I should have read the whole directions earlier.There are some serious non-nos in those directions.
1) Paint stripper is readily flammable, and the concentrated vapors are highly EXPLOSIVE. The stuff will eat through your skin, and plain water doesn't dilute it very well. Hit it with cream type waterless handcleaner first, the lanolin seems to bind the corrosives in the stripper, soap and warm water will then take it right off.
2) NEVER wet sand body filler. It absorbs water, come syummer, you'll have blistered paint.
3) Body filler only needs to be sanded to 320 grit, maximum. Any smoother, you ought as well try to stick paint to oiled chrome. If you have deep scratches or air bubbles, fill them with spot/glazing putty, and follow with high build primer as needed.
4) You can let a gas tank sit for a month, to air out, and still have it explode. Flush the tank with water. Plug the filler neck with a plumbing test plug, the fuel tap holes with corks.
5) Follow the directions on your can of paint to the letter. If it says recoat within 2 hours or wait two weeks, 2 hours and five minutes is too long, the new coat WILL blister/wrinkle/peel the preceeding coat(s).
I've made all of those mistakes. Watching a beautiful paint job wrinkle, grey out because you rushed it and trapped solvents, or blister because the body filler got wet will make you physically sick.
Lacquers look really nice. Bad idea for a ridden bike. The stuff is real soft, and is not fuel safe. Spill more than a drop or two of gas, and you're repainting the tank. Since the tank now doesn't match the rest of the tins, you're repainting them too. And, unless you use the same batch lot of color coat...the pieces won't be color matched.
I like doing rattle can jobs on my bike. If I get tired of the "look du jour" $8 gets me a "new" bike. I use tractor paints on mine. Tough stuff. Tricky ro spray though, you have to heat the can to about 85 degrees F for the paint to flow smoothly. Heat on the counter in a pan of hot water.
-WD
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