier!