Posted on March 19, 2010.
Preparing Your Chopper Motorcycle for Painting After you purchase custom painting manual guide, tools, paint and equipment, the next task is to dismantle the bike. Start dismantling your chopper bike with extreme precision. While breaking the chopper bike, you should be very careful with wires attached to the bike.
Dismantling chopper bike is not very difficult if you do it according to the custom painting manual guide. Remove only the motorcycle parts that you want to paint, like most people remove each and every part of the bike and find it difficult to mount it later. You have to remember while dismantling your chopper motorcycle, you have to mount it. Using the basic kit of tools, you can easily disassemble and assemble your chopper bike. You must collect all the pieces big or small your chopper bike very carefully when removing your bike.
Sanding
Sanding is done to remove old paint from the disassembled parts of the chopper bike and give smooth and silky paint. The process of sanding is done with sandpaper. Generally, there are two types of paper used in the sand sanding process motorcycles, is the first rough sandpaper and the second is fine sandpaper. rough sandpaper is used to remove old paint from the motorcycle and sandpaper is used to give smooth surface for new paint. If the old paint is remain on the bike so it might cause problems with the new paint. Therefore, sanding is very important before you start painting your chopper motorcycle. Never try to avoid sanding because it is very important for long-term gloss and the grace of new paint.
Sanding Your Chopper Motorcycle
Sanding a bike does not require knowledge or expertise. You must be careful in choosing the proper thickness of sand paper (rough sandpaper and fine sandpaper). sandpaper in the form of grain 600-1000 may be used, depending on the roughness of your chopper bike. 600 articles grit are used to say rough surface to remove old paint. 1000 articles grit are used for fine finishing of the bike.
Although sanding is not a specialized work, but it must be an expert to determine the regularity of the surface on which to paint. When you go for cleaning the bike, you must be well prepared, that persons engaged in such jobs are regularly exposed to dust (powder of old paint). Chances of getting dust in the eyes and throat are very frequent. Therefore, you should wear safety equipment. Ingestion of these powders can sometimes lead to lung cancer.
To finish your chopper bike, it is recommended to use 200 grain sandpaper. Smooth and sparkling motorcycle is the reward of good sanding. Use 1200 grit sandpaper dry and wet, if you want to paint a metallic color on your chopper motorcycle.
Chemical stripper for sanding
If you find it difficult to remove the old paint of your motorcycle with sandpaper, then you can also use chemical stripper. Apply the stripper very carefully all over the bike with a brush.
Chemical stripper can affect the skin badly. Therefore, you should wear safety equipment by applying chemical stripper on your chopper motorcycle.
How to apply chemical stripper
You should cover all parts of your bike, you want to paint with a transparent plastic sheet (available from any hardware store), if the vapor is trapped inside and work faster motorcycle. After covering the motorcycle parts with the plastic sheet, than wait for 2-3 hours and remove the plastic sheet.
Now you can begin to scrape the old paint from the motorcycle with a putty knife or scraper paint.
