Painting A Motorcycle Tank on a Budget - Step By Step - Ep.46

so I just started to clean up this little area here just so that I can stick some tape to it to cover up the hole while I'm painting and in the process I thought I'd just clean up around here as well and notice that there was a little bit of a repair job under the paint as you can see it doesn't look too bad there's no real pin holes that I can notice as a few little high spots which I'll probably sand down there and I think that's pretty much the main one maybe just one here and just get them down a little bit more flush I know the paint will pretty much go over the top of it and you won't even notice it because the cap sits all the way around the outside here anyway so this is kind of interesting to see what you end up finding underneath paint because obviously this tank is probably like what 40 years old or something I'm sure there's going to be some dents that have been repaired as well once I really strip it down to bare metal so let's do that let's get some paint stripper on it I'll tidy this little bit up now and yeah and put some tape over that so no paint really gets in there I'm not really worried about it I'm going to be pretty much flushing this tank out I like thoroughly before I obviously use it but I just want to stop paint getting in there if I can do that and then strip the whole tank down [Music] [Music] [Music] painting this tank is probably going to be something that's a little bit more involved than I initially thought just because it's got all these little veins and rust something me being a perfectionist I want to get rid of all this as a as much as I can before painting over it obviously you know sanding all this down completely and then having this badge I guess bracket that's been tapped onto the side of the tank there's gonna be rust behind it and that's gonna annoy me so what I'm gonna do is actually do what I did on that tank over there and pretty much unstitch it well just basically grind it off like grinders Brackley out and then clean it all up so that when I do run some body filler over that it's not gonna have the rust under it I know that the oxidization is not gonna happen if there's no obviously oxygen getting to it and so it's not going to go any further but it's just gonna annoy me if I know that there's rust under there so so I'm gonna spend a little bit of time on this just try and get all the rust off as much as possible before I go any further I'll flip it over and show you the underside as you can see the veins of rust are pretty much all over this tank like I said I'm gonna spend some time to get rid of it it's all the way through the scene here you could see there's just a line of rust so taking the time to get it as good as I possibly can now we make it last to hold a lot longer in the long term so I'm thinking the ultimate way to get rid of the rust on this tank would be to use a wet blast cabinet I don't actually have one of those at the moment but you know I have dry blast cabinets and I don't really want to use sandblasting in a dry cabinet to try and you know get all this off just purely because the heat that generates could potentially walk this thin steel I don't know if I can or can't I don't really want to let take that risk so I'm just gonna leave it and just do it all by hand it's definitely worth it something can make a big difference in the long term of this tank so let's get into it [Music] [Music] so these little guys when they hit you in the face they'll hurt like hell I can't imagine what they'd do featuring the eye so just make sure you wear eye protection at least I've got this and I also use sometimes I had it on before it was a full leather apron when they hit you on the shirt it's okay but you know try and avoid it if you can out of all the little bits of pieces that I've been using to try and get all the little bits of rust and paint off this by far this thing's the best on the grinder I'll leave a link to this guy in Amazon if you want to get one for yourself it's just obviously a higher speed considering it's going on the grinder and it gets right in those little parts you just can't get to because it is a little bit bigger and deeper as well so definitely get one if you're going to do this there are other ways to achieve the same result but I just want to try and get as much of the rust off as I possibly can and then the parts that I can't reach like just in these little parts here I'll put some rust converter and and that'll be done for that then I can actually put some primer on or sorry I put some body filler on prime it up and then sand it all back wet and sand and then start laying some paint something I wanted to show you here is if you're looking to do a brushed effect on a tank like this this is a 120 grit sandpaper that I've used obviously I haven't been consistent with the motion because I'm not after that effect but if you were I use I guess you could use a 120 if you look close enough you can see that brushed effects kind of noticeably there obviously you could use an 80 grit would be even more noticeable I was going up and down I guess if you were doing it you probably just start at 1 in and just push your way through and just keep that motion so it's nice and even it's kind of cool and you can also see now the seam line from manufacture obviously when they put them together there's a lot of join you can see when my thumbnail is there and we set the top so it's kind of just I didn't even know that was there I guess makes sense what I'm going to do now because the flash Rothstein has started I'm going to use a scour on it over the entire tank and just get rid of all that flash rusty and use some acetone and just wipe the entire thing down and then go from there [Music] so I just quickly threw the tank up on the bike just to see what it would look like as a bare-metal tank on this scrambler I think it looks kind of cool I don't mind it it's definitely not look that I'm 100% after but it would definitely suit this bike if I wanted to leave it like that but leave me a comment I'm just curious as to how many people do like this or maybe you don't like it just leave me a comment I'll go through them later and check them all out and see what you guys say