K guys, so I went to my local Lowes hardware and looked around/talked to people about rattlecan stuff for my bike. Since I didn't have $25 to lay down on all the cans at one time, I decided to go with (with guidance of course) the Rustoleum Auto Primer and then the high gloss enamel.

I cut the rubber guards off of my mirrors and did one coat of primer, one coat of the white enamel on both of them (on the swing bars, have different plans for the back of the mirror). Seems to be a pretty sturdy paint job, but I WAS able to take a tad bit off by digging in with my fingernail (not too surprised, it's not the easiest to remove though so I'm quite satisfied)

Then I also used the auto primer to coat the tire hugger with one coat, which is slightly less adhering than the mirror bars. It scraped off pretty easily, but I kinda wonder, how much abuse is the TOP of a tire hugger gonna get? not much, maybe a little dirt here and there.

I went on to do a thorough coat of white on the tire hugger (I'll try to add pics tomorrow or sometime since this is all probably pretty hard to envision) but it didn't spread too evenly. In fact some spots were dripping and running.

My overall question is this: Should I have done more than one coat of the primer? (I can always go back and sand off what I painted, save for the intricate parts of the mirror bars) and when rattlecanning, is it best to just do light coats of the top coat until it's completely covered? (Because a thorough coat didn't turn out so great for me)

 

Fail.... just my opinion.... Painting plastic parts never works out in the long run. Most likely, no matter how good of a job you do on it, its gonna crack, chip, peal and generally look like crap inside of a few weeks or at best a few months and the softer the plastic, the faster it happens. A hugger is pretty soft........ Good luck with it... you can always order a new one....

 

well I can always sand it off and go back to the black original with a very fine sand paper, which is what I'm gonna do sometime soon because the auto primer and enamel was full of fail in some spots while full of success in others, I dont get it lol

 

I would have used dupli-color paint instead. It goes on really nice and is pretty durable. Plus, it tends to flex and not chip like so many other spray paints do. You can get it at just about any autoparts store or even walmart. And, it can be clear coated over if you want.

Also, on an area that could potentially see flex, less paint is better. Do several light coats, not heavy coats of paint.

the reason your getting fail in some spots is its plastic. Plastic requires special primer. Most primers and paint will fish eye as it reacts to the chemicals in the plastic.