hey guys

Just looking for some advice on a good 2k clear for spraying a motorbike,

I know valspar ms is pretty cheap, about $60 for a liter but I havent used it, anyone else have any recommendations ..

thanks

$60/litre will get you a top shelf product like Cromax 696S. Beautiful clear, extreme gloss and depth and very forgiving in use. I use this for prestige jobs, restorations and the like, where a premium clear is warranted.

For everyday clear I use the Montana PE2600 which is an MS clear and very easy to match peel on repaired panels. Under $30/litre.

If you want a fast clear then the Concept Euroflash is reasonably priced at about $35/litre.

First two are Axalta products, so your local Axalta distributor will have them.

There are about a zillion other clears available from various manufacturers. Some of the better PPG clears are pretty good but their cheap clears are junk. Otherwise you pretty much get what you pay for.

The thing about clears is that they all have slight differences and you have to tune your method a little to get the best out of them. It's usually worth doing a couple of smaller, less critical jobs first with any clear that you're not familiar with, just so that you can see how it responds.

Hey thanks for your reply Chris.

The shop in my town use Valspar and debeer. Their debeer has is about 80 a litre. Their valspar hs is about 50. I don’t need too much.

Also Wondering on your thoughts with candy paint. Any particular system thet is easy / less stages but gets good results ?

Thanks.

Ed

You'd be surprised how much clear is used on a bike with fairings. A lot is wasted too.

Candies look spectacular but they are difficult because the layers have to be perfectly even, or you get visible variations in colour. From the perspective of what I do everyday, even the factory ones like Mazda 41V/46V are a PITA with matching and blending. Doing a whole project, though, would be fun. In fact I have a car that would be ideal for that and plan on doing it later this year. Watch the project threads here.....

For someone with less experience candies can be challenging. The key is practice until you can get consistency, before you embark on the project itself.

It’s a pretty small bike so I figured It can’t be that bad to try on it.

I’m happy to practice on it it’s not worth that much and there isn’t a lot of real estate to paint.

The guy was trying to up sell me with large quantities of debeer cos the saving is there if I paint 3-5 bikes lol but 700 bucks for paint is more than I have or need for 1 little bike.

I sprayed my Yamaha in acrylic cans in uni and buffed it and it looks good 8 years on still.

I sprayed blue motorbike in acrylic a few years back with guns and it came up really good.

I’m going to move into 2k products.

I see what you mean.

I was talking about something like this, that I did before last Christmas:

that looks like a lot of work!

this is really on the frame, tank, side covers, headlight and headlight arms, the front and rear arms are grey from the factory, swingarm is black...

I wonder if 250ml of intercoat flake and 250ml of candy will be enough, it goes over a white basecoat so I might just do the cheap rather than buy 3L of debeer hs primer which is like 200 something dollars

the paint guy said I could use the white primer which would save me having to spray white basecoat, but would the gloss etc be different?