Dads a50 Cafe Racer

Awhile ago I painted up a few bits for Dads project which was to convert his Suzuki a50 into a wee cafe racer. In the recent earthquake the bike fell off the workstand, luckily only a small dent was found on the pertol tank and even better is was able to safe the gold pin stripe! Dad made up a fibre glass seat base which needed painting plus a few extra bits. Because I had to touch up the tank I thought I would add on some cool silver chequers to give it a real cafe racer look. The bike will look pretty cool once complete.

Condor Road Frame Transformed

The original paint job from the factory was getting a bit hammered with some paint flaking, chips and scrathes. The owner wanted traight black with a white seat tube, simple but classy. I put a small silver pin stripe where the black met the white which gave the frame a bit more style.

Jon Waghorn's Retro Yeti

Yeti's have been a favourite of mine from the days when I was a young lad, I used to ride a KHS but I made up Yeti stickers to go on my forks so it looked like a Yeti. One of my favourite bikes was a Yeti ARC which I bought in early 2008 when we left Melbourne and it was a bike i regret selling.

Jon sent me a photo via email which I had to try match the colours as best as I could which I think I got pretty close. The hardest part was doing the black darts on the top and down tube as there is 4 points on each tube that needed to be matched pretty well. First I painted on the yellow because that was a small area to mask up then did the black darts. The Yeti turquoise is such a nice colour and goes really well with the yellow and black. I had a few Yeti stickers to go on to finish off the frame then 3 coats of clear coat for a deep gloss finish.

Deano's 55 Porsche Spyder Replica

I heard about this job awhile ago but at the time I didn't know what type of Porsche it was, when I walked into Dean's garage about a 6 weeks ago I had a smile on my face straight away! I definately wanted to paint this cool wee car. Dean isn't a panel beater but the work he did on the body was tradesman material, a lot of the door and bonnet edges had to be built up and in some areas about 10mm. I left him to it for a few weeks to get it ready for the paint shop. I had a week off in between jobs so for me it was perfect and even better my old boss allowed me to use his workshop plus a few materials to get the job done.

The whole car body is fibre glass with a gel coat finish so I needed to spray a few coats of 2k high build primer over the gel coat for the base coat to adhere to. The primer colour was almost black which worked well as a base colour for the top coat (basecoat). After priming I had to do go round the car and fill in any small pin holes etc so they wouldn't show up in the top coat. I used PPG Cobra Basecoat which went on superbly and 3 coats of PPG Deltron Clearcoat that left a perfect finish with very little denibbing required (sanding out dust with 1500grit). The car is back at Dean's now and I am doing the final bits and pieces to it so he can go parade the wee beast round Wellington.

Every time I walk into his garage I can't help but think to myself that I did an awesome job and thats what I really enjoy about spraying. Dean is over the moon with how both of our work has came out and full credit to him he did a brilliant job on the panel beating. It is a great feeling having a project that is a success.

Will have more photos soon.

Nathon's MX Helmet

I was pretty excited to paint Nathon's new helmet, he sent me a photo of a helmet he liked the look of but he wanted different colours. His new bike is a Kawasaki so I thought green, white and black would be awesome colours to use, they seem to work real well together. Ater I unmasked the helmet with the green and black painted I wasn't satisfied with how it looked so I left it at that for the night and went home and came back fresh the following day with a new idea and fresh eyes. I got the pin striping out and started working with that and from there the helmet started coming together quite nicely. I learnt a lot doing this helmet and know where I can improve, I look forward to doing another helmet soon..maybe my own?! Watch this space.

Craig Madsen's Tandem

Jamis Xenith SL Colour Change

I quite enjoy the colour changes. The masking is always fiddly and takes abit of patience getting the corners correct so theres no small patches of overspray. On this frame the owner wanted the white on the fork, seat/chain stays and bottom bracket area painted black. I wasn't too sure if black was the colour to go for as the white did look quite cool but once the job was finished the black was a good choice.