Painting at home… (Red)

While I have consistently thought of Red as a rebuild project and not a restoration, I still care a lot about what the final bike will look like. You know from other posts, Red is going to be a BMW inspired project, but is not going to be true to factory paint and options. That provides a good degree of freedom in what I am doing with paint. If you’ve never done a project like this, you might be surprised at the cost of professional finish work. For a whole project, I can easily imagine spending north of $5,000 once you take care of media blasting, vapor honing, powder coating, body prep, and paint. If you’re looking at true restoration colors that will be more. If you are looking for a perfect Silver Smoke or Daytona Orange, then expect to go even higher. Freeing myself of that expectation allows for a good bit of cost savings and will also greatly reduce the anxiety I will have when riding Red. And yes, I will ride Red regularly when complete. 

For this project, I am mainly the “wrencher”. I’ll be doing all of the mechanical and electrical work myself, aside from the final drive and cylinder heads. I did not want to invest in suitable tooling and time to become a capable paint and body guy as well. I poked around a few rabbit holes in that direction and found I would want about $6,500 for getting up and running. I would also need some specialized power for the equipment and I am not quite ready for that. So, I chose to find others to handle the main paint, blasting, and powder coating.

That led to the issue of the smaller bits. Brackets, miscellaneous parts, some of the motor parts, and more that would need to be refinished. Some of this is going to be best left as cleaned metal, some in high-temp black, some in 2K satin black. To do this, I decided to setup a small paint booth using some aluminum extrusion and bits from other projects. I really just need an area where I can paint without ruining everything in the space. 

I set up by the door so I can open it when painting and vent the air outside with some job site fans I have. Once everything is vented, I’ll add some radiant heat during the cure. I previously used KBS Velvet Black Motor Coater for the engine parts. It’s not as bad to use as the primer and paint I’ll use for the other bits and has a good finish, so I am using it to refresh the brake calipers. 

For the various frame parts that were not powder coated, the top brace (which was only available in aluminum) and some other bits, I am using an etching primer and satin black from Spraymax. This stuff has a heck of an odor and absolutely requires a respirator and good ventilation when applying. I am hoping to get away with just two coats to keep the painting period brief.