How To Paint A Motorcycle or Car Step By Step A-Z

Hey! What’s up!

Here’s a video of the motorcycle project that we just completed.

This is a glimpse of the whole process, starting from start to finish. You will see the detailed, step-by-step inside the VIP Course.

I had a few parts that we did with epoxy for the cracks. And I did some little Bondo work to fix a dent on the tank. I did all the bodywork on all the pieces. A job like this should be done by hand because it’s such a fragile area.

We block-sanded, put some 80-grit on it and cut all the high edges down.  We also used 80-grit over the original decal. The Yamaha decal was put on top of the red base and clear-coated over.

The plastic motorcycle fairing had a dent on the side. If you saw it before, it was pushed in. It probably fell over and dented it up. It was flat on the other side.

I show you some bondo work in this project. The bondo I used has been sitting in my garage and there was some glaze sitting on the top. That’s normal. Sometimes, there’s even a lot. I’ve had one person tell me, “I have all these glaze on it so I dumped it out.”

What?! You don’t have to do that. It’s actually the stuff that you need in your body filling to make it work properly.

Make sure that you squeeze the tube like well to get everything mixed up. You want to make sure everything is mixed up because you don’t want to go opening it up, squeezing it out and a bunch of clear liquid coming out.

Here’s a quick tip on how to easily cut sandpaper.

You need to sand all of your primer filler down flat so it looks like matte color. Then you’re basically ready to paint.

If you’re not a great artist who can draw cars really crazy, with graphics on them but you want to design a graphic on your motorcycle or your car…the easy way to do it is to take a picture of it or go on the internet and print a black and white copy of it.

I took a picture of my actual bike. I printed it out in black and white to draw my own graphic on.  Pretty cool, huh.  This is helpful to get some ideas on how you want the bike to look. So I know what I’m going to do: I wanted some areas would be silver and most of the parts will be green.

It’s a pretty cool way to get an idea of what you want to do with your car. If you don’t like it, you can just throw it out. I printed a few pages just to get some ideas on what I’d want to do. I drew some flames on it because I was thinking of doing some flames on.  Then there’s another version where I imagined it to be part black, part silver at the bottom with green on top.

And of course when you’re done with cars or bikes, you can buy  a graphic kit set and put graphic decals on top of your paint to make it pop even more. I added silver graphics.

So remember,  base coat is one-to-one mixture, 50/50 mixture, whatever you want to call it. It’s basically a one-to-one.

I always like to have a high fluid flow so watch that clip in the video where I show you how I adjust the fluid flow.

I’m only showing you little bits and pieces of the whole project on this video. If you want to learn more, you have to get the VIP Course.

The most common question that I get is, “After my base coat, how long do I have to wait before I start masking for graphics?”.

A lot of it depends on the weather. If it’s cool out, you may have to wait a little longer, 45 minutes to one hour and a half, before you start putting some tape in there.

In one part of the video, it was about 85 degrees , the temperature was dry and I show you masking out our tank graphic that we have on the design.

I first fine-lined tape my graphic, then I cut the ends with a razor blade very lightly. It looked  like a point in the end and I got a wave-looking action on both sides. It looked pretty cool when it was done.

When you’re doing this, you have to be very careful. I traced it with a razorblade and used it to cut out the excess. It is important that you use a brand new, sharp razor blade and just follow the line lightly.

So I did the graphic with fine-line tape and if you don’t know what that is, it’s just this little blue tape that’s called fine-line tape and it’s very moldable.  You can shape flames with it.  It comes in different thickness like 8-inch or 1/4-inch.

What I did was…first, I lined up the graphic with it, then I got some painter’s tape and I covered it and cut it because that part was going to stay silver. I laid the green base on top of the silver.

Now, the reason why I painted the whole tank silver was to give it a nice under base coat. So when I put my green on top of it, it made it pop even more than just painting over primer or a darker color. I wanted the green to really pop out.

After I got the graphic all done,  I taped up one more graphic for the number in the back.

Then it was ready for the green paint! Rock and roll!

When the green paint was dry, I got some black pinstripe and outlined the graphic with a black pinstripe then laid clear on top of the whole thing.

I also did an outline on the tank. It just spruces it up. It gives it more of a 3D look, even before I laid the clear coat on. It’s pretty easy. The two sides of the tank probably took me 20 minutes to do, each half side.

