Sportbikes

Here are a few pictures of the finished bike- I’ve included a picture of the bike in the Yamaha Museum for reference. As I mentioned in other posts, almost every one of the factory bikes was different. Some had different bodywork, some had slightly different paint schemes and the wheels Read more…

Today, I did the final buffing and polishing on the paint. Really, the quality of the finished product will depend on how much time and effort you put into the detail stuff like wet sanding and buffing. When you have different colors painted under the clear, wet sanding the edges Read more…

Well, today we are finishing some of the detail stuff- we wanted street legal turn signals that didn’t stick out obtrusively so I went with some small button style flush mount clear lens units. They actually look really good mounted next to the taillight and they are not noticeable except Read more…

The clear coat is on and drying. 3 coats of high solids clear will give it a depth after it is wet sanded and buffed out. I’ll let it dry a couple more days before reassembling it. There are some other detail things that I need to do anyways- the Read more…

All of the graphics are on and all of the touch-ups are done on the color base coats. The blue turned out to be just about perfect- we were trying to pick a shade from a bunch of internet photos and every one of them looked different but this shade Read more…

After lots of taping and masking, I sprayed the blue base coat on for the stripes. One thing I found is that while there are all sorts of 1/4 and 1/2 in masking tapes available, there is no 3/8 in… at least not that I could find. So I had Read more…

Well, the bike is taped off to paint the blue stripes and you can start to see the final design coming together. We still haven’t decided if we want to paint the large red number plates on the lowers like the factory bike. It might be a bit much. I’ll Read more…

Today I taped off the panels and sprayed the red. The red that Yamaha typically used was a very bright red so spraying it over the white keeps it nice and bright. Lots of taping- it’s very important to get everything completely covered because any slight mist or overspray on Read more…

Today I spent a lot of time laying out the blocks in the stripes. Lots of measuring and then trial and error until I got the proportions and angles I wanted. Since the bodywork on this bike is obviously not the same as on the bike in the museum, it Read more…

Last time we sprayed a white base coat and 1 coat of clear on all the parts in preparation for laying out the graphics. After wet sanding everything with 400 grit so the red and blue base coats will stick, we mounted all the bodywork back on the bike so Read more…

Today I sprayed on the Polar White base coat and then 1 coat of clear so that while we are remounting the bodywork to lay out the graphics we don’t have to worry about getting dirt, fingerprints, etc on the white base. I will sand it all with 400 grit Read more…

Well, today we are going to put the epoxy primer on the sanded and prepped parts. The first picture is the hand made aluminum gas tank. The 2 holes are where the relocated oil tank fillers stick through. Most paints don’t stick well to bare aluminum so it is important Read more…