I bought a totalled F4i from a friend about 2 years ago... but it wasn't really totalled. The guy that inspected it for the insurance company was a friend of my friend, and wanted the bike from himself. My friend did'nt end up selling it to him, but sold it to me instead. I got it for $2,000, rode it for a year, then took it apart last winter. I fixed the fairings in my apartment, and painted it using spray paint. Everyone told me that i should get it professionally painted, but all my money is going into school at Michigan State University.
I only painted the the fairings, but not the tank... i rode if last summer but got sick of everyone telling me that i needed to paint the tank. I wanted to put a sign on it "Under Construction". Durring my Christmas Eve break from school/work i took the tank off and painted it... which puts me as done for painting the bike. Here is some pics, if you care to see...
Before i started...

 

I started first on the tail section… the guy before me crashed the bike one major time… and 2 small lay downs. One of them (may have been) a wheelie done badly… which ground off the tip of the tail. The side parts of the tail were pretty road rashed and had some long cracks. I used “Plastic Weld”, which is a two part epoxy. It worked good as at first but I wished I would have been able to know that it would crack later on… Here are the pictures of that.

Here is the long crack and road rash on the left side



Here is the tip that was ground off



This is the best part of my fix… you cant even noticed that it was missing now that its painted





Here is the side part that I filled and sanded



Primed



Painted

 

Next I worked on the right side fairing… It was missing a large piece on the top (which you will be able to see where I fixed it in the pictures), and also had a few cracks through it. The large piece missing was replaced with fiberglass, which lasted up to this point… where as (like the tail section) the plastic weld started to crack again.

Here it is before



Here is the fiberglass fix







Primed



Painted



And the fiber glass portion after it was painted

 

The nose section was what I worked on next. It had a couple cracks near where the mirrors mount and also on the sides where the stickers go. This is the only part that the plastic weld held up… But there isn’t a lot of stress there I guess. The tabs where the head light mount were broken off in the crash, and I had to fix them with plastic weld… which for some reason they held (but I don’t know why, because that has a lot of stress on it)

Before



Primed



Painted

 

Like I said before, I put it together before I painted the tank so I could ride it. I couldn’t paint the tank at the same time because it was attached to the bike (which was at home) while I was at school. I know it looked bad, but I couldn’t help but ride it instead of ripping the tank off. I also put on a Lockhart Phillips Blinker tail, while it was apart, along with a Competition Werks Fender Eliminator. I installed a black windshield when the nose went on…

When I first put it back together, with the fender eliminator and tail light installed… you can see the yellow tank here sort of.



I took the wing stickers off the tank and prepped it Christmas Eve then started painting



Primed





Here is the finished product… for now at least






And here is the latest addition… M4 pipe off Ebay, which was pretty cheap and I couldn’t pass up





More pictures will be up when I mount the pipe… just don’t have time now that classes have started.


What do you think? Is it alright or terrible?

 

well, if you cover it with vinyls of some nice style and clearcoat altogether, i would say it should look nice, for now as i would say from the pictures the metal gave much more shine to the paint color, than the plastic, it looks somewhat off, but sure it's not terrible. i always look and wonder, for such money spent on sprays and such lot of time spent working, you could get an air compressor and a paint gun maybe? it would look even better than. correct if i'm wrong guys, prices in ukraine can be somewhat different..[:-]

 

The reason for the shine difference in the paint is because the plastic was painted a year ago, and the tank was painted a month ago... the bike was out in the sun for a while and washed a couple times... im sure it will match up when summer comes and i actually ride it. And, the reason i painted it with a spray can rather than a gun was because i painted it at my apartment where i go to school, not where i have my air compressor... plus the paint cost me less then 20 dollars for everything i needed... rather than the 150+ dollars that i would have to pay for paint supplies and a gun plus haveing to go into a dust controlledenvironment...And i think i did pretty good for spraying it outside with a paint can on my porch... no blotches or streaks. Its a 2002 salvage title F4i... not a 2008 600RR.

My next bike will have a better paint job... plus it will be worth more then $2,000 i hope.

 

hey man... i tip my hat to you for doing the paint yourself. i myself wouldn't do something like that on my own. bike came out good for what was put into it. one question tho... did you put a clearcoat on it?

 

I think you did rather well for doing it yourself on a patio. I would do the same if it was mine.

 

I didnt put a clear on it yet... i was gonna tear the fairings off it again sometime (maybe spring) and put another coat of paint and aclear coaton it... but i got a satin lacquer clear for it, which is sitting there waiting for me to use.

Thanks for the complements guys...