Cut hole, fill, mold to shape in ABS motorcycle fairing

Anything goes in the world of fiberglass and plastic

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PostPosted: Fri Jul 03, 2015 1:58 pm
Dust is a never ending battle when you shoot fiberglass and plastics....why?.... because we are generating electrostatic energy as we shoot. It's a lot worse than what the metal guys have to put up with. 76 has got it there with the wet floor job and.... I also run a ground chain on chassis if the fiberglass or plastic body is attached to it. I run that chain out to my ground rod for the main on my building. I even attach smaller parts to a "ground bar" I made that goes there as well. It is still not a perfect environment but between getting the parts up higher, wetting the floor, and grounding I don't seem to have it much worse than my buddy who only shoot metal at his home garage set-up.
Gun speed?.... you guys will gradually get it figured out...you just need to do more shootin'. :)
Metal, wood, fiberglass, we work it all... www.furniturephysicians.com We can restore the irreplaceable!

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PostPosted: Sat Jul 04, 2015 5:44 am
Alright...wetting the floor. I have to say that I've completely missed that tip this far. Will do this morning.

Here's the other problem I have, which I didn't mention till now. This cheap gun set that I bought...came with three guns. One red, one black and one silver-ish. Right away, the red one, the one that came with the 1.4 tip, started to shed red powder coat. The other two haven't had this problem.

gun.JPG


I've already had to reshoot one small piece because of red specs coming off this gun. And I had a couple of red specs on the tank I shot yesterday. Luckily, those are in spots that won't really be seen. It wasn't until I was cleaning the clear from the gun yesterday that I saw the black gun in the background and thought....WHY HAVEN'T YOU SWITCHED TIPS AND USED THE BLACK GUN, YOU IDIOT???

:knockout:

Beyond that, I'm quite certain I'd be better at this if I had purchased a better gun to begin with. I REALLY have to crank the pressure on these to get them to atomize well. Essentially, I feel like I'm using a LVHP gun and not a HVLP gun.

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PostPosted: Sat Jul 04, 2015 8:31 pm
fairing.jpg


The main fairing...the part that started this thread got shot this morning. Wet the floor and switched to the black gun. Now...I have no idea what the physical difference is between the black gun and the red one...but the black one shot WAY BETTER than the red one did. I took the 1.8 tip off and put on the 1.3 from the red one. Slowed down and tried to go heavy and focus on overlap.

Eureka moment. I finally understand the wet edge and how to use it to my advantage. All that dry spray went away. REALLY cool to see the paint flow out like it's supposed to.

You can't see it in this pic, but there are actually a couple of sags on this side. They're not too bad. Can deal. But clearly, this is the thickest clear and the smoothest I've shot. Pretty stoked about it.

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PostPosted: Sun Jul 05, 2015 1:51 pm
Looks like I'm the only one working this weekend? As it should be...hope you all are having a great weekend with family and friends. I did...but I worked at sun up each morning trying to get this project done so I can start on my own bike...

Again...with each batch of parts I do, things go smoother. Wetting the floor helps, for sure. Slowing the gun down helps a lot. Still a lot to learn...but these fenders looked so good after two coats of clear that I stopped. These pics were taken when they were still tacky. I'm pretty shocked at how long clear continues to flow. They look even better now that they've dried. The front fender has a couple of slight sags and runs...but this is still much better than the dry spray/orange peel I was still getting two days ago.

And I still have a few little foreign objects that are finding their way into each stage. But I'm learning to accept my limitations. And I'm learning to not pick at them, as I tend to make things look worse if I do. What we need here is a master class on all the tricks you guys use to fix these kinds of things....like bugs that want to break into 5 pieces when you try to pick them out.
fender rear.jpg
fender front.jpg

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PostPosted: Mon Jul 06, 2015 8:49 am
And a couple of shots of the parts going onto the bike after the owner finishes them up to his liking. Starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel on this project.

This painting thing...I love it and I hate it at the same time.

bike 2.jpg
bike 1.jpg

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PostPosted: Mon Jul 06, 2015 6:04 pm
Looking great SS.....I also will try to concentrate on that paint line and slow down a bit. Are you gonna buff all them parts out? If so you might want to consider a few more layers of clear rather than just 2. There are some major angles on them parts and when buffing you will have to be careful not to cut threw the clear on edges....especially with 2 coats.
Give a man a brush, and he will paint a Picasso.
Give a man a spray gun, and the wife better hide the car.

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PostPosted: Tue Jul 07, 2015 7:25 am
Thanks, 76. As with the rest of these parts, I'm not the one buffing, my buddy is. He's doing all of that before he mounts the stuff on the bike. I do hear you with the additional coats of clear. I probably should have hit them again....but they looked so good. And I really did lay down two very wet coats. I didn't want to do anything else for fear of getting more debris in the clear. There were a couple of tiny runs that he had to deal with, but he said it all worked out well.

I couldn't be happier with the fenders. They really flowed out smooth. The finish on them looks better than what comes from the Victory factory. My goal has always been to get to that level or better, and it's happening at just the right time. All of these parts are the ones that people really see.

I won't get to see the bike in person till this next weekend, but he sent me pictures of what he did last night.

side view - no bags.jpg


rear fender unlit.jpg


front fender 2.jpg


I still have to paint saddlebags and lower leg fairings, so the bike is still looking somewhat incomplete.

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PostPosted: Thu Jul 09, 2015 1:41 pm
The brakes just got put on this project - right as I saw light at the end of the tunnel.

Now that I feel like I've got good stuff coming out of the gun, I sat down with the owner of the bike and we started talking about taking this one to the next level. So he ordered saddlebag extensions which will have to be bolted and epoxied on. I'll have to sand, fill, level and prime them again. He also ordered a new, extended fiberglass fender for the rear.

fiberglass fender.jpg


The gel coat should just need cleaning and scuffing. But I suppose I should hit it with a layer of primer to keep the substrate the same color.

Sad. That beautiful rear fender...the one I did all the fabulous body work on and finally got paint to sit on very well...it's not going to end up on the bike after all.

Good practice, I guess.

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PostPosted: Thu Jul 09, 2015 2:31 pm
And see, that's a little bit of the downside to new skills.... more work! Yep, once guys find out you can do this and get consistent results you'll start having em' lined up to do stuff.... just pace yourself.... you are still learning.... :lol:
Metal, wood, fiberglass, we work it all... www.furniturephysicians.com We can restore the irreplaceable!

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PostPosted: Sun Jul 12, 2015 1:35 pm
We spent Saturday working on adding the saddlebag extensions. This required sanding off the primer I had already sprayed. We used a combination of bolts and epoxy to fasten the extensions to the bags.

extension.jpg

exentsion installed.jpg


Here's a pic of my bike. You can see that the pipe is plainly visible below the bag.
003.JPG

Here's a pic of the bike we're working on...with the extension added to the bag.
extension view.jpg
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