Painting a Motorcycle Tank at Home (Spray Cans Only!!!) HOW TO!

hey everyone welcome back to the channel on today's episode we're gonna go through step by step on how to paint this motorcycle tank let's get into it so before we get into the work i'd like you to go down and hit that subscribe button i set a goal for myself that by the end of the year we'll reach 500 subscribers we're almost halfway there and every subscription will help and also if you like the way this video comes out and the tank comes out hit that like button it really helps the channel so to give a little background this tank is actually off my 1982 cb 750 sc which is the nighthawk model this bike inherently from the factory is not a very cool bike but i decided to do a cafe brat conversion to it this basically is chopping the back putting a flat seat and a more of a sportier gas tank lowering the front end stuff like that i'll put a picture down here so this particular tank actually came off of a cb750f which is the supersport model it's a little bit longer and lower and makes it look a little more sporty for what the 80s considered sporty and in my opinion it's the best looking tank for this year bikes so before you do anything you're going to want to make sure you drain all the fuel out take the tank off the bike remove any kind of badges which this had a badge on either side with two screws the fuel petcock and this one actually had a gas tank lock so i removed that as well just has the gas tank cap on there right now so being that it's already stripped and removed i used well going through the process i'm getting ahead of myself here going through the process i stripped this mechanically i tried using paint stripper and or aircraft paint remover whatever you want to call it and it didn't work i don't know if i didn't leave it too long or maybe it was some old stuff that i had lying around but i ended up using a purple strip disc and let me grab one like this one and it took down the paint relatively quickly make sure you wear a mask because it's a lot of dust um and it also knocked down any rust that was on the tank this thing's from 1982 and it probably spent a lot of its time outside so being that we're at the point that it's already stripped down to raw metal i actually got into pulling dents out there was one dent here and there was a little ding in the front of the tank the dent the larger of the dents that's on the the top side of the tank i ended up welding and pulling out a little bit i didn't do that great of a job so we're gonna have to use some bondo of course uh and the smaller dent i think we could take care of just with a skim coat of bondo so we're gonna get into that now and get to mixing up the bondo so prior to actually applying the bondo you're going to want to make sure you wipe down the surface you're going to be applying the bondo to as well as sand it within 80 grit sandpaper the 80 grit sandpaper will actually give a nice rough surface so the bondo adheres better and wiping it down prior to sanding will prevent you from sanding in any of the dirt or grease that may be on the tank after sanding you're going to want to wipe it down again to make sure that none of the sanding dust that was left over from the previous step is still on the tank and then we could get to mixing some bonding so because i stripped this tank mechanically the surface was not in the best shape so i decided to hit the remainder of the tank with 220 grit sandpaper to give a smooth consistent surface finish for the primer to stick to in a later step with the sanding on the rest of the tank complete i wiped it down with acetone once again to remove any dust that was left behind [Music] so now that we have all the prep work done it's time to mix the bondo in this case i decided to use some plexiglass that i had lying around to use as a mixing palette and mixing stick because it won't actually absorb any of the solvents that are within the bondo and cause it not to harden correctly a lot of times you see people use cardboard and that's not really the best thing to use because it'll act like a sponge and soak the solvents out and cause the bondo not to harden so i keep referring to bondo bondo is essentially just a body filler this is basically a plastic that comes in two parts both a hardener and then the bondo material itself that you'll mix together and it'll harden similar to epoxy this allows you to fill lows in the metal and create a perfectly smooth finish to apply your paint to as far as the mix ratio is concerned i'll leave you to read the back of whatever product you go with [Music] so to apply the bonding you're going to want to use one of these plastic putty knives it's important when you're applying the bondo that you don't dig the edge of the putty knife into the low part of the dent because then you won't get the filling effect that you're trying to achieve in the first place [Music] so with the bondo all cured it's time to do some sanding to get it all flat and smooth um you're going to want to use something like these dura block sanding blocks rather than just holding the sandpaper in your hand because what'll happen is if you're just using your hand you'll actually even if you keep your fingers close together but i'll just exaggerate it if you push down with your fingers you're actually going to sand more where your fingers are and you'll actually put waves in this bondo and you're basically creating a dent or a wave in the panel that you're gonna see once the color and the clear coat is on so there's a couple different shapes they make they make like this round one if you needed to get in like a a curved edge they also make a more of a flat style block and then they make a thinner block that actually geez maybe it would help if i was actually showing you a thinner block that actually has some curve to it so i'm going to go with the thinner block here because this has a slight curve on the panel on both sides and then there's actually a sharp body line here so i'm gonna use the thinner style block so i started off the sanding process with 150 grit to knock down most of the bondo and then i finished it off with some 400. so you can kind of see how much bondo actually came off the dent is only in this small area so what i'm going to do next is wipe the tank down with a little bit of uh paint thinner or or wax and grease remover just to remove any kind of dust and stuff that's on this and then i'm gonna dust this with some black paint and that'll give me a what is called a guide coat and the guide coat will let me see if there's any low spots on here because right