So, I’ve put all the pieces back together. I’ll show you exactly how to do it inside the VIP Course.  Remember to check it out after watching this video so you can easily complete any kind of project that you’re working on whether it’s a motorcycle or a classic refrigerator you want to restore —whatever it is that you want to restore…I’ll show you exactly how I do all these and also how to fix the mistakes. Some things happen when you paint and you’re going to go through some hard times but I’ll show you exactly how to fix it.

When I was done with the tank, a little bug flew right on it so I made sure to take most of him out and  really lay the clear coat on that area. It was easily color-sanded and buffed out and of course, I captured everything on video just like the other projects in my course. I also show you how to take care of stuff like this.

I tried getting some compound on the windshield but there’s just too much overspray on it and I have a problem taking it off. But my creative genius spoke to me and said, “Hey, why don’t you use the clay bar?”…which is a smarter, more logical thing to do.

You could use a little piece at a time but I’d like to have a good grip on it so I used the whole thing. I put some soap on the windshield to soak or anything smooth would do where it’s going to slide, right. All you do is rub it around until you take off the overspray.

Another thing, I totally forgot to drill my hole when I fixed the panel. It was cracked so I epoxied it, fixed it, but I forgot to drill the hole so I can put my screw in it. So, I just drilled the hole and you can see it in the video.

You will also see a clip where I wax and grease and clean the tank. And you can wax and clean over clear coat, you’re not going to hurt it. You don’t want to wax and grease over base coat because you’re just going to melt it off.

Don’t worry if you’re getting mixed up, I know I’m packing a lot of information in one video but in the VIP Course, I have step-by-step videos. I’m covering a lot of things in this one video because I just really want to put out a lot of good information here.

You will then see the finished tank that we laid two heavy coats of clear on. As you see, the decal is within the clear coat and it looks amazing, too. I mean you do feel the decal but you know it’s inside there and even the end part, it feels even better. You can’t really feel that part because it was previously in the clear and then we sanded it and cleared it again twice.

But the www.LearnAutoBodyAndPaint.com decal has only two coats of clear on it. I haven’t even buffed it out, but you could just look at the finish. You can see how nice it flowed on. Just check it out, it’s pretty cool. I want to show you how you can see the same results, same glassy results like it every single time. If you can lay clear coat on it, you really don’t have to color sand them and buff.

Regarding buffing…some people, they go over it a little bit and go, “Man, I can’t get the shine out, what’s going on?”.

Well, you haven’t buffed enough yet. As long as you’re using 2000-grit or finer, you’re good.

I don’t usually go down more than 2000-grit. Some people say it’s too coarse to buff over. It’s totally not. If you want, you can go to 2500-grit but 2000-grit in my opinion, is all I’ve used and all the other body shops that I worked with and I tell you…definitely, 2000-grit is where you want to be at.

You could see the gloss on it now. It looks beautiful. If you really want to get the bike looking good, you do this to the whole thing — color sand and buff the whole bike. But if you look at the quarter panel, it’s literally like glass. You could see the pinstripe and feel it a little bit coz the pinstripe is in the clear coat. You could see how nice that came out, and it feels nicer, too.

You put a little bit of Carnauba wax on it and you’re rolling in style.

That’s it. There’s a lot more to it that’s why you should really join us at the VIP Course. We walk you through these projects from start to finish. We teach you how to paint a motorcycle or car step by step, any other kinds of projects, even non-automotive ones like appliances and furniture.

Again, thanks for watching my videos. I hope you like the completed project.

Make sure you get your FREE 85-Page Auto Body And Paint Manual and a FREE 90-Minute Auto Body And Paint DVD.

I’ve put a lot of jam-packed information in there that I think you’re going to like. So if you want to learn more to do your own motorcycles, cars, classics, whatever you want to do with professional automotive finishes, I want to show you exactly what to do and what not to do so you won’t go through the pitfalls and trials and errors like people do.

So what do you think of the finished project? How do you like it? 😀

Let me know in the comments below. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks for watching! I’ll see you soon!

 

-Tony

 

Other Helpful Links:

Get A Free 90 Minute Auto Body DVD Here

How To Block Sand Primer Flat

How To Guide Coat and Block Sand Spot Putty To Fix Small Dent

How To Pinstripe A Motorcycle Tank

How To Paint A Motorcycle Yourself

Warick Spray Gun Review (what we use to paint at LABAP)