Plastic repairs and paint job on a Blackbird

[Guest]

Hi all,

I'm going to try (I don't have the proper equipment to do this has I would like) to repair a nose cone from my donor Blackbird.

It's going to take a wile, the paint is a double base coat (adds depth to the finish)

 

There is a fair bit of damage and cracked plastic that someone has tried to fix at one time (not very well) looks like the bike fell over at some point, there is a bit of damage on the lower faring, nothing to warrant spending time on.

 

The tail as started to split down the seem so a bit of plastic welding is required and there's a small 5mm hole where an old alarm LED was fitted.

 

Surprisingly enough the tank is spotless

 

pic1

pic2

pic3

pic4

Edited February 11 by Vic101

[Hairsy]

Watching with interest. I have some repairs to do myself in the next few weeks.

[V650]

You could possibly get a plastic welding machine with the hot staples 

They go on Amazon / ebay for about 25 quid 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Plastic-Welding-Machine-Staplers-Repairing/dp/B08X6VMYRS/ref=asc_df_B08X6VMYRS/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=499292497816&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2383161695211935559&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1007843&hvtargid=pla-1225380420916&mcid=4c1871dd1b4c338eaa58f2d685d52b46&th=1

Never used one myself though so not sure if they work on a fairing 

No doubt someone with more experience will chime in and say if it is a good or bad Idea 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, V650 said:

You could possibly get a plastic welding machine with the hot staples

I've ordered one of these but coming from china it's going to take sometime to arrive. Never used one before so I'll be the guinea pig. I'll used it on the long crack pic3 and the seem on the tail piece.

 

In the meantime I made a start on the pic 2. I haven't done anything apart from removing the old repair and 2 layers of a fibreglass paste keyed the first layer before adding the second layer

pic5

pic6

Edited February 11 by Vic101

[Guest]

Ok, the main damage has been rectified on the inside more work is needed on the outside, The bit repaired will be has strong if not stronger than the original.

so, sanding down to get an acceptable shape, you will get bubbles in the fibreglass, you will need to gouge these out and fill with just normal body filler, only because it looks better. Not that anyone is ever going to see it and primer.

.

pic7

Edited February 11 by Vic101

[Guest]

Pic4 repaired, this part had ridges were the cracks where from the previous bad repair. so sanding till all has nice and flat has possible, (If your going to do hand sanding try to keep your hand as flat as you can,

you can use a block made of wood, cork, rubber you can buy rubber blocks) in some areas this isn't possible, your going to be using 80's grade sandpaper for a big job and something like 120's for little bit's.

Using your finger ends to sand a large flattish area is not a good plan.

 

You might have an issue with the cracks opening up again after the repair if you just use body filler, So I looked for something that could resolve this and found.

Bicarbonate of soda and supper glue do a search for it, but only use this on the back of the repair.                                                                                                                                       

tried it the other day and it sets like gannet in about 5 seconds so ideal for small crack repairs, try is on some random bits of plastic first so you know what's coming only use a thin flat layer of bicarb 1mm thick, you can build it up as required.

 

WARNING. this chemical reaction nearly feckin killed me, mask and goggles if you have them.

 

Once flat your going to grind out some of the plastic where the cracks are so the filler can get a grip pic8, then it's filler time.

Get it to the right shape make sure it's dust free and prime it, at this point you can dust over the primer with a coat of any spray paint you have knocking about (not synthetic)

cellulose based.

once dry sand that with 120's and you will see what defects you have in the filler, you can buy something called "Stopper" to rectifi the little defects but i just skim over it with body filler pic9.  Here endeth the lesson for today.

 

pic8

pic9

Had an issue with this area, due to the old repair having pushed the plastic out and was standing a bit proud it all feels nice and straight now. Can't do anything else I ran out of primer.

Edited February 13 by Vic101

[Simon Davey]

Looks like it's going very well. 

[Guest]

On 11/02/2024 at 08:19, V650 said:

You could possibly get a plastic welding machine with the hot staples.