now it's just all gray it's hard to see any shadows or any low spots so what you do is you dust on some black paint and then you hit it with some sandpaper not too much just enough that you could see the high spots will come back this gray color because you're effectively sanding the paint off and the low spots will remain black and you'll either have to add more bondo or there's still a little sanding left to do so you can see here this is actually a low spot so what i'm actually gonna end up doing because i i can barely feel it with my finger i'm gonna use some of this glazing putty this is basically used to fill like tiny little pinholes this is very minute um it's just deep in one concentrated spot i guess you could say so i'm gonna put some glazing putty on that that'll fill that in i'll go over it again with some sandpaper and then we should be ready to prime oh and i'm going to do the same [Music] i'm going to do the same to this dent now you can see on this dent there's really no pronounced low spot because there's no black primer left so i'm gonna get to putting that glazing putty on and then let that dry and hit it one more time with some sandpaper wipe it down and we're ready for primer so because i'm gonna paint this tank only with can so it's easy to do at home the first type of primer i'm going to use is a self etching primer this type of primer actually has an acid in it that will etch itself and make itself adhere better to raw metal than say a filler primer or a sealer primer it's a good idea to give yourself approximately two to three light coats so that you have good even coverage over all over all the exposed metal also because i forgot to do it mention it earlier it's important to tape off the filler neck as well as fuel petcock prevent paint from going inside the tank or on the threads for the petcock [Music] [Music] after letting the etching primer dry i sanded the tank once again with some 400 grit sandpaper to make the primer a smooth and consistent finish before blowing it off with air and wiping it with a tack cloth the tack cloth is essentially just a tacky type of cloth that removes any kind of dust or fibers that may be left behind before adding another coat of paint [Music] so the next step that i did was add a couple coats of filler primer this basically fills in any kind of minor imperfections say less than like a 16 to a 32 of an inch and can ultimately be sanded smooth similar to how we did with the bondo but just in a much finer fashion [Music] i know this may be getting repetitive but after the filler primer dried i sanded it down once more with 600 grit sandpaper in preparation for the base coat [Music] with the dust blown off the tank and the tanqueray tack cloth i got to spraying the base coat for the base coat i used this dupli-color perfect match in toronado red i believe it was called i'll post it down below so you guys can use it if you like the way the stand came out it's important to remember with this type of paint that you need to put it on in light coats or they'll run into what's called blushing where moisture actually will get trapped underneath the base coat and cause it to look very dull you can usually correct this they're missed by either misting lack of thinner on it after the fact or wet sanding the coat which you can see is what i ended up doing [Music] so because i actually had some of that blushing effect that i mentioned earlier i ended up color sanding which is just essentially sanding the base coat with 1500 to remove the blushing prior to clear coat with the tank all ready to be clear coated i wiped it down once more with a tack cloth just to remove any final dust or fibers that were left over for the clear coat i went with spray max 2k clear this type of clear is very resistant to gasoline and other solvents so it makes a perfect clear coat for a motorcycle gas tank however this is some pretty nasty stuff and that's why i wore my hobby air 2. i have another video on why i'm wearing this and the reason i decided to use this over a regular respirator and if you want to watch that i'll link it below because this is a 2k clear there is a recoat window that you actually have to get the next coat of paint on before it fully cures or it won't stick to the next layer of paint so for this particular type of 2k i waited 7 minutes per the directions on the back of the can so at this point i'm really happy with the way that this is coming out but you can see that there's still some texture left in the paint so to remove that you're going to want to wet sand compound and then polish to get a glass-like finish so i started off my wet sanding process with 1500 before moving to 2000. as you can see you're going to be looking for a flat textured finish that has a consistent sheen that will indicate that the paint is very flat [Music] so with the wet sanding all done it's time to polish for the polisher i used the dual action polisher although this one was not the best i recommend getting a better one but it did end up working in mike i started out with compound on a microfiber pad before moving to polish on a foam pad compound is just a little bit coarser and removes more material and allows you to get the job done a little bit faster and then moving to polish allows you to get out all the micro scratches and any other minor little imperfections that may be left over shout out to aj for teaching me the right way to do it hopefully i remembered correctly [Music] one thing that i should note here you should always check the areas that you just polished with the light because it may look great head on but when you look at it from an angle the light hits it differently and it still needs to be compounded more or polish more [Music] [Music] with the polishing complete it's time to show the final product [Music] so i'm super happy with the way this tank came out i think it looks awesome i hope you guys learned something and can recreate this on your own please remember to like and subscribe and i'll see you on the next one [Music] [Music]

Channel: jamesofalltradesny

Views: 35,158

Keywords: Duplicolor, Paint, Spray Paint, How to, motorcycle, diy, paint job, painting, rattle cans, spray cans, 2k clear coat, hobby air 2, respirator, primer, body work, paint work, painting a motorcycle tank, honda, cb750, cafe racer, brat, supersport, custom, bondo, body filler, filler primer, lacquer paint, clear coat, wet sanding, polishing, compound, polisher, do it yourself, cheap paint job, affordable paint

Id: THlqqQDIbUw

Length: 14min 54sec (894 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 22 2021