Painting the chassis of my GSX750es

[GSX750ES junky]

After many hassitations I eventualy decided to do the work properly and I stripped my motorcycle down to bare chassis. I guess only this way the painting can be done properly.
The thing is... I was never able to see a restored chassis painted in the quality of the stock frame. Not esthetics wise and not reliability wise.
Is there a painting method for steel frame that can reproduce the original quality ?

[hampshirehog]

The original quality was actually pretty poor. Easy to do better. Best finish in my opinion is powder coating (cheap as well).

[GSX750ES junky]

1. Should I have the steel chassis sand blasted first ?
2. Alloy parts like brake calipers and steering stem that show minor wear:
Should I have them sand blasted and repainted or is it enough to smooth the surface with gentle sand paper and paint on top of the old paint?
I was told that sand blast can damage soft alloys.

[SVSooke]

Been there

Wire brush on my angle grinder got me here

Some rust converter for the stuff I could not get got me to this

Used this

To do this

Wire brushed and painted all those bits and way more on mine
Some examples

[Flyboy]

That is where I am right now, also using a combo of paint stripper and a wire brush on the drill to strip, damn, it is a tedious, soul destroying process.
I have been at it for days and the frame is only half way done.
After a lot of thinking about it and tossing ideas about, I have also decided to break away from the powder coat on this one and go with a spray paint, purely for the ease of touch up and repair of little nicks and scratches afterwards when and if it is needed.

[Nessism]

I've painted a couple of frames with two part urethane gloss black and it works pretty well. Best to use two part epoxy primer first of course. For the semi-gloss parts I used POR-15 chassis coat paint. Tons of work but the results are good.

[Smokinapankake]

Powdercoat. Quick, easy, and reasonably affordable too. Your time has to be worth something, right?





I got a can of rattle spray mixed up to match at my local auto body supply shop. 'Bout 13 bux, but for those unlikely touch ups... I'm covered.

[GSX750ES junky]

Powdercoat indeed !
Apparently there is a renouned Powdercoat workshop not far from where I live. I saw some steel frame paint jobs they did and they look awesome.
Before I do that though, I'm concerned about the allighnment of the frame. I bought the bike and the frame seemed straight. Now that it's stripped and pre-painted I want to be 100% sure it is aligned. There is a workshop with high-tech-star-wars-laser equipment to align frames but they are very pricey. Is there a rough homemade method to check alignment of a clean frame before I go and spend a few 100 of $ on laser measurements ?

[SVSooke]

The quick and dirty test would be to measure from the steering neck to the end of the frame rails.Both sides should be the same.

[Smokinapankake]

I think I'd be more concerned about alignment of swingarm pivot points to head tube.... This is what ultimately determines alignment of front and rear wheels (notwithstanding spacers on the rear axle.....).

[hampshirehog]

The old fashioned way. Put the wheels back on and hang the thing from the garage ceiling via a rope through the front wheel (so that it swings completely freely). Then drop a plumb line down through / alongside the chassis and take as many measurements as you can from each side.

Don't forget that it won't hang exactly vertically (as one side of the frame is often slightly heavier than the other) but it's close and you can make allowances.

Oh, and you can blast your alloy parts if you're going to paint them. Just don't be to aggressive and you need to make sure that you get every last bit of grit out of your calipers etc.

[Big T]

blast the alloy using soda or walnut shells

Sand is too aggressive

For frame painting, check Chuck and Chandlers builds in the Projects forum