Paint repair/Cut & Polish tips?

[Redshift]

After a month or so of ownership I have started to tidy my Kat up some. I'm giving the paintwork a going over first so I thought I'd see if anyone was willing to offer a few tips on paint repair or restoration. :smt100 I was hoping you could help me avoid any stupid rookie mistakes!

1. Where will I find the paint code? I can't see any obvious sign of it, is it part of the VIN number?

2. Once I have the paint code, has anyone got tips for touching up paint chips on the tank? How about deep (dropped by previous owner) scratches/gouges on the fairing?

3. Sticker removal on some sections of the fairing (& 2 more I plan to remove) have left slight colour & wear differences in the paintwork, light to medium surface scratches are also scattered over the bike. A trial run with a cream cut & polish compound has left the test area hazed & cloudy. Can anyone offer advice on good cut & polish products & techniques?

I'd truly appreciate any advice, links or other help....... unfortunately my ambition outweighs my skill & experience in this field!

[Bielser2]

hey bro...did u check out SweetLou's post on this forum about painting......if not u should check it out.........very informative.........hope this helps u out...............

[SweetLou]

Re: Paint repair/Cut & Polish tips?

1. Where will I find the paint code? I can't see any obvious sign of it, is it part of the VIN number?

2. Once I have the paint code, has anyone got tips for touching up paint chips on the tank? How about deep (dropped by previous owner) scratches/gouges on the fairing?

3. Sticker removal on some sections of the fairing (& 2 more I plan to remove) have left slight colour & wear differences in the paintwork, light to medium surface scratches are also scattered over the bike. A trial run with a cream cut & polish compound has left the test area hazed & cloudy. Can anyone offer advice on good cut & polish products & techniques?

I'd truly appreciate any advice, links or other help....... unfortunately my ambition outweighs my skill & experience in this field!

To get paint that matches your body color, check out Color-Right. You can get paint from them, just using your make, model, and year. To Get the scratches and chips filled, well, that really depends on how well you want it to look. For chips on the tank, you can just use a dap of paint from a touch-up pen or something of the like. For the deep scratches though, I would use Scratch Filler (For over 1/16th deep), Or Scratch Filler Primer (Less than 1/16th deep). When using either though, you are pretty much going to have to re-paint the whole peice, not just the area.

As for the stickers and the different shading of paint, that is because of the fading effect caused by the sun, the only way around this is to get a new paint job. As for the scratches, a buffer may be able to get them out, I dunno. Corey would prolly be able to answer more about the buffer method. Sounds like you should really just do a new paint job though. Its really not all the hard, just time consuming.

[Redshift]

Thanks for the tips SweetLou. I'm considering a repaint sometime in the future, but for now I'll stick to a bit of patchwork. Generally the paintwork is still quite good (despite the way it might sound) and i just want to go over a few small spots & bring a bit of lustre back to it. Picked up a few more helpful products today, so I'll let you know how it goes..... or doesn't go!!