about it but I think it does look pretty tough I'd obviously have to bring in some more silver into the bike to accent that tank a little bit so this stuff here that I'm going to use is rust converter you can get it at pretty much any auto place all the places that I was unable to get to with the wire brush or grinder or sander or whatever I'm just gonna dab this on you don't have to do this process because when you put paint on paints gonna stop the oxidization process anyway and it'll pretty much not rust any further I just like to do it you don't have to do this but it's just something that I figured doesn't cost anything and it's uh you know it's pretty easy to do so why not now that the rust converter has done its thing I've done a little bit here and a few little spots all over here to get rid of that rust I've wiped the entire thing down with acetone which is down here so that's done now it's a matter of just putting some itch primer on the steel [Music] so this is the etch primer that I'm using concept paints looks like it's made in Australia family-owned in Australia so if you in Aussie obviously you can get that I don't know if you can give it overseas but it's just a niche primer so I can't imagine it being anything fancy compared to anything else out there the putty that I'm using is rust-oleum spray I guess it's just a spray putty nothing fancy about that either just going to be putting that on and obviously following the instructions on the back and then after that's done then I'll do the 600 grit sand to get it all perfect and then obviously the paint after that and I'll show you the paint as I use it and how I'm gonna do it before I put the spray putty on what I want to do is just fill this guy up first with some putty obviously so I'm going to do that and then send that back try and get that nice and perfect and then I'll pull the spray putty on and then sand the entire thing down with 600 grit sandpaper so this side went really well when you send it with 120 sandpaper and you can't really feel that edge so I'm really happy with that but I'll go over it just something a little bit finer and then on this side did the complete opposite I feel like the edge is starting to pretty much just break off it's not sticking to the tank for some unknown reason I don't know why so I think I'll do this side again I'll just scrape all this off and mix them more whether I use too much hardener or not enough I'm not too sure but yeah we just want to get it right so now that this has happened on this side I'm a little bit suspect on the other side as well just I'm not sure if I need to sand this edge primer a little bit to get this body filler to and hear a little bit better but what I'm gonna do on my second attempt is get rid of all of this primer the etch primer and then put it directly to the steel I think that will stick a lot better especially if it's coarse sanded like that so that's a thousand times better that gila goes directly on this deal a lot better than it does the paint it was literally just peeling off the paint so that's obviously the way to do it as far as I know it's sort of smooth now I started out with 80 grit just to get this stuff to stick onto the steel and then I went to 120 so there's no edge you can't feel any edge there just perfect and the other next step is to put this spray body filler over the entire thing actually edge applying this first to cover up all that steel and then the spray putty killer and then sand it all back and then I'll do my first layer of black I've put about I guess three to four coats over the entire tank just pretty much the top surface area obviously I'm not too worried about the underside there's a few problem areas was one down here there's one here you might get a C on the camera a little dish and there's also a little one of those exactly the same on the other side and back here on the other side so they're just the things that I've got to pretty much try and sand out I guess worst case scenario I'll have to get some more putty primer if I can't send them out and just keep working at it until I do had I really thought about it I could have used that other putty to actually feel like those in the gaps before I started but I'm pretty sure I'd be able to him out so that was the next step I'm just going to sand this guy down with some 600 grit sandpaper and then just go from there [Music] so now that I've done all that sanding I've done all the flat areas with the block as you've seen and that just gets those perfectly smooth and all the little bits around here and obviously all the curved really really tight spots I'm gonna have to do by hand because obviously you can't get the block in there those problem areas completely gone I'm stoked I'm pretty lucky that I got a tank that didn't have any dents or any issues really apart from where the badges where is the only thing that I wanted to patch so yeah it's perfect it's worked out really really well really stoked so I'm just going to go around and spend some time around these areas just by hand and just get them all perfect and then we can lay down some black so I've just finished sanding the entire surface with the 600 grit sandpaper that was the next step it has come up really smooth it is black spot-on perfect and in every sense all around the entire tank if I was going to stay with this gray I would just put clear overtop of it it is just I've spent a bit of time to prep the surface to get it right before I lay down the color and I think that's pretty much the secret with painting I could be wrong but from what I've learned through the process is when you spend time trying to get it right under on the underside then if you're a half-decent painter you can potentially get a good looking paint job in the end so that's what I'm gonna do I'm gonna lay down some black now and then some green after that I'll show you the process so let's get into it [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] now this is the decal that I had made by a graphic designer Blair made this for me I'll leave a link to his website in the description below if you want to get anything obviously designed then here's the guy to talk to something for your tank or anything else on your motorcycle yeah just give you a basic rough idea of what you want and he'll manipulate it and make it work which is what he did for me so yeah that's gonna go on the side and the reason I want to get this perfect is because this is going on I'm gonna be painting the entire tank in green and then I'm gonna peel this off so there's going to be pretty much a paint transition between obviously the sticker here where the paint actually is between the two colors and I don't really want a big Ridge there so I'm going to not put too much paint on the very edges so therefore once I peel this off I don't really want to wet and dry too close to that edge for too long because you could potentially get rid of you nice perfect edge if that makes any sense hopefully it did but yeah that's what I'm gonna do stick the sticker on on both sides and then we can paint the whole thing in green let's get it started [Music] [Music] [Music] so we're putting this decal on a curved surface everything went as expected from about here to about here it was perfect and from about here down to here was perfect but obviously that curve going that way really had a few little struggles there's like three points on both sides which you know you can see the crease line which doesn't matter because I only need the edge as long as the edge is perfect I'm just gonna play around here and try and get these edges spot-on and then as long as that edge is right and once the paint goes on I'll peel it off and I'll have a nice crisp line that's all I'm really worried about so just so you can see on this side the same scenario it's three places where it's pretty much creased off and this is the first time we put in a decal on a curved surface so I did what I know I use the skills that I had you would have seen me using that spray which was just basically dish soap and water and it's the same as basically I guess when you're tinting the window you get the the film and you can spray the window and you spray the back of the film where it's sticky and then you can basically move it where you need and then once you've pretty much got it in a position you just squeeze it out from the center same thing I did with a sticker and it worked quite well it made it gave me the ability to manipulate it a little bit it's spot-on even on both sides as good as I can by hand so I measured it to try and get it perfect so yeah now it's just a matter of basically fixing up these little spots and then putting down some green paint standing back and looking at it being black and white actually looks pretty damn cool but I've committed to playing it green so it's gonna go green so what I'm gonna do here with this section I guess we'll call them pleats I'm going to get this knife here and I'm gonna slice it down this way just to try and take out the bulk of it because it's a bit of a ridge at the moment so if I can get it flat or as close to flat as I can what I'll do is I'll get this orange fine line tape and just run that around the top edge there and just obviously because it's only those three points which are the issue and then once that's done hopefully no paint can bleach down into this part that I'm trying to protect so I'm going to try I'm gonna be really really careful with this knife because I obviously don't want to cut into the paint worst-case scenario if I do then I can always do the opposite to what I'm doing now and just use some of that orange fine line tape around the edge here once the green is on and then repaint this section black that's worst case hopefully I don't have to do that but it's always an option if I do go a little bit hard with this knife so nice and gentle I just take my time so that actually didn't work out too bad as you can see I'm only trying to get down the section widen often for this tape so after I do this orange tape along here on both sides I'm about to lay down the green paint but before I do that what I'm going to do is wipe down the entire tank with a thing called a tack cloth now that'll get rid of all the bits of dust and fluff and everything that's landed on the tank from just a rag being wiped over it and then I'll put down the green paint so you won't have any of those bits of dust to like you know you can sort of see them here and there so you can try and blow them off but you're not going to be able to get all of them off unless you use like I said a tack cloth I'll leave a link to this kind of stuff a little bits and pieces I've used to paint this tank I'll leave a link in the description below for you to grab if you're going to do the same thing [Music] [Music] so I'm really blown away with how this has turned out this is my first attempt of painting anything of this caliber first time paying the fuel tank as well like the lines are spot on like me spending that extra time to try and get that right especially up here there's this there's no imperfections in it at all worked out spot-on I'm happy with the color I love it I mean absolutely so ecstatic without turned out the only thing is left to do really is put a clear over it now because this is obviously shiny and this is matte I want to pretty much make the entire tank matte that was the plan and the actual clear that I'm going to use is I'll show you so this is the paint that I'll be using it's a 2k matte clear it's a two-part and the reason I'm using this is for fuel spillage because I've just spent all that time getting this tank paint as good as I possibly can and if I do get some fuel spillage which I'm sure I'm going to if I'm filling it up or if the seal isn't a hundred percent perfect something splashes out and runs down the tank then all that paint work is just destroyed so this stuff is going to protect the paint and it's got a little red cap on the top here you taped it off you press it up underneath and it activates the hardener now that gives me eight hours apparently to work this paint so if you're gonna paint the tank just remember just you know you are gonna be dealing with fuel at some point so make sure the clear that you put over the top of it is going to be something that can not get attacked by fuel so I've now done poor coats of this can it's completely empty and I'm starting to think that the guy that sold me this paint mixed up the kind of the color for me and also sold me this map put his name on the can his name must have been Matt because I really don't see any Matt in that finish that's pretty glossy to me I mean it looks awesome but it's not what I'm after so I'm gonna have to take this back to them and ask them what's going on I don't know if I can just get another matte clear and just throw it straight on top of this I'm sure you can but I just don't know if that's gonna solve the problem yes I've got to find out but yeah that's the finish that looks pretty damn good but like I said just turn exactly what I was after so today Sunday so I'll let this go and QR over night and by Monday morning I'll find out what's happening so I just thought I'd throw the tank up as it is at the moment in gloss I'm not gonna be keeping a gloss I just think that this brain this military-style green needs a matte or a satin finish gloss just doesn't suit it as well as far as I'm concerned that's my personal opinion and that's what I'm gonna do but there are a few little imperfections in the clear coat it's only in the clear coat the actual paint itself I think is pretty damn good they're gonna be really hard to see you can probably just see one there and one there it's just dust that's landed on the clear coat as it's pretty much trying to dry and there's nothing I can really do about that unfortunately because I don't have a spray booth unless I was to make myself a spray booth just for this tank I guess I could do that the reason it's gloss and not matte is purely because apparently I've got to leave it a lot longer between putting the second coat third coat and fourth coat on I left at about 20 minutes between coats and that's what I was recommended but apparently I've got to leave it even longer than that so I've got to put a coat on and leave it about 40 minutes to an hour to let it really flatten out and then just do that each coat I didn't realize this I thought it was about 20 minutes to half an hour so that's apparently why it's really glossy so I'm gonna try it again hopefully second attempt it's going to turn out a lot more matte than it is right now but you know if not I'm eventually gonna get it it's eventually gonna work and it's gonna have a hell of a lot clearer on top of his tank so it's gonna be nice and durable at least so the next step I guess is sand it entirely down with 800 grit sandpaper or wet and dry obviously run it wet just to get out those little imperfections and there's no real reach there I can't really feel anything that's major which is between the black and the green which I thought there would be but there really isn't but this would be the time when I would probably sand that you know the clear a little bit to try and get that more smooth if there was like if there was a defined line between the two like I think maybe a tiny bit but nothing really noticeable ooh that's gonna be you know standing out yeah so pretty much 800 sandpaper wet and dry I'll do that wet and then clean the entire tank back down with some wax and grease remover and process all over again so I'll put some clear on it wait an hour and then put the next layer on wait an hour next layer or next coat and that's pretty much gonna be done fingers crossed it works this time [Music] so these are the two cans that I pretty much got this is the first one that is empty now and in this one's the second one that obviously take to of trying to get this Matt I don't know enough about paint to know whether there is actually a matte component in it or not but it didn't work so take two hopefully this black cam is going to be the magic finishing touch to make this thing look awesome so this has just been done like literally two minutes ago with that matte clear and it is perfect spot on exactly what I wanted that looks so good I think I went I probably a little bit heavy or a little bit light I'm not sure through the center here hopefully that'll fix up on the next coat but yeah as you can see it isn't magic really really really happy with how it turned out so if you look down on this tank here you can see right down the center here there's like I don't know hate what you would explain it's just it's kind of like a discoloration and it's right underneath the actual clear coat it wasn't there when I had the clear you know the gloss over it but as soon as I did this matte and it showed up I don't know if I didn't put enough on the first coat or what but like I said it could be a blessing in disguise because I could do something down the center of this tank here whether it be a decal or whether something what I was thinking about doing is recreating something like this like a frame that kind of comes down the tank gives it a bit of a tough look down here with some sort of you know crossing on it or I don't know just some ideas that just came to me when I first saw that I'm like well it's kind of there now I'm not sure if I can get rid of it affectionate side of me is it's going to annoy me so I'm gonna have to do something but if you have any ideas leave me a comment down below about what you think I should do about that small little you know I guess imperfection in the paint or in a quick coat filing that you know if it really bugs me enough then I could always focus if it really bugs me enough I could always just sand it you know sand that I guess Matt down so it gets down past that point and then REME at it but I'm running the risk of you know that happening somewhere else because I don't know what caused it feels amazing looks awesome and I'm stoked I'm really really happy with how this is turned out [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Cafe Racer Garage

Views: 266,865

Rating: 4.8767653 out of 5

Keywords: dent repair, paintless dent repair, dent, motorcycle tank dent repair, dent removal, dent specialistmotorcycle tank paint repair, Motorcycle Dent Removal, motorcycle tank paint stripping, Gas Tank Dent, Motorcycle Gas Tank Dent, cafe racer spray painting, cafe racer tank painting, motorcycle fuel tank restoration, scrambler fuel tank, brushed steel fuel tank, motorcycle painting tutorial, how to custom paint a motorcycle, diy motorcycle painting

Id: Ab1a0_DbJYE

Length: 29min 8sec (1748 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 07 2020