Sanding SUCKS!!!

[RoadRacer61]

I'm finally getting stuff together to start painting my bike. Started fooling around in the garage tonight, sanding my first piece just to get a feel of what it's going to take to get everything prepped. The one little piece I did took almost an hour, and I'm not even sure if it's good enough yet.

Is sanding the best way to remove the old paint? I've seen several threads on here about the use of solvents and how they're bad for ABS and such, but would a stripper that came in a plastic bottle be alright? I mean, if it comes in plastic, it shouldn't hurt other plastics right?

[Crazybert]

If you want to get the paint off faster, you can just got to a lower grit. If you choose to do this make sure you stage-sand up as much as you can so your not left with really deep scratches. I'm an autobody prepper so If you have any other questions just ask.

[RoadRacer61]

Exactly how far down do I need to go? When I bought this plastic originally it was painted with House of Kolors, and pretty thick too. Then I has a gas leak that ate the paint of the left hand side, which prompted a quick "no prep" rattlecan job. Do I need to get all of the House of Kolors paint off or just sand it til it's smooth?

[Crazybert]

If theres that much paint on there already the thickness is gonna be through the roof. your best bet would be to take it all off either to the plastic (when it starts getting rough) or until you see a grey/white layer which would either be the original primer or sealer. from there you should be priming, sealing, basing, then clearing.

[RoadRacer61]

Cool. Thanks a lot. I'll post pics as soon as I get a chance to, but it's gonna be a while. I can only work on iton my days off, which don't happen again til next week.

[hardlydangerous]

Paint will bond better to old paint then to plastic
dont remove all the old paint

just wet sand it with 600 grit and prime it very lightly and paint it.

[teddy]

Paint will bond better to old paint then to plastic
dont remove all the old paint

just wet sand it with 600 grit and prime it very lightly and paint it.

+1000

Don't make yourself more work than you need to. If the plastics are all intact and the paint on them is decent, do exactly what hardlydangerous said. Areas needing repair will obviously need more attention than others when it comes to prep.

[ThAzKat]

Exactly what I did to mreed's bike teddy. 600 grit wetsand! I use a sponge so that I don't get those dreaded finger grooves!

[ATOMonkey]

Sand blast it. Works like a charm.

[hotrodder000]

sand blasting will work with the katana body? I thought it would just tear it apart. lol.

[JokerZwild]

dont sandblast the plastics lol

[ATOMonkey]

I used crushed garnet at about 60 psi IIRC.

http://katriders.com/vb/showthread.php?t=97038

[tmk7c9]

I've always just sanded my bikes down until they were smooth....no need to remove all the old paint unless is it already coming off.

Prime it and go. Even if it's thick already, what will it hurt? an extra 2 lbs of weight maybe? probably not a big deal. It will stick and look good with just some sanding...no sense in making extra work for youself.

[teddy]

Prime it and go. Even if it's thick already, what will it hurt? an extra 2 lbs of weight maybe? probably not a big deal.

If it's too thick it will crack. No amount of flex agent in the world will prevent overly thick paint from cracking under stress.

[waffenampt]

Yeah I discovered about 6 different coats of paint on my fairings. All started cracking and peeling around the round corners. I used some of that chemical stuff and it turned into a sloppy mess. Had to put 3 coats of the paint stripper on just to go through about 2-3 layers of paint. After awhile of that it got old real fast, and im back to sanding with 80 grit, thinking of going down to 36 grit.