Painting my 450

Wicked, looks like you all set to go, I am watching this one for sure, to pick up as many tips as I can.
Now please understand, I know nothing of this dark art and voodoo magic of mirror like paint jobs, so take my ramblings from where the come.
I would think that that strainer is maybe a bit coarse, you may want something like those little plastic tea strainers with the finer mesh.

And just remember not to rush it, the key is in the prep, if the prep is not 100%, no amount of paint in the world will cover the flaws, I see a LOT of sanding in your life.
Remember, that once you have sanded everything down, to where you think it is ready, lay a very fine (1 pass) check coat of colour on it, any imperfections will show right up, if you happy with it, put the primer down and start going to town.
Search out all Larry's posts and Ed's posts on his 1000S paint Job.
yes I know there are other members here who do excellent work, I am not excluding anyone, those are the two I can think of right now,

[pete]

Now as to equipment to do the job, I bought a compressor just before Christmas last year which came with a free hose and HVLP gravity feed gun set. I know they're not the highest quality ones but given this is probably the only use they'll get it was a bargain.



2.5HP motor, 40 litre tank, 180 litres/minute free air delivery, so it should be up to the task I believe.

There's a 0.8mm small gun and both a 1.4mm and 1.7mm large gun as well as a pressure regulator:



However, there's already a regulator on the compressor itself, so not sure which I should rely on, but I'm guessing just using the built in one on the compressor should be fine:



The last piece of equipment I may use is this:



I have heard it is best to strain the paint into the gun before spraying, so is a normal household strainer like this good enough? Or is there some special strainer I should be using? Or am I off the garden path altogether?

Anyway, is there anything else I'm missing equipment wise or preparation wise?

Also, for masking off the base coat to put on the stripes, the tech. data lists a taping time of 20 - 45 minutes, so I'm assuming if I wait at least 45 minutes then I can safely mask it off and start the white stripes.

Any tips/pointers/advice/pointing and laughing is all welcome at this point

[pete]

Subject says it all really, a thread for painting my 450... and no, this ain't a poll, I already know the colour scheme and have purchased the paint

Bits to paint are the front and rear mudguards, fuel tank, seat trim, tail piece, exhaust bracket, and the tail light bracket.

The tail piece is raw fibreglass at the moment, so I need to stick some putty over that first.

The tank and tail light bracket I'll just sand back a bit so I won't have to prime them, but I have plastic primer for the guards and acrylic primer for the exhaust bracket and seat trim.

So here's what I got today:



The plastic primer and the single pack primer:



Now here's where I think I went wrong with the primer. The tech. data for the paint explicitly says don't use a 1K primer. So is single pack primer 1K primer? As in should I take it back and swap it for something else? The lady I spoke with when buying the paint said get an acrylic primer and it is an acrylic primer... I had to get this from a different shop to where I got the paint because the refinishing place only sold bulk primer and I only need to prime the tail piece and exhaust bracket.

Anyway, I got this putty a little while back for the tail piece:



This is the clear and thinners for it:



The colours and reducer:



The Matador Red Pearl is the base coat for the front guard, tank, seat trim, and tail piece. The black is for the rear guard, exhaust bracket, and tail light bracket, and the white will be for two lengthwise stripes down the tank and tail piece.

They gave me some mixing cups and these black/white checked card for checking the clear mixture before doing the actual spraying:



I already have some tack cloths around as well as plenty of gloves and sandpaper.

Now, courtesy of Leigh and Tim Tom's abilities with Photoshop type software, here's a mock up of the paint job: