| Author | Message | ||
     Captainplanet |
I finally finshed polishing my bike. I did the frame on the bike. I removed the swingarm to do it. Makes it look like a different bike. Now for the paint. The bodywork will soon be the color of the rim stripes.  | ||
| Evil_twin |
It's good. It's goooood. Rich  | ||
| Brucelee |
Can you explain more about how you did this and how long it took? What about upkeep on this? Thanks | ||
| Ilikehotchicks |
yes as i would also be interested. I am someone who has no exp. Polishing things. Did you have experiance before you did it? Or did you just get with it and do it? Was the swing arm the only item needed to be removed? And How hard was it to remove? Also What are the rim stripes made out of? Paint? thanks ben | ||
| Steviejay01 |
Great job there man....... Let us know what you did. Looks like a really good finish too! | ||
| 1320 |
Check this out http://www.zoops.com/zoopseal.asp it is not cheap but it works unbelievbly well and lasts 2-3 years before you need to re-apply... | ||
| Captainplanet |
The rim stripes or from tapeworks.com. The polishing is not difficult, it is just very time consuming. Overall, I have about 80 hours of work in the polishing. Basic steps are: 1 - remove paint (either by sanding or by chemical strip). Then wet sanding with 400, 600, 800, 1000, 1500, and then 2000 to remove all scratches. Then I used mothers metal polish and a grinder and a drill with cotton polishing heads on them. Once polished the maintainence is easy. It stays bright a long time. If it dulls a little, just use some mothers metal polish and it will brighten right up. Everytime you use mothers on it, it look even better. I actually have a little more work to do around the frame head, but I need to pull the triple tree and forks to do that. Otherwise all of the frame can be polished by just removing the plastic bodywork. The swingarm is easy enough to remove, but you need to suspend the bike from the ceiling to do it. A couple of tips here. The gas cap is not aluminum and can not be polished. Use a magnet to check the parts if you are not sure if they are aluminum or steel. Lots of other small parts polish, like the front motor mount, brake and shift levers, etc. The heel guards are made of some type of alloy that does not take a polish. I guess I will have to buy the damn chrome ones. | ||
| Ilikehotchicks |
i got my chrome ones on ebay for about 20$ shipped =) | ||
| Joojoo |
Very sharp!!! Nice work. Jack edited by joojoo on February 15, 2004 | ||
| Xb9er |
To each his own... The "chrome" look on sportbikes just doesn't look right to me. I have the same bike and it's like you ruined a great looking finish. And the rim strips, pretty gaudy. Just my opinions. But, I must admit, it's probably going to look cool with orange bodywork. If you happened to watch 2-Wheel Tuesday recently, they had a guy in who specializes in actually chrome plating billet parts!!! They had a chromed-out, custom painted Hayabusa. It looked completely ridiculous (even more so than stock Hayabusa's). | ||
| Turnagain |
nothing wrong with polished aluminum (oh yeah, disclaimer -- IMHO). I looked at their new small accessory catalog and thought they'd dropped the word 'chrome', but from now looking at the site, it looks like they listened and offer more polished bits.  polished__vs.__chrome | ||
| Bigsherm9r |
Hey, CPT Planet- Looks awesome, especially the rims. My heelguards polished up fine, in fact they were the first things I ever polished, encouraging me to do the whole bike. Sherm | ||
| Captainplanet |
Sherm, That is strange. No matter what I did, I could not get the heel guards to polish. My bike is one of the very early 03's. I wonder if they changed material. Mine had no paint on them, only a brushed aluminum looking surface. I already ordered the chrome ones from DaveS anyway, so I guess I won't worry about it. | ||
| Xb9er |
Yeah, Capt., that must be it. What you describe is exactly what the heel guards look like on my early '03. | ||
| Captainplanet |
Just so I don't spread bad information. In my post above where I said my heel guards would not polish, I was wrong. What appeared to me to be a raw aluminum finish was apparently anodized or coated with something extremely tough. Upon putting a wire wheel to it, the coating came off and I was able to sand smooth and polish the heel guards. |