 

Arrived today, seems to do what its meant to. cost me just over £12 off ebay. It has damaged the other side of the faring (not bothered about that its all being painted) so some kind of heat dispersion is required if you are.

pic10 this is the back of pic3 as you can see I needed a bit of fibreglass around the vent.

Edited February 14 by Vic101

[V650]

3 hours ago, Vic101 said:

Arrived today, seems to do what its meant to. cost me just over £12 off ebay. It has damaged the other side of the faring (not bothered about that its all being painted) so some kind of heat dispersion is required if you are.

pic10 this is the back of pic3 as you can see I needed a bit of fibreglass around the vent.

Looks a lot smaller than I thought  

Do the staples hold the fiberglass together ok or will you put more fibreglass over the staples?

[Guest]

8 hours ago, V650 said:

Looks a lot smaller than I thought  

Do the staples hold the fiberglass together ok or will you put more fibreglass over the staples?

It seems solid enough but it's only 3 paper clip size weirs,  making sure it dose not crack again so yeah fibreglass can't hurt. I think when ever the area your dealing with is going to get any kind of stress fibreglass is a good option.

 

Edited February 15 by Vic101

[Guest]

Well today a spray can of primer arrived, I didn't like the smell of it, it's the cheap nasty thinners in it,  I used to clean out my spray gun with, I gave it a try. I ordered some proper primer today in a tin you thin down your self.

 

One important note though.

Needed to make sure all the body work fits has it should. Nothing protruding or over lapping any of the other body panels. 

Edited February 15 by Vic101

[Guest]

The job has stopped for a little wile, did my back in trying to get it on the centre stand in a tight space. Should have used the dam jack

[V650]

31 minutes ago, Vic101 said:

The job has stopped for a little wile, did my back in trying to get it on the centre stand in a tight space. Should have used the dam jack

Get well soon

[Guest]

Thanks,, hope so, popped a few pills

[Guest]

Ok back to the job at hand,

Has I'm doing the whole nose cone I've flatted/sanded it all down with 800's grit wet and dry sand paper. in this case wet with some washing up liquid in it,

the washing up liquid will stop any build up of rubbed off paint sticking to your paper.

Once that's done prime it,

Your going to need to leave this for a wile, you might think it's dry after a day or 2, but it will still have solvent in it, solvent = bad thing. the reason you can get something called drop back, this is where after a few days or even weeks the primer dries out and drops back into any scratches or small defects. 

you can obviously speed up this process with heat.

now it's chill time waiting for the primer to dry out completely.

[Shepherd]

Enjoy reading this, and learning from your tips.

 

 

[Guest]

On 20/02/2024 at 20:49, Shepherd said:

Enjoy reading this, and learning from your tips.

 

 

Thats great

 

 

So, I ran into a issue with this primer I didn't like the smell of (as mentioned earlier in the post) it reacted badly with the cellulose in the matt black.

 

It was some kind of synthetic primer, I decided to paint the inside of the things I'm painting with matt black. I have used it on the outside unfortunately. that means I need to remove most if not all the primer and start over with a cellulose primer(cellulose primer dose not react to anything, last thing I need is a bad reaction on the paintwork.

 

Better to start again at this stage than risk a reaction on your top coat and have to start over.

 

The primer side of things needs to be cellulose, I should know better.

 

 

[Guest]

here we are again happy as can be NOT.

Ordered some paint for the job cost £127 all told, and is not even close to the right colour looks more bronze than the candy red I ordered.

 

Not only that the metallic in the base coat is the wrong grade it should be much smaller particles, so I've had to order some more paint.

so just a couple of pics to show you what the original pic4 looks like now the prep is done.

as you can probably tell my camera skills are not the best

[RideWithStyles]

so are both the pics, top one is the colour you want and the bottom is the one your at now? 

 

if it was just the particle size you could high speed mix it to break up the pearl to simulate a smaller size but i suspect other aspects are throwing you off.

more like because the base coat is visually looking darker, the pearl has a better contrast so it looks like their bigger as you can see them easier, just a thought.

