The start of my plasti dip project

[JSMencer]

I started doing matte black plasti dip. Here is my progress so far, I will post more pics as I complete it. I plan on going over matte black with the matte white. They recommend using gun metal as a base for white, but I could not get gun metal locally. So I guess I will see how matte black works as a base.

[RX8_Kat600]

Looking good! How many cans have you gone through?

[JSMencer]

I used 2. I got 2 more today, all though I don't plan on using 2 to finish the matte black part. I'm not looking for it to be perfect in all areas, cause I plan on doing 3-4 coats of white on top of most of the black.

[RX8_Kat600]

I gotta be honest. When I did my car, I only did one or two coats; and a year later it still looks like I put it on yesterday. What is the benefit of doing so many coats? is it just cause you don't want the red showing through the white?

[JSMencer]

If you check out the dipyourcar web site they recommend doing gun metal first before white. This gives it a matte base rather then putting it on a gloss finish. I used the black. I'm just thinking to cover black with white is gonna take a couple coats. I try to put the coats on rather light too since i'm new to this. I don't want any drips

[RX8_Kat600]

Ah ok that makes sense. Be careful about putting too strong a coat too. the last thing I did on my car was the hood and it was about 2am so I just put one big coat... My hood now looks like it has herpes (it has small bubbles and dimples all over the plastidip)

[rottenpixies]

Nice job! It came out nice and smooth. Did you spray it right out the can or use a spray gun? Any tips for how you got it smooth? Mine seems to come out a little rougher looking. I think I may be going on to heavy possibly?

[JSMencer]

yeah just what i dont want to happen

I just tried to keep the coats light. It dries really fast. I used watered down alcohol based hand sanitizer to clean it off before i sprayed the paint. I sprayed right from the can. about 4 cans covered my whole bike. Remember if your spraying over parts like turn signals or head lights lay it on really thick or a bunch of coats. Thats easier to peel off.

The hardest part is the front of the tank. I'm not very mechanical so I sprayed everything on the bike. I didn't take the tank off, or the front fender. So I'm hoping those spots look ok. I just did all that this morning. I will have some more pictures up tonight. It's out baking in the sun right now.

[rottenpixies]

Do you continually hold the spray nozzle down and spray side to side? Or do you release the spray nozzle after passing each side? I think I also got some roughness and splatter from trying to release the nozzle after each pass. The first time I did it I just held the thing down and passed back and forth, but than I saw a plasti dip video and the guy was releasing it after each pass so I tried that, but I think it messed it up and got me splatters and roughness.

[JSMencer]

I've done a little of both. 1 big thing is spray a little before you start spraying. That will get bubbles and gunk off the nozzle. Another thing was trying to maintain the same distance over the whole thing, and going with the curves. It is not an easy thing to do painting a bike. I hope after all the coats it turns out good. With the white applied to. It would be a bitch to peel off.

[rottenpixies]

I've done a little of both. 1 big thing is spray a little before you start spraying. That will get bubbles and gunk off the nozzle. Another thing was trying to maintain the same distance over the whole thing, and going with the curves. It is not an easy thing to do painting a bike. I hope after all the coats it turns out good. With the white applied to. It would be a bitch to peel off.

That is also the hard part for me, is all the curves on the side fairings make it really hard not to over spray certain parts when you're trying to hit all the angles. Luckily this stuff is cheap enough to where even if I re-do the entire thing I'm still way below the cost of real paint job.. even with a few cans of touch up every year it would take long time to cost more than regular paint.

[JSMencer]

Its nice to practice with. you learn from your mistakes I guess. We'll see how the white goes on.

[JSMencer]

My bike has been baking in the florida sun, and i ran to mcdonalds, well I spilled some tea on my bike. When i got back to work i hosed it down. Looks better.

[teddy]

the white plasti dip is like bright refrigerator WHITE man, just so you know...

i was going to do my wheels on my white jetta, but it was very overpowering and ten times brighter than the actual color of the car, it would have looked awful with uber bright white wheels against the OE white of the car, had to peel the one i did back to it's original silver paint. thinking about the copper metallizer this time around though...

[JSMencer]

yeah bright is good. It's still a matte finish