oven baking lower fork legs

[nedmmo]

bout to start painting my lower fork legs. 84 model honda so more modern fork leg construction. once the dampner rod and forkseals out, would it be safe to oven bake them for an hour at 200f?
am I going to get a lot of oil leach and mess up my kitchen oven. or should I get get them back on the bike and just cure them a bit with heat gun?

gone rogue or in the shed

 

[VonYinzer]

You're just painting them? You don't need to bake them. Clean them with a really good degreaser, scuff them lightly with a scotchbrite pad and go to town.

 

[o1marc]

Don't even think of using your kitchen oven. I t may not ruin the oven but your whole house will smell like oil. As mentioned, unless it's a wrinkle paint, you won't need to oven cure your paint.

 

[nedmmo]

its 10c here during the day and the paint just wont cure! I baked the triple yesterday and they came out beautiful! bit of stink in the kitchen but nothing more thab using a new baking tray or something. might just use the heat gun. I tbought the oil might burn...

gone rogue or in the shed

 

[Moa]

I painted my fork lowers with caliper paint and cured them in the oven no problem.

 

[AlphaDogChoppers]

200 degrees F won't hurt anything. I powdercoat fork sliders all the time at 375 F. At 200F there won't be much in the way of oil smoking. Oil gets hotter than that in your engine.

Fork sliders don't tend to be porous like some engine cases I have had to powdercoat. Clean them well with hot water and Simple Green, and you shouldn't have any problem with oil residue.

 

[nedmmo]

cheers alphadog. its not exactly a full bake...just to get the paint nice and hard for reassembly so I dont need to leave it curing for a week.

gone rogue or in the shed

 

[AlphaDogChoppers]

I oven cure rattle can painted parts all the time. I do it at the lowest temperature that my oven comes on, which is maybe 150F. It definitely hardens up the paint so that there is less likelihood of messing it up putting things together. Especially when I paint engine parts, I figure the paint is cured by heat to some extent. I start them out at 150F, and after a while, I ramp up the temperature to 250F for the heat resistant engine paints.

VHT paints, (very high temperature,) that I use on exhaust systems get heat cured in three steps:
250F then cool down
400F then cool down
700F

I had to modify the position of the thermostat sensor on the oven that I use to get that higher temperature. The ceramic coatings just don't cure adequately at 500F. I also built an insulated box that sits on the oven door to expand the size of the over for larger pieces. This is obviously not my kitchen oven.

 

[VonYinzer]

I'm asking a question, but will only accept the answer I came up with up with in my head already. Tell me I'm right...

You'll fit in great here.

 

[Bert Jan]

I'm asking a question, but will only accept the answer I came up with up with in my head already. Tell me I'm right...

You'll fit in great here.

lol

 

[nedmmo]

yep haha. sounds about right

gone rogue or in the shed