Hello, first post. I'm a noob. Zero automotive painting experience. Getting my feet wet with a motorcycle fender that I will be powder coating.

I bought a new rear fender for my motorcycle. It's raw steel. From photos(have not received yet) it looks like it still has mild mill marks. I'm assuming I should sand this through multiple grits before having it powder coated or painted.

If you are interested I'll leave a link to the fender I bought to give an idea what tye raw fender looks like.

Thank you

https://tcbros.com/collections/sportste ... s-choppers

Your going to have to do something to smooth it out. i would talk to the powder coater and see if they can coat it with a primer of some kind and then let you sand it smooth, then recoat it. please let us know what you find out.
Jay D.

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately anything under the powder coat must not gas out under the high heat. That leaves a very expensive option. He said he could build it up with powder and sandding. Prob not ideal but I'm stuck with this fender

The fender is even worse than the pictures showed. I should had sent it back but I've never done body work and didn't realize till after I started drilling holes.

Should get fender back today to do some sanding. I'll post an update.

Thank you

Just in case anyone is curious. The podercoater sprayed two coats of powder coating primer and gave it back to me to sand.i think it will work ok. Not going to be perfect but not very noticeable to most people. I guess it's a learning process lesson. First body work so. I'll post back after tye final high gloss black coats.

YEP , I've done a lot of them, they look like a nearly blind person welded it up. then they gave it to a likely visually impaired person with a 9" grinder to try and smooth it out. I've never powder coated one, but have done a lot with the regular process. a coat of epoxy then a skim coat of filler then liberal coats of hi build.
Jay D.

Still waiting on powder coating. Something I think I've learned is all new tins will need some level of work. If they sold ready to paint item it would cost a fortune. I've since bought a motorcycle gas tank and it also needed work. Not as bad as the fender. Being my first attempt at body work I didn't know. The fender was garbage though. Never buy a Wyatt Gatlin fender.

I didn't realize powder coating also has primer coats that are sand able.

I'll post some pics when I get them back for completing of a thread.

Thanks

Oh. Just to clarify for any future searches the initial link I provided is not the fender that I ended up with. So correct link here

https://www.denniskirk.com/wyatt-gatlin ... 399364.sku

I can't catch a break. Got the fender and gas tank back from powder coating and they look like ****. Tons of pock marks from our gassing and the surface looks like bad orange peel.

I know this is not a powder coating forum. I feel like my best option if possible is to sand the powder coat smooth and paint over it.

Is it ok to paint over the powder coat?

Thank you.

Sorry for the many questions and multiple directions. Just trying to figure out how to best fix this and get it done. I've wasted time and money. Part of the game of learning. It's definitely a learning experience. First time body painting/coating. Love the learning / hate the barrier to entry of learning.

So.... Through hours of solitary research(Google has become almost useless. Too many "content providers" and advert results. Not easy to discover people who know. Odd dichotomy in this information age. Too many blow hards and fakers who don't know but think/act like they know.

I feel like going to paint shops and coater shops asking newbie questions wastes peoples time and not usually receptive. I get it. I'm wasting their time.

So. If you guys would humor my questions.

I believe my best option is to sand the powder coat imperfections out and paint.

At least this way I will have the knowledge and tools to continue the practice of automotive painting. Which I hope I'll do lots more off. I love customizing motorcycles. Hopefully not my first and last coating.

I have started the sanding process on the fender and found the cratering(not fish eyes) Seems to be ONLY in the clear (powder) coat.

I've got it pretty dang smooth. Went from 150 to 320. Planning on going up to 600 .

So. I've never sprayed before, automotive or otherwise.

So, do you think an airbrush rig would suffice for small parts as in motorcycle chopper tins? Especially relatively small stuff like sportster tins?

I feel like if it would suffice. But what the hell do I know. Jack **** to be exact. And it would be a cheaper entrance cost, smaller footprint.

Many thanks.

HypoLuxa wrote:So, do you think an airbrush rig would suffice for small parts as in motorcycle chopper tins? Especially relatively small stuff like sportster tins?

I feel like if it would suffice. But what the hell do I know. Jack to be exact. And it would be a cheaper entrance cost, smaller footprint.

Many thanks.

You "could" use an airbrush, but the risk of striping the base would be too great with an untrained hand. For not much more than a decent airbrush you could pick up a mini gun like the Ani R160. Love that gun!