ive got a couple of ride-less weeks coming up due to eye surgery so im looking for something fun to do in my time off work recovering. just spotted a few videos about plasti-dip and was wondering if anybody has tried it before? i could pick up 4-5 cans for the money id be saving on petrol by not riding so its worth a play with haha. im in the process of making a fly-screen for the mt03 so thinking of coating that with plasti-dip to see how it goes rather than painting it properly. that wont take a lot of time to do or much of the stuff so im looking at other things i could play about with. im leaning towards doing the wheels with a sort of satin black finish like this which would look much nicer than the current standard black they are now... or if im feeling super adventurous, im thinking about looking what colours they do and doing wheels and tank too for a full colour change as i can always peel it off if i dont like it. my question to you guys is... if i was to plasti-dip the tank of the bike a different colour, would i have to declare a change in colour to the dvla? its only the tank which is coloured, but as plasti-dip peels off it wouldn't be a permanent change, more of a protective coating so would that still need to be declared? cheers chaps.
decided on the plan after looking at the v5... although my bike looks blue its technically called green. the designer at yamaha is blatantly colourblind haha. To avoid the issue of a potential change in colour declaration ive decided to go for the steve mcqueen special edition bonnieville look as I think it could look awesome. going to do the tank matte camo green, and silver plastic bits, swingarm, wheels and fork bottoms matte black. imagine this bike... with similar paint to this.... no idea if it will work out like this but its worth a play considering its reversible.
I've been reading up on PlastiDip and one thing you have to be careful of is high-wear areas. More specifically, the tank. Where your legs, jacket and zip rub it'll peel and scratch off very quickly, plus if you drip/spill petrol on it you'll have a nasty mess - don't wipe it whatever you do otherwise you get this: Also be aware that it's a pain in the ass to clean, and microfibre cloths will drag/peel the coating.
heard the same. checked on my way into work where I was touching...as its a very upright position, my knees dont actualy touch the tank. there are plastic panels on the points where my.legs touch. if those wear through the dip I may vinyl wrap those points so its a bit more rugged. im normally super careful when fueling up. only ever had one spill on the tank in 4years of riding. cleaning wise im more of a rinser than a scrubber. I don't mind a bit of dirt so normally I just whack a bit of muc off and rinse. (will do a test piece before I clean fhe bike with it incase it reacts) plus having a sort of military look, a bit of dirt wouldn't be too out of place so a good water only rinse would probably do it.
seems harder to do but may use on high ware points if If the plastidip doesn't hold up well. wouldn't have the skill to wrap the whole tank and wouldn't wanna pay to have it done. this is just a project to play on while im a pirate for a few weeks.
I've used plastidip before. I plastidipped my helmet (which looked awesome) and it didn't last very long because I kept getting pelted with stones or banging it about in uni. I plastidipped Adams engine casings and it held up pretty well - it hasn't peeled anywhere (not by itself anyway). Before: After:
It ain't cheap though. The Yanks get it for like $5 for a 400ml spray can from their local Home Depot, but here in the UK you're looking at £15-16 a can (at least). Lol you tell a Yank he has to pay $20 for a can of PlastiDip and suddenly no-one would bother so much with it!
just the knee panels and fly screen im making left to do now. Turned out really nice imo. Looks much better in person headligh mounting brackets gone from silver to matte black, tank from blue-ish to camo green, radiator covers to matte black from silver and footpeg hangers from matte black to camo green.not bad for about £40 for the 4 cans- 2 of each colour with spare for touch ups.
The process itself was a piece of piss, even considering ive never touched a spray can before. Took the parts off the bike that I wanted to do. Gave them a good wash with some soapy water and then dried with a hairdryer cos im impatient. Propped the tank up on bits of wood on the grass and hung the little stuff off the washing line in the garden and put 5 wet coats on each item leaving ten mins in between coats. The coats go on wet as its sort of self leveling but you have to be careful not to overdo it to the point it runs. Also its important to go over the edges so there are no exposed edges that wind and rain could have a go at. Im pretty confident this will last okay but ill update in a few months to let everyone know how it lasts. The camo type plasti-dip has quite a textured finish whereas the normal black is a satin finish. There is quite a difference in between the two. Left them hung in the garage overnight to dry and then removed the tank cap this morning, peeled it off of that, cleaned it and put it back on, then I lightly scored around the yammy badges and peeled the plastic off of those then whacked everything back on the bike again. In total id say it was about three hours work including time between coats and removal/reinstalling of bits with 18 hours left between application and putting back on the bike. Most difficult part was taking the tank off without spilling any petrol as ive never done that before but got the hang of it on the second attempt and figured out which way it needed to tilt so no petrol was lost.
Pretty much done now. Made my flyscreen over the weekend but not fitted yet as still making up a bracket Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk
Looks smart that mate... I wasn't sure about the color scheme but it's worked out well I think to compete the look, the swingarm may need to be black... What d'ya recon? Live Forever or Die Trying
Having said that, the front forks and swing arm both being silver kinda give it balance... Hmm Live Forever or Die Trying
Doing the Swingarm and forks was my original intention. seems a pain in the arse to get it off so thought id leave as it is so it looks more like its came out of the factory like that, rather than looking blatantly custom from a distance. Im a fan of subtlety. If what ive done holds up i may do it in the future if I fancy another mess around with it. It Was hard enough getting the front fork out to do my fork seal as I dont have a headstock stand so dont even wanna contemplate how id manage Swingarm removal lol
