Plastics paint vs repair

Damaged fairing on a 10 year old red / black busa. Occurs to me that
on a bike that age new plastic might stick out too much and a good
paint job might be better.

Not to be boring but I didn't bin it, just that I saved up some dosh
and I wouldn't mind fixing the old dog.

 

New plastic will be pricey. I'd buy the required used panels on eBay,
get them painted up if necessary, and just clag them on. That way you
can carry on riding the thing with the damaged panels, whereas if you
want the old panels repaired, you'll have to send them away and put up
with a naked 'Busa in the meantime. Which might be fun. Or not.

And then when you've replaced the old damaged panels, you put them up
on eBay and recoup much of your investment. Or maybe all, if you're
lucky. But even if the replacement panels, painted etc, cost you (say)
£600, and you only get £300 for the old ones, that means you've got
yourself some nice spanky panels for the same price as someone has
just paid for some manky ones.

This approach has worked for me innumerable times.

 

Bear in mind on the red / black 1999 Hayabusa with the 'Candy Antares Red'
colour scheme you are looking at probably 50% more to paint it in both paint
cost & labour, as you need the silver base coat before the candy top coat.

There have been problems matching this colour so it's a bad idea trying to
paint only a couple of panels, the chance of getting these to match the rest
of the bike are low, so you'll need to do the whole bike or nowt!

--
Frooty

GSX1300RX - The FAST AS FECK wan
TT250R - The wee dirty wan
Lifan LF50QGY - The wee monkey wan
Down to just three toys :-[

 

I paid over £100 for a panel from a breaker (via partfinderuk), but
whilst it was the right colour, it was the wrong year model and didn't
match up properly, so it went on ebay and fetched about £35.

So the value of panels can go down as well as up ;-)

Paul.

 

There's an immaculate right hand panel and nosecone in blue/white for a
GSXR1000 K1 sitting in my lock-up. Unfortunately there have been two
K1s crashed and then broken just for the lack of cheap replacement
panels recently, and I got there too late with my pair to help out.
Could have sold them twice over for a fortune if I'd found out sooner.

--
Lozzo
Versys 650 Inter-Continental Hyperbolistic Missile , CBR600F-W racebike
in the making, TS250C, RD400F (somewhere)
BMW E46 318iSE (it's a car, not one of those 2-wheeled pieces of shite
they churn out)

 

Oh ****. You mean something like:
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/yl6ZP39sKSWApS_I8dkAfw?feat=directlink
? I have no fucking idea what colour code it is.

Can you expand on "problems matching"? I know **** all about paint, I just
assumed they sprayed the stuff on then lacquered. Which would of course not
explain how painting can look better than a new panel on an old bike. If
indeed that is the case.

Interestingly, nobody's yet said "don't buy a new panel as it will look
different to the original after 10 years of the original fading".

FFS, what to do. But I fucking love the bike so for once I don't mind
splashing some dosh on it.

--
TD
2000 GSX1300RX (red and black)
Missing: SOB, Unreliable Italian exotica, cage
- What with the Internet, it doesn't take long to feel like one is an
- expert on any subject these days.

 

I assume that is you. Gaylord.

it's 12 years old. Just fix it up with so that it does not fall apart and
ride the bloody thing.

 

I've got similar probs with my VFR. It currently looks like it is
cheaper to buy a cheap ebay fairing set from China than it is to paint
my original panels up. Aus$600 compared to Aus$1000 for a paint job.
I've done about 6 crashed bikes with the Chinese jobbies and most of
them fitted up quite well after a bit of dremel time.

Fraser

 

Candys are different, they use two colours (silver & red in your case),
& the red is slightly translucent so the silver base coat shows
through. The thicker the red coat, the darker it will be, which makes
colour matching very tricky.

