Hi folks,
I will be spraypainting the new fairing kit I got and wanted to start a thread on the best ways to carry out the work. Stating the primers used, what primer was used on what, (plastic fairing primer used, fuel tank primer used), Base coats, how many coats used, paint Base, (water based etc), lacquer used, what shine % etc. Include photos.

Paul

 

How did you make out? Did you already decide on what paint to get?
(I'm asking because this thread is a couple of weeks old now.)

I've painted a couple of motorcycles. I haven't tested every primer out there. PPG is a big name and it was referred to me, and so I've tried and always liked K36 for painting motorcycle parts. Unless you are going down to bare metal on the gas tank, PPG K36 will be good for the tank as well.

I don't like lacquer primers...too many reasons list. Primer needs a hardener.

As far as paint, it depends on what color you are spraying, what brand and what line of that brand to determine how many coats you will need--not to mention how heavy/thin you put it on.

 

I had plastic primer in a rattle can so I decided to try using that but the application is poor and streaky. Would not advise. So I decided to apply a 1k plastic primer coat using my compressor and gravity fed spray gun. Setting up to the settings described on the can, (air pressure), the gun itself I then set up, wrongly as I found out when applying paint because of the orange peel effect, not what you want. So always test on a scrap bit of plastic to make sure you have the correct paint feed and air feed for correct atomisation of paint and a good spread of what you are applying. I have not bothered with lacquer yet as I am not happy with my paint job so will be buffing back to plastic and starting again. I will have to set up the gun correctly to find the correct setting for nice smooth application with no runs, no fog or orange peel. I have found an amazing website I will put up a link to help others.

http://www.collisionblast.com/paint-defects/

This link is very good

Paul

 

I see you are making some progress then.

About primers. I guess it can be categorized as either
1) a primer that is reduced with a thinner than when evaporates, the residue left is what is on the object being painted.
OR
2) a primer that has a hardener (AKA activator) that instead of relying on the evaporation of thinners, becomes hard from the chemical reaction of the activator. This is the good kind of primer that I mentioned.

The way I learned to paint was to read the House of Kolor tech sheets (the older version).
It was a booklet that was ordered from supplies that you would use from start to finish, and how to use each product. Then I painted a scrap piece of metal, then I did a helmet, then another helmet, then I started doing bikes.
This would be the new version of the tech sheets that I mentioned:
http://www.houseofkolor.com/opencms/...cal-manual.pdf

So basically, read the instructions, and then practice the trade.
Since you asked for pics....I just now realized that I do have one pic hosted:

 

I've just painted a small tail section and just used regular rattle cans, I made sure I spent some time flattening the primer right back before applying the top coat and again flattened the top coat with wet and dry and cutting compound. The results were not bad.

I drank both bottles of beer to celebrate!