 

also your undercoat colour matters, if your just going down the fewest coats of paint possible! which what you have there is quite grey/blue almost a purple hue from the picture earlier on from the primer so with that you either apply loads of top coats which will be very thick,costly and probably still abit off colour or you should apply a few good solid white under coats first to lift the colour to help the top coat out.

thats what you need to do, but now you have a choice, keep the path and apply a lighter and brighter colour to off set the darker red (which to be honest is digging further down the hole) then you might have to do all the other panels and tank the same way so at least they match or you apply loads of white coats and try the red again with the under layer lighter...might not be perfect but a damn sight better... upto you.

 

also to note the pearl colour and type (if its a organic or synthetic, plated or coated) will make a massive difference.

 

Edited February 28 by RideWithStyles

[Guest]

1 hour ago, RideWithStyles said:

so are both the pics, top one is the colour you want and the bottom is the one your at now? 

 

if it was just the particle size you could high speed mix it to break up the pearl to simulate a smaller size but i suspect other aspects are throwing you off.

more like because the base coat is visually looking darker, the pearl has a better contrast so it looks like their bigger as you can see them easier, just a thought.

 

also your undercoat colour matters, if your just going down the fewest coats of paint possible! which what you have there is quite grey/blue almost a purple hue from the picture earlier on from the primer so with that you either apply loads of top coats which will be very thick,costly and probably still abit off colour or you should apply a few good solid white under coats first to lift the colour to help the top coat out.

thats what you need to do, but now you have a choice, keep the path and apply a lighter and brighter colour to off set the darker red (which to be honest is digging further down the hole) then you might have to do all the other panels and tank the same way so at least they match or you apply loads of white coats and try the red again with the under layer lighter...might not be perfect but a damn sight better... upto you.

 

also to note the pearl colour and type (if its a organic or synthetic, plated or coated) will make a massive difference.

 

both the pics are of the same part of the faring just in different angels, with the day light refracting off the top one, just so you can see the contours are correct.

 

I have just been of the phone with the paint suppliers and they agree it's not the right colour, and they are sending another batch of paint, but she told me she can not guarantee it will be the right colour, lol,  coz it's a motorcycle colour.

 

whats the point of a f*cking colour code in the first place, the colour on the bike is cherry red and the stuff they sent is bronze, i have a feeling I'm going to end up painting the whole bike.

It's not a pearl paint it's a candy.

And that go's like, base metallic then the candy base (looks like a toffee apple) and finally 2k lacquer( I stopped at the 2nd base coat coz i could see it wasn't right

 

As you say the way you apply the paint can and dose make a big difference to its appearance consistency is the key to all types of metallic and pearl paint work.

I might just paint the dam thing black.

Edited February 28 by Vic101

[RideWithStyles]

sorry going by the assumption it was the right paint . looks way better than what it started off as.

 

anyway red colours are very unstable, light fade (uv) and burst with heat more so than anyother colour.

so when you have to blend or make a colour it goes by age of degradation of the paint and go off that rather than what it was to start with unless you rather paint everything else that needs to be that colour the same while your there?

pearl and metallic to some people are the same but they aint and don't behave the same in the visual or physical form.

yes so the idea is that there is a clear high gloss floating layer above.

 

[Guest]

UV on my other Bird after I removed the tank guard.

[Guest]

Well the wrong paint arrived yet again, I now have 4lt of what I think is a Honda fire blade colour.

hmm,,, wonder what my car would look like that colour, In the meantime I bought some paint form a different manufacturer and it is the right colour. Hopefully thing will go smother from here on in.

The paint on the left is the wrong one.  

[Simon Davey]

Such a difference. 

[Guest]

27 minutes ago, Simon Davey said:

Such a difference. 

yeah tell me about it, at least I got my money back. I think they have the wrong formula for the paint mix, not like the Germans to f*ck up so badly, mind you it has been known.

Got the paint from a German paint supplier

Edited March 5 by Vic101