 

It so happens that a young friend of mine (f'naar) has roped me into
his bike project. He's found a VFR400 (NC30) that has been 'resting'
in a dry garage for several years, after being dropped. We went over
there at the weekend and got it started and the motor is sweet, in fact
all the mechanicals seem to be fine. There's no apparent damage to the
frame, but the fairing is missing, having been binned years ago. This
was going to be a bit of a stopper, until he came up with this:

http://www.k-conversions.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&products
_id=19

which looks just the ticket, and he prefers the look of the headlights
to the standard twin round jobbies. It is almost too good to be true -
all plastics, lights front and rear for 700 dorra!

I'm currently pondering the realities of the situation - what does the
FOAK reckon?

Apart from the plastics, it obviously needs an MoT and in order to get
that, will need a pair of tyres as those fitted are a bit smoothish but
they've cracked at the bott6om, having been allowed to go flat.
Purchase price, subject to haggling, starts at £350, but I reckon we
can get him down to a couple of hundred with a bit of nagging - but
that still leaves a total of about a grand on the road.

I'm of the opinion that he ought to look elsewhere, but of course he's
infatuated with the thing and it's all so close. He seems to accept
he'll never get his money back, he wants to keep it for ever.

Opinions?

 

That looks like a Tiger bodykit from Thailand. They are pretty good and
look the canine's nads when fitted properly and painted up. I've seen a
few now and they certainly make the old NC30 look much more modern than
it did

--
Lozzo
Versys 650 Inter-Continental Hyperbolistic Missile , CBR600F-W racebike
in the making, TS250C, RD400F (somewhere)
BMW E46 318iSE (it's a car, not one of those 2-wheeled pieces of shite
they churn out)

 

I couldn't find a paint code for this scheme, but spoke to a guy called Mal
Wilkinson at Bike Paints (Google it & you'll get the number), he told me
about the problems & said he had formulated a colour for touch-ups / paint
that was as close to the original as you'll find.

Mine is the early copper / silver scheme & all the panels are at my friendly
local (& cheap!) sprayer now.

I looked into the full sets of replacement panels on ebay, they are
definitely cost-effective, but I wanted the bike to be as original as
possible (I'm anal that way).

If you're not bothered about that then go the ebay route but be prepared for
problems fitting (as others have said), plus they don't have a lot of
lacquer on them so budget for someone giving them a coat too.

As TOG says you'll probably get the bulk of your money back selling off the
original panels.

--
Frooty

GSX1300RX - The FAST AS FECK wan
TT250R - The wee dirty wan
Lifan LF50QGY - The wee monkey wan
Down to just three toys :-[

 

Tyga, you mean?

 

Why don't you get hold of [1] one of Lady Nina's ZXR basket cases. At
least they've been run in the last 12 months and have fairings ..

Paul.

[1] Wrest from her grasp ... ?

 

Yeah, they made them too

--
Lozzo
Versys 650 Inter-Continental Hyperbolistic Missile , CBR600F-W racebike
in the making, TS250C, RD400F (somewhere)
BMW E46 318iSE (it's a car, not one of those 2-wheeled pieces of shite
they churn out)

 

Looks like the Tyga kit. See if he can go direct and buy one cheaper.

Fraser

 

Heh. There's anal, and there's my acquaintance who gets me to buy
stuff from eBay for him (because he doesn't trust it, doesn't want to
open an account and would never give his details to Paypal in any case)
and I tell you, he's really fucking anal.

We started off with old Hornby railway catalogues (had to be immaculate
with no creases or loose pages, had to have the price list included),
moved through Paystation games (had to be the original issue, Platinum
wasn't any good, even if it was enhanced and updated) and now we're on
music on CD - which has to be the original issue, so has to be NOS and
has to be in original unbroken cellophane.

I'm speechless, but he forks over the cash and it's feedback for
nothing to me.

 

Good call - I'm looking at their site now. He'll be looking to me to
front the transaction, so I'd best do the research. That's very
useful, thank you.

 

Prise out of her cold, dead hand, more like.

 

Thanks for that Loz. I'm on it.