Sanding Concours

One small heater does the job now that I have
garage door insulation installed.

A good couple of hours were spent in the garage today getting the scratches and dents out of various Concours panels.  The previous owner had used some kind of plastic filler to put back together the lower right fairing after it had been dropped.  With some hand sanding today I've gotten it close enough to prime and prep for a round of painting.  If it isn't perfect it'll be much closer than it was.

I'm trying to find the Tremclad metallic red similar to the blue I used on the Ninja, but I'm having trouble finding it.  Home Depot seems to have dried up on it.  That paint with the gloss clear coat comes very close to looking like it came from a body shop.

I'll keep looking.

The small heater did a good job of heating up the room to 18°C (it was -8°C outside).  The garage door blanket is doing its job nicely.

Got the rear fairing piece around the seat off and prepped for painting.

Everything sanded and cleaned, ready for some primer.

Connie stripped down to the tank.

The Blueing of the Ninja part 2

I spent some sweaty hours this weekend de-blacking the Ninja.  The coolant got flushed as I was waiting for paint to dry.  With the fairings off I got more done than I intended.  I stripped the tank and repainted it, my first attempt and recovering the stripped back to blue paint.

Original Kawasaki Paint codes courtesy of Color Rite

I was able to find a metallic blue that would work with the Ninja original Candy Plasma Blue.  Going on it looks almost identical, but it dries a darker blue, a more royal blue, though since it's metallic it pops like the original factory metallic paint does.  The paint I found was Rustoleum's Metallic Cobalt Blue.  It's readily available, I found it at Homedepot.


After laying a couple of coats of the new blue, I followed it up with a couple of coats of a gloss clear coat.  The picture of the tank on the right shows you what kind of finish you can get out of these basic tools.  It won't satisfy a perfectionist, but at under $20 to paint the front fender and tank, it will satisfy your accountant.  I waxed it once everything set (I let it sit for half a day), and it looks pretty sharp.  I've driven it 200kms so far this week since and no scuffs or scratches on the paint, so it's pretty tough too, even after an impromptu ride through a driving hail/thunder storm.

I could agonize over stockness here, but I don't think I will.  The vision I've got for the bike isn't stock anyway, but it's a far cry from the flat black bike I started with.  I'm still working out the orange for the frame.  I've got a gloss red and a gloss yellow and intend to mix my own.  The only oranges available seem to be traffic cone inspired (see the pics below), I'm going for a burnt orange as an opposing colour to the royal blue.

From the pictures you can see that the blues are mighty close, though the camera does flatten the differences a bit.  When you're up close you can see where the new paint is slightly darker, though just as rich and metallic.  With the clear coat on top it's silky smooth to the touch and polishes up nicely with wax.  I've been riding in rain all week and everything now beads off where it used to just get wet and sticky on the flat black.

The back end is still stock blue, the tank is the new metallic cobalt  blue

This is a closeup of the seat fairing - the front is the new blue, the back is
the old blue - pretty damn close - matches the spring nicely too

The headlight and front fairing is stock blue, the front wheel
fender and tank are the new blue

Another angle on the tank.  I taped off the filler cap and silver surround,
it came off clean.  I wiped any overspray before clear coating everything

     

After and before - the metallic blue covers up the bruises well, and where
the bike was already blue, you've got a strong undercoat that supports
the top colour.  It took a couple of extra coats to cover the bruises.

Next up: cleaning up the frame and getting it a metallic burnt orange

While I've got the fairings off to do the frame, I'll have another go at the blue on the big front fairings.  It's a time consuming, tiring process taking that black off, so the fairings might be a while longer before I get them done, then I can finally call my beaten up black bike blue again.

Won't you make my black Ninja blue?

Project: restore the original blue paint job of a 2007 Kawasaki Ninja 650r.

Plan: remove the flat black-out paint job and restore the original metallic blue

Backstory:

This '07 650r Ninja is my first bike, I got it a couple of months ago.  I was considering buying a new bike, but wanted something I could get mechanically familiar with.  I got this Ninja with low miles (still only 8k on the clock when I got it).  There was evidence it had been dropped, but the bike was in excellent mechanical condition and with the low mileage, it seemed like a good candidate for a restoration that would let me familiarize myself with motorcycle maintenance (I've owned many interesting cars, so I know my way around an engine bay).  

Making a black Ninja blue again

So far so good, the bike is letting me figure out the mechanics and maintenance, and works flawlessly otherwise.  The biggest effort has been trying to figure out how to strip the blacked out paint job and restore the body to the stock colour.  Here is the process to date:

How to Strip Paint Off a Motorcycle:

My first attempt was heavy handed,
but lessons learned on the front
fender paid off elsewhere

Stone chips were showing the blue paint underneath around the front fender, headlight and leading edges of the fairings.  With it looking so shabby anyway (it's not like it's a nice black paint job), I began with the front fender, trying to find ways to remove the black.

I tried wet sanding the black but this didn't prove very effective.  The compound curves on the body work ('07 Ninjas are very sinuous) make sanding smoothly difficult.  The sanding block would either burn through into the

Goof Off Graffiti remover got
the worst of the black off,
then a wipe with a soft, lint
free painters cloth with some
thinner took away the haze

blue below or damage the clear coat; it was too blunt an instrument.  I eventually tried some graffiti remover  and it did the job while preserving the factory paint.  

Once I got the technique down, the
black came off leaving the blue in
good shape underneath

I initially tried wiping off the sprayed on remover with painter's rags, but they are too smooth to work well with paint this thick.  I eventually tried tea towels with a rougher texture and they worked well with the Goof Off.  

Eventually I found that spraying a thick coat of remover on a spot on the tea towel and then wiping in small circles would remove the black paint leaving the blue underneath untouched.  This is best shown around the seat at the back of the bike.  Even the clearcoat was left intact by working in small circles, removing the black paint in small areas at a time.  The paint there is not even waxed and looks great, this part of the bike was quickly restored with no damage to the underlying paint.

Graffiti remover (I can't speak for all of them but if they are all formulated similarly then you should get similar results) does a fine job of stripping a bad paint job off bike body work.  Work in small areas, spraying on to the rag and then applying to the paint.  The top layer of the black comes off on the first application, the blue shows through after the second.

Hidden bruises

This closeup shows just how
the black is coming off to
reveal the Ninja blue below

Of course, when someone blacks out a bike they might be doing it for aesthetic reasons, but I don't think I'll be assuming that any more.  It turns out the bike had been dropped pretty hard on its left side.  As I was removing the flat black it looked like I could see her hidden bruises for the first time.  The scuffs had all been sanded smooth for the black paint job, but as the extent of the injuries become clear I'll have a better idea of what happened.  It looks like the bike went down and slid without hitting anything.  It still has its original front end and various switch gear, so this was an asphalt slide that damaged the body work.

Looking at the bottom of the main fairing, I found that one side appears to be unpainted other than the flat black while the other is blue, so this is probably a replacement fairing.

The fairing on the right
has no blue under the black

I'm about half way through stripping the black off.  I'm to the big front fairings now, and they have a lot of real estate on them.  Working in small circles, this is going to take a while.

Once I've got it stripped down, I'll remove the panels, repaint them metallic blue and then paint the frame (burnt orange) while I'm in there.  The end result should be a colourful Ninja that proudly wears its stock metallic blue paint, albeit with some touch ups that make the bike even more visually interesting.

Notes:  

I picked up the Goof Off at Canadian Tire.  They had other brands there, I haven't tried them, but if I do I'll follow up with comments.

The factory paint job on an '07 Kawasaki Ninja 650r: