HOW TO: Paint graphics

Here's how to paint graphics on your bike, car, truck, boat, whatever. Read it start to finish for the complete instructions because the way I explain the process.

I really like the Duplicolor Perfect Match paint since it's great for DIY painters who don't want to bother storing and taking care of all the painting equipment. 

So here's where the project started:

Project started with a cracked 1000rr fairing off ebay

Plastic welded the fairing

sanded the clear coat off the fairing

Plastic welded and undertail on 

Add caption

Vents for 1000rr tail

Plastic welded the 1000rr vents for a seamless look later

played around on photo shop making the graphics design for the CBR

Traped the design of the graphic I liked to see how I'd like it on the CBR

Custom CBR 929 seats

Painted base color after all the prep work and primer etc (see how to paint article I wrote)

Use some high quality masking tape for you graphics lines. the blue tape is crap for this kind of work

You can buy the skinny roles of tape... but it's the same price as the normal role... so if you split it yourself you save 3x the money on tape. 

The thinner the tape strip the easier it makes extreme turns without wrinkling.

Mask off and paint your lightest colored graphic first. Painting white over red would be difficult without tons of layers.

Took six layers of paint

Here's the Dupli-Color perfect match color "Victory Red"

If you make a mistake painting you can always reverse the tape onto the graphic and repaint the damage. Just wait 5 hours or so before putting tape on this fresh paint

Only put on a couple coats on, sand, and repeat until the flaw in the paint job is gone.

Taping graphics advice

You can pull the tape up once the paint is tacky or it can be the next day... no need to cut the paint edge first. Ridges will wet sand out.

My 1000rr tail graphics

dab the 1000 grit sand paper in water and use the flat edge against the graphic line to clean up the pain line.

if you wait more than 8 hours or so you'll have to wet sand the whole piece and 1000 grit so the clear coat can stick

Immeditately wipe off the wet sanding water or it WILL stain the other colors

The wet sanded red paint stained the white

To tape off the graphics you want take out the tape design you mocked up earlier. Measure, measure, measure.

How to tape graphics:)

use the same method for laying all the graphics to paint down.

Method for painting graphics

taping over the red hear will save it... fixed some stained white areas by painting white after this... then black

taped off the graphics so I could repaint the white.

Crap masking tape can leave goo or rip off your paint.

taped off graphics on 1000rr 

fixed the white paint using paint of the bade areas then wet sanding

white dried for an hour so I carefully taped it off without getting crap tape on it. Now to paint the black graphics on.

before painting anything you've handled or not been to in hours and hours wipe it down with alcohol

here's the area I had to repaint because of the stain. Now to clean up the paint ridge edge with wet sanding.

wet sand the 1,000 to fix the harsh paint lines on your graphics

After you fix all the ridges you can clear coat. I use Dupli-Color perfect match clear.

finished custom 1000rr graphics

no more paint ridges... just need to wet sand the "egg shell" out of the clear coat.

Matt Behning CBR 929

Matt Behning CBR 929 custom tail

Matt Behning custom 1000rr tail on CBR 929

Matt Behning, Custom LEDs on CBR

With enough patience any paint flaws can be fixed with wet sanding, re-taping, and re-painting. Using the high quality spray cans is nice for that because you can switch back and forth from painting one color to another easily.

Have fun! You can do these kind of graphics over your bike's stock paint after taking a heat gun and removing the stock graphics and wet the stock clear coat with 1000grit enough to lightly scuff it so the graphics stick.

Good luck! 

-Matt Behning
(Stillwater MN)