modified, aftermarket, or custom. nothing is safe (78 KZ1000)

You have great taste in bikes. Really love the under tail treatment.

It's inspiring to say the least.

That kick stand is atrocious tho :

Beauty of a bike man! Color me impressed!


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thanks guys. hope to make some more progress soon.

doc_rot said:

thanks guys. hope to make some more progress soon.

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shes a flamin beauty doc
got any plans of documenting ,her weight ?

xb33bsa said:

shes a flamin beauty doc
got any plans of documenting ,her weight ?

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I will once its a rider, my target was 480 wet, very curious to see what it will be.

I'm torn in-between doing vinyl pinstripes and clearing over them or painting the pinstripes on and then clearing. I'm worried that if i paint them they wont be very crisp and the red will take many layers to get it bright over the grey. Vinyl is so easy to apply. I bought this vinyl pinstripe but the red is semi-transparant and not nearly as bright as I want it to be. maybe hand pinstriped?

Lots of clear then cut and buff to get the vinyl buried. if you use 3/16ths or even 1/8th pinstripe to mask the paint lays down with no blowouts or bleed, my last tank the lines are amazingly crisp just wish they mirrored better

doc_rot said:

I'm torn in-between doing vinyl pinstripes and clearing over them or painting the pinstripes on and then clearing. I'm worried that if i paint them they wont be very crisp and the red will take many layers to get it bright over the grey. Vinyl is so easy to apply. I bought this vinyl pinstripe but the red is semi-transparent and not nearly as bright as I want it to be. maybe hand pinstriped?

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It's a familiar problem. You can try an alternate brand of vinyl to see if it is less transparent/brighter. Paint is always some sort of trouble due to the transparency. You might try masking the stripes and using some sign painters paint which is bright and covers pretty well. Hand laid stripes are awesome but do look hand painted and still need to be cleared over to last. A lot of trouble to mask, but it certainly can be done. Just place the stripes with whatever width fine line tape you want and then lay another row against both sides and peel out the original. Might be worth an experiment using a fat brush and masking to see if you get the results you are after. Or you can spray it - try shooting white first before the red. That's what I did the last time I faced a similar issue where I wanted the brightest possible red and it worked great, but I did realize it before I started and shot that first and masked off the stripes from the beginning which you obviously can't do now unfortunately. Paint or vinyl, it will take a lot of clear to really bury it flat as I'm sure you know. Likely you will have so much paint getting the brightness up the stripe will be as thick (or thicker!) as vinyl. I'd probably pick the best vinyl and shoot enough clear to protect everything and call it a day. I've found about 2 medium coats is good over stripes. It's a long way from being able to obtain a flat surface over them, but any more and the clear ponds up near the edges and looks lumpy. Really great bike your building here. Nicely engineered and pretty to boot!

I will pick up some One-shot this afternoon and give that a try. I also will look for a different brand of pin-striping tape.

Im finally tackling another one of the things I have been dreading to deal with. When I had the machinist make the caliper mounts he made them so there was not enough clearance between the fork bosses and the holes he milled. Every time I bolted them on they would sit in a different position and didn't seem to be parallel to the disk. I realized the mounts were binding on the fork tubes so I sanded them down so they wouldn't bind. After that the calipers hit the spokes. I put them on the shelf for 2 years.

I drew up a new bracket in CAD and laser cut the profile out of .060" acrylic so I could stack them to get the correct spacing. After some tweaking I have finalized the design. I think its better than the original as i put the bracket behind the fork bosses and caliper so everything tucks in tighter. I am taking one out of Slikwilli's book; I'm going to have the bracket waterjet cut out of 7075 and then manually mill the rest.

So I decided to paint the pinstripes with 1 Shot sign paint. they make a special hardener (4007) and reducer (6001) so that it can be applied under urethane clears. I sprayed a test piece out and prepped the rest of everything.

Other than that little bleed it looks fantastic!

Thanks! Yeah the bleed was from me being sloppy because it's a test piece, I got some good 3m vinyl tape for the real thing

jag767 said:

Other than that little bleed it looks fantastic!

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+1

Im laying down the pinstripe tape and wondering if i should do the fender as well?

Yay.

This is a beautiful bike!

Lines look odd on the fender but if they were straight I think it would look the part.

Nice work.

Cool bike. I 'll be back to go through the whole build and watch the rest of the progress.