Ninja Blues

This has been many weeks in the making.  I began de-blacking the '07 Kawasaki Ninja 650r (my first bike) in May.  Last weekend I took another big run at it.  This weekend I finally got it to the point where I can live with it.  I think I'll do the rest once the riding season is over in Canada, but in the meantime, I've got a Ninja that looks a lot better than it did.


I've blued the front end and the fairings down to the air intake.  I'll eventually do the entire bike, but those fairing are big and it takes a long time to strip the flat black off them (I'm using graffiti remover in small areas at a time).

At the moment the tank, front end and rear end are completely covered, but the fairings are only half blue.  I've faded the metallic blue into the existing flat black and it doesn't look half bad.

The more interesting bit is the frame.  I wanted a burnt orange, but every orange on the shelf was a pylon orange.  I was all set to mix a yellow and dark red to a burnt orange, but the mixing didn't go well, it ended up looking an angry pink.  It eventually settled into a darker orange, but I still wasn't happy with it, it looked muddy..


I had greater success getting the orange I wanted by doing a base coat of pylon orange spray with a cover of candy apple red metallic.  The result is the sparkling burnt orange I was looking for.  The plastic drop sheets and cardboard I was using to shield the rest of the bike looked like they'd come out of a volcano when I was done.  I'm not entirely thrilled with the finish, but now that I have some sense of how to mix the colours (orange based, mix in light layers of red while the orange is still wet), I'm ready to experiment more.

Orange base, light candy apple
red metallic over top
while still wet

I think I'll eventually make the entire frame that burnt metallic orange. It's also rust paint, so it'll seal up the frame nicely.


I got a different gloss this time, thinking they are all pretty much the same,
they aren't.

You want the one on the
right; AWESOME clear coat

The ultra-cover 2x (the blue and white can), gives you what looks like a factory clear coat finish.  The lacquer makes a foggy mess.  I'll only use the Ultra Cover in
future applications.
















The angry young man's flat black Ninja:

A truer, bluer Ninja:

One heck of a lot more visible, and it sparkles in the sun.

When I get the fairings finally done I'll giver her a real photo shoot.




















I'm now thinking about Kanji-ing up the front end... Ninja Kingfisher...

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: