Instead of the usual 4 wheeled beasts we have coming our way, today marked the return of something different for us. It has been a long, long time since we detailed a bike (nealry 2 years in actual fact :shakehead: ) and had fond memories of the previous one....An italian stallion in the form of an Aprillia RSV Mille. Today was the turn of another 'mille' albeit this time one from the land of the rising sun...a GSX-R1000 :headbang: Working on bikes is somewhat of a different and often more challenging experience. Whilst the actual size of the canvas is alot smaller than a car, it's all the little details that tend to bog one down and eat up your time. Add to that all the finicky little angles and curvey bits on a bike and it is easy to see why working on a bike is not always quicker than working on one of it's 4 wheeled cousins...well for us anyways! Anyways enough :bla2: lets get to the actual detailing bits. We decided to attack the wheels first (especially the rear) considering these were full of spattered chain lube and looked dreadfull. The whole bike (incl wheels) wound up being cleaned with a 4:1 solution of Meg's APC to cut down the grime and to try and clean up the chain spatter. In the end we needed to revisit the wheels with Sonax tar remover to remove the majority of the chain lube and to try and get them looking decent again. Once that was done the car was given a quick rinse and dry before proceeding to the paint correction. As far as correction goes the Gixxer's paint proved to be quite hard and needed several passes with varying combo's to effectively knock back all the swirls and the majority of the more serious RIDS and scratches. Worst off seemed to be the tank, both the top as well as the sides where the riders knees would go were badly scratched and marred and needed some aggresive polishing to remove most of the defect. Our weapons of choice today were none other than our new 3M pads (regular and spot pads) along with SIP, 106FA and 3M's Fact Cut Plus compound. At the end of the day we were both impressed with the outcome and wound up the topping the paint with a coat of 4* UPP. The finer details involved dressing the frame and all plastics/seats, etc with 303 Aerospace protectant and polishing up the exhaust with Sonax metal polish. Overall another fun detail and learning experience for us that the customer seemed to truly appreciate :applause: Righty on to some pics starting with various befores Bugs from the previous days burn out to the country side Tar and chain lube galore, this stuff was everywhere :thud: Toasty pipe Some of the swirling And some of the other random defects which proved difficult to capture (time for a new camera) Some comparative shots, left side un-corrected And right side corrected No in-between pics but a collection of random before and afters And finally some afters Once again thanks for looking :thumb:
Hi Carn, What a real cool bike and you did a great job on It. Thanks for sharing...:thumb:...:thumb:...:thumb:
Great job and the bike looks incredible. Love the work you are doing down there in SA. Bikes are not easy. I've done one and it was much cleaner when it arrived than yours was so I can really appreciate the work you did.
Yeah i agree with everyone on how great of work this really is..We all know the nooks and crannies of cars but when detailing something new it take a lot of discipline to get the small stuff right..how did you manage your way around the stickers/decals?
Well done, the bike looks incredible. I really like the colour scheme, not just the blue but the rims as well...everything just seems to mesh well. Any who I haven't detailed a bike my self but just looking at it I'm sure it's just as difficult (if not harder) then a regular vehicle. Well done :thumb:
Thanks for all the kind words guys :thumb: MWAUTOPRO we wound up spending around 6 or so hours on this one. Slightly less than the usual 8 or so hours on a motor car but alot of the bike was in pretty good nick and the clients main concern was removing the swirling and some of the marring J Bell I don't know if this is still the bikes original paint scheme but almost all of the decals were cleared over. The ones that weren't cleared we went over lightly with the 3M blue Finessing pad at slow speed :thumb: JL & Ken, myself and Grant were just saying how difficult a bike with lots of chrome would be (something like a Harley I guess) :thud: This one was a refreshing change :headbang:
