Thankfully Dirt Bikes don't need a lot of
painting. We basically had to do the engine, frame, tank
and some small bits and pieces - no chrome do dahs like
your average road bike.
Where to start
Anybody who knows about painting
anything will tell you that success lies in the preparation
of the surface. Basically, if you don't start with a
surface that is clean, free from flaky bits and grease,
you are wasting your time.
This is a shot of the shock body showing flaky paint
and grease. These need to be removed with a good degreaser
and some wet and dry.
Unfortunately, as with a lot of offroad bikes, much
of the metal work on the suzuki is alloy, and needs
special primers for the paint to adhere properly.
This is no problem if you have a spray gun/compressor
setup but can be a pain if you are relying on aerosols.
The petrol tank is all alloy and had at some stage
been painted white - the next picture shows the original
yellow paint where we've rubbed the tank down.
To get a brilliant finish you really
should strip the whole thing back to base metal, but
as we aren't aiming for perfection we have simply filled
the dents with filler and touched up the areas of bare
alloy with special metal primer (dark red bits).
Hmmmm, the colours don't quite match.
After we sprayed the tank we realised that the yellow
didn't quite match the sidepanels - oh well, it is yellow.
If anyone knows of someone who can supply a precise
match then please let us know.
The engine cases were also alloy (the
flywheel cover is magnesium) and of very intricate construction.
This made them difficult to sand down, the original
paint was barely hanging on. We did contemplate stripping
the paint and lacquering the cases, but opted to paint
them instead.
We used a brush on primer for the engine
(high temperature), again this was a bad idea, as you
can see from the pic you can still see the brush marks,
even though we tried to sand it flat. Every time we
sanded it the paint just peeled off...
Here is the finished article, it looks
OK from a distance, but don't look too close. We don't
think that this is going to last - I don't know exactly
what the cases are made of, but they don't like paint.
We used good old cylinder black on
the cylinder and the exhaust pipe, this seemed to work
well and will hopefully cure once we get the engine
up to temperature.
Painting the frame
The frame presented it's own problems,
although it is steel it needs a decent paint that can
take a lot of abuse as you work on other aspects of
the bike.
To start with we stripped the old paint (a fetching
shade of blue) using a metal paint stripper. This
was fairly easy and took about two coats of stripper.
We then rubbed the frame down with wet and dry.
You can of course have the frame stove
enameled at a price (starting from about £70),
but we decided to do the job with Hammerite smooth finish.
We had used this with great results on a Husky frame.
With the Husky frame we painted it directly onto bare
metal, in this case we used anti-rust primer - big mistake.
The primer was chalky and seemed to react with the paint
in places, even though it was from the same manufacturer
as the paint
The main problem with the hammerite
was that it couldn't be repainted for ages (3 weeks)
without blistering. It worked well on small components
that we painted directly (we learnt our lesson with
the primer). When we finally got the paint reasonably
smooth it seems to give a fairly tough finish. Note
the pipe lagging on the bottom frame rails to protect
the paint finish.
To clean the bike you'll need
some decent degreaser we used Halford's own brand (all
we could find) which cost £4 but did include a
small copper brush which came in very handy. Paint prices
vary, it will always be cheaper if you have a compressor/airgun,
but aerosols are between £2 and £5 (the
hammerite is about £7 for a large aerosol).
What we learnt
this time...
The main thing we learnt was don't buy paint for
a £1 from an autojumble. Our lovingly cleaned
and prepared shocks looked brilliant for about a week
then we noticed that they were cracking (see pic).
But the real message is preparation is everything
and learn which paints give a good finish on different
material... if in doubt, test it.
Parts list & Costs
