Tank & Fender Paint Pt. 3

To hold up the tank and fenders, I adapted three cheap Harbor Freight adjustable roller stands by taking the rollers off, adding plywood cradles made for each item, and putting the stands on wheels. The booth was pretty roomy for any one piece, but with all three, it was nice to be able to easily move them around. The second pic was actually taken after the painting was done.  

I had decided to go back to the original colors on the bike, which were "Olympic Flame" and black with a white pin stripe. Olympic Flame is a reddish orange metallic. Original Triumph paint codes are apparently difficult or impossible to get, but there are a couple of places that supply the paint. Don Hutchinson, a pretty well known Triumph guy is one of them. I called Don, asked a few questions, and he was pretty helpful. What Don sells is the DuPont Chromabase system, and though I could have bought some of the components locally, the datasheets are a little bewildering, so I ended up having him send me everything I'd need, except for the primer.  

First up (after a final sanding and wipe down with a degreaser and a phosphoric acid etch) was a two-part high-build urethane primer/filler/surfacer. This was my first experience with two-part paints. I mixed way too much, and of course once it's activated you use it or lose it. I wasted about half of what I mixed.

The primer gets sanded with 400 wet.

Then the base (color) coat. It is also a two part paint (three, if you count the reducer). The pieces got three coats about 10 minutes apart. The paint is dry enough to handle in 30 minutes. The base coats of two stage systems (at least this one) dry with a matte finish.  

I wasn't too concerned about painting the underside of the pieces. The undersides were primed in a separate step, and will get a different coating--probably something like a truck bed coating or undercoat.