costs of painting my bike?

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Gadjet · #11 Unread post by **Gadjet** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 11:30 am

I had the tank for my old Suzuki painted professionally last year. I took the tank off myself and did most of the prep work. Single color job, off the books at the paint shop still cost me $250. It would have been more if the painter had to put it on the books.

shoey949 · #12 Unread post by **shoey949** » Mon Jun 27, 2005 3:19 am

I had an automotive shop repaint my '82 Nighthawk, tank,air covers,and seat pan cover thing, for $150 under the table. It looks pretty awesome, all just a single color though.

iwannadie · Mon Jun 27, 2005 4:47 am

why is it a big deal to do a 3 tone scheme. cant they just mask it all off paint the first color, pull the mask off cover the first color then paint the second color? just straight lines no thing fancy. why would they need to mask,paint, sand all over for each color? seems like it would be easy to just spray all then sand it all then clear coat all at once.

ronboskz650sr · Mon Jun 27, 2005 6:39 am

iwannadie wrote:why is it a big deal to do a 3 tone scheme. cant they just mask it all off paint the first color, pull the mask off cover the first color then paint the second color? just straight lines no thing fancy. why would they need to mask,paint, sand all over for each color? seems like it would be easy to just spray all then sand it all then clear coat all at once.

All of the steps old-n-slow wrote are essential to a good result, and require lots of loving care/labor to get it right. That's why it's expensive. The ONLY way around it is to do it yourself, and I can assure you, you will learn alot if you do. Perhaps on the second or third try, if you have a steep learning curve, you'll have a decent looking paintjob. And you WILL sand and remask and sand some more, believe me. That's just the way it is.

mysta2 · #15 Unread post by **mysta2** » Fri Jul 08, 2005 3:02 pm

well, you don't really need to sand it all over between each color, you just have to touch up any overspray (if there is any). You do however have to knock down the edges of each color at the mask line with some 1000-1500 then when you're done a full buff will be needed. If you skip those steps you will see the step from one color to the next, also if you skip the buff even on a single color there'll be orange peel, go look at your' cars factory finish and you'll see what I'm talking about(especially if it's a FoMoCo car) this is just a quality issue cars are a dogs to buff, but most paint shops still do it, motorcycles are easy by comparison so they're done prettymuch every time. Every vehicle they shoot is a representation of the work they do, so it's just bad buisness if they let a crummy job go out the door.