[teddy]

good Lord, do NOT use that coarse of grit on plastic...you'll never get those scratches out without skimming the whole thing with thin set filler. Find someone who has an air compressor and a DA and stick with 80 at the most....

[Kreylyn]

good Lord, do NOT use that coarse of grit on plastic...you'll never get those scratches out without skimming the whole thing with thin set filler. Find someone who has an air compressor and a DA and stick with 80 at the most....

Krey

[Sierraromeobravo]

I'm in the process of doing the same thing and I have a little "mouse" sander with 120 sandpaper and it seems to roll along fine. It's still time consuming but works great.

I've done this a few times and it works best to get down to the first layer of actual paint. Oftentimes, if it's the original paint job, the bike will have a few clear coats on it and once you get past the clear coats and start to see the color coming up move on to the next spot. I've been able to paint my bike doing that and following it up with some high quality rattle-cans. It works pretty well.

[iceman_4090]

when i started working on my 97 kat i was all hyped up and ready to work on it til i started sanding... that quickly changed my view on getting a "fixer upper" lol i had a hard time getting the original stickers off. i tried a bunch of diff solvents and it didnt work.

[brooder]

dont sandblast the plastics lol

Why not. Several people on KR have done it. Mojoe even put together a nice writeup of what he did and how everything came out. Just because a bodyshop says not to doesn't mean it's not a viable option.

[ThAzKat]

what is always the quickest way isn't the best way! decals take a while and alot of elbow grease, especially if they are 20 years old. The decals I struggled with was, the tank decals. once you get thru the clear coat getting the decals off is easy, the residue left behind is what is hard. use a brake clean or wd40 to get that off.
Don't forget, you are sanding on plastic, to much time spent in one place will deform it due to heat. I have a orbital that does a good job, I just go over it lightly with a 300 then step up to a 600 grit. Alot of hand sanding!

[wepainters]

i think whats throwing guys off here on sandblasting is this.

when sandblasting plastic first off you arent realy going to use sand as the blasting medium you use something that leaves a little less profile

like soda.walnut shell. plastic bead, gaarnet etc you use low pressure and turn up the sand so it almost chugs out the hose

so again low pressure and 60-75 pounds and alot of medium

I am a proffesion sandblaster and painter buy trade and you can blast plastic if you know what your doing

if you use soda and a wet attachment you can wet sand it smooth to say a 800 grit profile or more buy blasting alone.with soda you can remove one layer of paint at a time.

so i think the sandblasting term here is used loosely here and you probly dont want to use a sharp grit sand on this type of application,

in this situation i agree with the loosly labled sandblasting as someone painted this stuff with latex house paint and it needs to all come off
before you can paint these skins with proper paint.otherwise it will be one problem after another

Ill be sandblasting mine in the very near future and ill take pics along the way and post them for you all to see.

if you want to crate them up and send them to me along with the cost of medium and maybe a tip ill do them up for you when i do mine .just send me a pm

food for thought here, you may also try a heat gun, just dont melt the plastic, sort of heat the paint and roll it off/where a gloves or use a cloth etc so you dont get the sticky hot stuff on ya. or maybe alot of elbow grease and goof off and a scrub brush etc.one of these may work but i think blasting would be best.

[RoadRacer61]

Ok, So after waiting for a week for a couple days off, I finally got a little done tonight. I got a later start than I wanted to, so I didn't get as far as I would have liked, but progress is progress.

First, I compared my two sets of plastics and tried to decide which pieces were going to be better to use. Grabbed a piece and started sanding. A chunk came off along side a crack, which told me I was going to have problems lol.



I kept digging, got pretty far in the bondo that was EVERYWHERE and ended up with this.



Slightly more than I wanted to get into. So I went with the other side I had. It had a couple small cracks and a chunk missing from the bottom part where I dropped a jack on it in the garage. This is my first attempt ever at repairing cracks and missing pieces but all in all I think it went pretty well.



That's with one of the three pieces fitted back into place.



The back side ain't pretty, but it's going to hold I think and the front is smooth after sanding. So I'm happy with it.

On to the tail section.... Once again, there was a chunk missing (not my fault this time). Since I didn't have the piece that goes back in, plastic welding looked like the option for me. Once again, my first time ever.







I used zip ties for filler and just tried to build it up to fill the hole, then commenced to sanding,



There's some pitting in the plastic, but it's nothing that a layer of epoxy won't fill in and come out smooth. So once again, I'm pretty happy so far.

Decided I needed a break so I grabbed something easy, the front fender. No cracks, no sweat!



Had to take it down further in some places than others because of chips in the paint, but all is good now. Now the only things left are the other side piece, one belly piece ( I did the other last week), one tail piece, and the tank. None of the other pieces have any cracks in them at all, so I'm hoping I can get the sanding done tomorrow night.

[RoadRacer61]

I FINALLY got all my sanding and repairs done. Took forever, but when you work a jacked up schedule like I do it's hard to find the extra time to work on it. Anyway....

I'm going to paint it next week, hopefully Tuesday. I have a couple questions before I start. First, with 11oz cans, how many should it take? This stuff is like $30 a can, so I don't want to overbuy. Second, it's a metallic color with some pearl. I've heard somewhere that you do not ever wet sand metallic colors. Is there any truth to this?

Is there anything else I need to know about painting that's not obvious? I'm scared to death to start, but anxious at the same time....

[JokerZwild]

keep that tack rag handy!

[RoadRacer61]

Tack rags... Check!