Bruce, I totally appreciate all that you shared. I've done a fair bit of hobby painting in my past. That means that I'm no expert but, with a lot of effort and patience, I can pull of simple things like a solid black with a clear coat. Candies and pearls? I don't know. The cost of such materials has stopped me in the past and I know all the variables with spraying that stuff consistently. I'm pretty sure I'm not that good.
But 333 is your basic black X. The color code is PPG 9700. If I walk into a paint & body store, the guy is going to point to the can of "OEM Black" behind me, right next to the primers. I only know this because I once owned a black car and repeatedly asked about different grades of black. They always told me that unless it was a metallic or something like that, "black is black."
I also totally hear your fear on the Duplicolor stuff. The only reason I'm using it is because of the hassles of buying and spraying small amounts of paint. Unlike 99% of the rattle can stuff out there, I've had very good luck spotting in, clear coating and rubbing out their stuff. When you consider the cost per ounce, it's waaayyy overpriced but, I'm paying for convenience.
I've refinished some carbon fiber parts on my Buells with their clear. It's astonishing that it comes out of a rattle can--absolutely perfect results (after color sanding and buffing).
I even had a Cagiva gas tank where the factory clear was flaking. I was prepping it to exhibit at a vintage Italian bike show. My long-term choice was lose the factory paint job and the irreplaceable stickers, or at least try to preserve what was there with Duplicolor clear. I scuffed the factory clear, feathered the edges of the flaked areas, then reshot it with their rattlecan. I was stunned at how good it looked. I expected to see faint witness lines where it had flaked (it wasn't very thick to begin with). Nope. Two full cans of their clear and color sanded it after a couple of days and it looked great--nearly like new.
333 had some kind of decal on the tank, visible here in the photo from Gregg's registry entry:
I don't know who removed that decal but it looks like they did it with a bowie knife and a spade tip shovel. There are multiple gouges in the top of the tank. I suspect it was somebody at the Harley dealer in Sturgis, where the bike was sold (the Harley hate for these bikes still cracks me up--morons). The gouges go down to the primer. Out of curiosity, I measured the depth with a caliper: 0.010". The gouges are a mess.
The problem I have with repainting the tank isn't just the decal placement. I could do a great paint job on the tank, and even get the stickers in the right place and clear over it all. My problem would be reproducing the stripes. I can't do that and I don't know anybody who does. I wouldn't be happy if it weren't done right. I've seen repainted Xs and the giveaway is usually the sticker placement or the stripes. I won't pick on somebody's bike but, I could find a google picture of one of those paint jobs in about 10 seconds.
It also looks like something got run over on this bike. The lower lip of the fender got smacked and bent under and forward. That's much, much better than bending backward, which would have stretched the metal. The damage is all below the edge of that character line running around the fender. Of course the paint flaked. That is so far down that none of my friends looking at the bike has noticed it until I pointed it out. It also has a few chips along the leading edge (as so many do). It's not worth losing the striping to fix either of those blemishes.
Somebody also violently cross threaded the rear seat bolt riv-nut (yes, I wrote violently). They spun the riv-nut in the sheetmetal. It was so screwed up that it also put a dimple in metal because it pulled the seat down at an angle. The damage is very small but, being right in the center of that big expanse of metal (I'm running without the passenger seat), it's glaring.
So my choices:
- Full repaint and risk having the pinstripes bugging me forever more. It also takes away from the bragging right that I can point to the paint and say, "See? Look at this! This was a FACTORY paint job!" I'd rather not go there. I'm more about preservation.
- Do nothing. Plenty of people have told me I'm being too anal. It's a 15 year old motorcycle. It has some bumps and bruises. Live with it. Uhhh...no.
- Touch up the areas the best I can. I can hammer and dolly that little bit of damage at the bottom of the fender. I won't even use body filler. Just getting it dollied back into shape and smoothed out will achieve 99% of the intended goal. Nobody will ever notice it once the paint goes back on, gets some clear and gets color sanded. Even if there's a visible transition in the clear, it's well hidden and will look better than the damage. Ditto for the flaking clear around the left gas cap, gouges on the tank top and the chips at the leading edge of the fender: blended and black will look better than what's there now.
Out of the three choices, #3 achieves the most with the least dollars. #2 is just downright lazy and #1 is still an option if #3 doesn't work convincingly.
With a can of Duplicolor, I can still make the bike look better than 90% of the factory Harley paint jobs out there.
And...this is a good place to discuss it for future owners in exactly the same situation.
