Step 15 - Another Set Back

I went to the paint shop this morning with two of the pieces in hand to show them what was happening on the undertail. It looks like fish eyes, as if you are painting with oil based paints. Except I'm using water based paints. So it kinda looks like water spots, but that wouldn't happen with water based paints either.

Well the guys in the shop don't know a whole lot about the water based paints yet since they are so new. But we came to the conclusion that the surface was probably contaminated some how and that's why the spots were showing up so badly. I'm not totally convinced that's what it was. I think it was more likely the way the paint shot out of the gun. I'm going to switch to the other smaller air gun and see if that makes any difference. I resanded down the undertail and the gas tank to resurface it a little anyway just in case they were right.

Bad news is that they black paint has to be custom ordered and I ran out of what I had, so I have to wait 3 days for it to come in, so that will be like Monday at the earliest. Then I can repaint the black coat on those two pieces.

Meanwhile the other pieces look fine so I can move on to the white graphics and the clear coat on them....weather permitting. That's the other set back. there are dust storms going on here like Afghanistan and there is just no way in hell I can do the clear coat with this kind of dust kicking around. The black and white are one thing, they dry instantly, but the clear, that's gonna take a while to dry. So any dust in the air will stick to the clear and look like ass.

So I decided to mess with the skull stencil tonight, which actually went pretty well considering how the rest of the night was. I'm not sure the contact paper I have is strong enough to stick while painting over it but we'll find out. At least I'll have extra black in case I fuck it up this time.

Then I decided to try to get the angel eyes installed. so we put the headlight assembly in the over for 12 minutes and took out our nice little headlight loaf and managed to pull it apart. Then we kicked into getting the angel eyes in place. We decided that we needed to change the directions, of course, since we had a better idea. I thought it might be better to drill 2 little holes for the ends of the lights to stick thru. Which actually works better than the instructions tell you to do. however, as I was putting the right side in place I accidentally pressed too hard and snapped the damn light. which of course is one of the most expensive pieces on the bike. So now its all taken apart and I have one headlight done and the other is busted. great. now I can call them back and beg them to overnight only one replacement to me.

I installed the cool LED's in the front intakes tonight though and the glue on them is surprisingly strong. They are staying right where they were put, along a curve.

So anyway, tomorrow, back on the white graphics and we'll see how that goes.