I was lamenting the primer/sand/primer/sand/primer/sand/base/sand/base/sand/base/sand/clear/sand/clear/sand/polish process to a co-worker and he asked me why I was bothering to paint it. “Just wrap it”, he said. My immediate thought was that I could’t vinyl wrap it because… er.. well… uhm.. heeeeyyyyy… why can’t I vinyl wrap it!?
I ordered a 5’x2′ sheet of 3M 1080 in Gloss Blue Metallic, got some knifeless tape, and then went to Meijer for a can of denatured alcohol, some silicon kitchen spatulas to use as squeegees, a bottle of propane, some good scissors, and got to work.
I decided to start off easy, so I tried the gas door. I had already sanded and primered it, but my first lesson was that any little imperfection in or on the surface will be VERY obvious in the vinyl. The gas door had a couple tiny little particles of paint on it that caused some really ugly bumps all over the surface, so I pulled the vinyl off, and used a razor blade to smooth the surface of the door. Once it was smooth, I pulled out a new bit of vinyl and with a little stretching, squeegee-ing, and some heat from the torch, I got this:
I am very impressed with how nice it winds up looking! It has a deepness and uniformity to the color which would have been very difficult for me to achieve with paint. It also doesn’t want to chip very easily, but it does seem to be easy to scratch — the vinyl wound up having a couple scratches in it as it came off the roll.
My next attempt was the lid for one of the side bags. I tried doing it as one piece, all the way around, and I just can’t get the vinyl to shrink enough around the corners. On one side, I managed to burn a hole through and on the other, it just won’t un-wrinkle. I’m going to peel back some of that vinyl and use the knifeless tape to put a seam in to finish that one without wasting the vinyl that’s already on (or at least most of it) and then I’ll do the other side making sure that I put the seam on the side that faces towards the frame. Future parts will need to be done similarly to avoid that mess.
I’m not entirely sure how much of this stuff I’ll wind up needing, but I ordered another roll 30’x5′ today as well as a 1’x5′ roll of carbon fiber pattern vinyl for some of smaller trim bits. I’m thinking that maybe the insides of the forward-facing vents for the lower front covers and for the bottom sections of the left and right side panels. It goes on so easily, though, that I may make liberal use of it to help improve the overall look of the bike. Right now I’m thinking that I might be able to find a vinyl that would work well on the inside of the front fairing (the dashboard?) to make it look like it isn’t 30 years old.
So far, so good! Looks like I’ll be able to ride this thing soon, if I can keep this up.