A paintjob for Kermit

[Aerik]

Okay, so some people may remember my write-up last summer about Kermit. If not, here goes: Kermit is a 2001 Ninja 250 that Raincheck bought for a starter bike. It had a bunch of weird problems, and we spent epic amounts of time trying to fix it up. We got it mostly functional, and he had a decent season riding it.

The plastics were a little messed up (it had been dropped before, and so on), and Raincheck flipped over a guardrail with it as well. Also, it was OMGWTFBBQ kawasaki green.

Anyway, this summer he was ready for a bigger bike. I had bought Todd's ninja 600 for my wife (Scari812), but she was too short for it to be a good fit. So, we traded, and I acquired a Kermit.

This week, we painted the damned thing.

Here's the 'before':

And some of the damage on the plastics:

Needless to say, a bit of fiberglass was called for. A lot of fiberglass, actually. Anyway, we decided to follow our motto, "When in doubt, murder it out".

For those who don't know, that means we're using flat black rattlecan paint, because we are fucking classy in here.

So, to make sure this is as janky as possible, we made a paintbooth by hanging plastic sheets from my open garage door:

And yes, we used an old surround-sound speaker for a paint stand:

And I actually got Cari to come out and help:

On the second day, we gave up on the paint-booth because goddamn it was stuffy in there:

Also, because we're not exactly a well-trained body shop, we made a few stupid mistakes that led to us having to re-sand, re-prime, re-wetsand, and re-paint the tank and main fairing like three fucking times. We got weird 'droplets' sprayed from the can, strange 'furry spots' in the dried paint, and so on. Yay.

In the end, though, it came out alright:

Total cost, including paint, dropcloths, and all sanding supplies: about $45.

[hollywood3586]

wow looks better.. way to go..