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Prepping body work for paint - questions


yummy_waffles

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Hello people. So I just started prepping my plastics to be painted. I'll be doing the painting with a spray gun as well (first time). I've spent quite some time researching in forums, but since I'm fairly new at this I wanted to get a few tips from the people who are familiar with body work.

I haven't gotten very far, but I wanna make sure that I take the time to perfect the prepping stage.

  • Washed all plastics with soap and water.

  • Once dried, I used dupli-color prep-spray (wax & grease remover).

  • Then I dry sanded with a 'P240 very fine' wet/dry sand paper. It came out pretty smooth, but I'm worried once I go to prime will the scratches be visible? So I was thinking about following up w/ some wet sanding using the same grit paper to possibly smooth it out a bit. Would this be okay?

That's how much I've accomplished so far. Still got a lot of work, but things are going pretty smooth. As far as priming, do I need to lay a coat of adhesion promoter for the plastic? I was thinking about going that route instead of epoxy primer since I already bought regular dupli-color primer. If I use the adhesion promoter, will I need to fine-sand that as well? Does the promoter only come in aerosol can, because that's all I can find.

That's it for now. I'm pretty sure I'll have plenty of questions along the way. I'll update with pictures as I go along. Cheers :cheers:

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adhesion promoter only needs to be used if there are areas of bare plastic before you prime. The promoter should have been done before primer anyway. I would personally do 2-3 real good coats of primer with wet sanding before you lay down the color.

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+1 and don't use the P type sandpaper. Its much more course.

320 dry 400 wet 600 wet any higher and your just wasting time.

Color sanding thats another story.

Bingo. Coming from someone who did the prep work for a full faired bike last year, get yourself a comfy chair that can be easily cleaned and something handsfree like a TV to keep you occupied. It's not going to turn out the way you want the first time, and you'll probably have some annoying stuff the second time around as well. Get yourself PLENTY of sandpaper.

Do you have any fairing rash from going down at all?

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Thanks for the tips! Met up w/ Attackpainter this evening and he gave me some pretty good pointers (returning the dupli-color paint tomorrow, lol). Looking forward to finishing up the sanding tomorrow.

Do you have any fairing rash from going down at all?

No fairing rash at all. Plastics were near mint. Pretty ballsy of me to use nice looking plastics on my first attempt. Don't worry, I'm pretty anal about imperfection, so I don't mind if it takes me forever just to get the primer to go on smooth.

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Thanks for the tips! Met up w/ Attackpainter this evening and he gave me some pretty good pointers (returning the dupli-color paint tomorrow, lol). Looking forward to finishing up the sanding tomorrow.

No fairing rash at all. Plastics were near mint. Pretty ballsy of me to use nice looking plastics on my first attempt. Don't worry, I'm pretty anal about imperfection, so I don't mind if it takes me forever just to get the primer to go on smooth.

That's awesome then. I went down on both sides, used a body filler called (something) Ice to fill in the scrapes and curves. The first few times you use it, it's a real PITA, but after you get the mix right (it's two part plastic and hardener) it's all good. To completely (ish) prep the fairings on my Kat took me about a month and a half of work, I just did it for a few hours after work.

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