Restoring an old Honda. Exact match of the original Candy Ruby Red

[Ayers Garage]

I'm doing a full coating job on a Honda Mini Trail right now. These jobs have been my bread and butter since I opened the business. I counted them up, and this will be the 14th one of these bikes I've coated in this color since July 1, 2011.

A little back story. When restoring these things, the headlight buckets are always wasted since they are plastic. 40 year old plastic is never good. Fortunately, Honda still sells brand new buckets for them, but only in Candy Ruby Red. So, I paid my supplier to formulate a base undercoat and candy topcoat that matches the new headlight buckets perfectly. I'm very protective of this powder match since it cost me a good bit of money to have it done. Other coaters have asked for it but no one wanted to pay for the development costs so I keep it to myself.

Here is a new OEM Honda headlight bucket next to my powder on the forks.


I don't want to sound like a braggart, but the finished results are stunning. No matter how many of these I've done, when I take the finished part out into the sun it never fails to take my breath away.




Completed bike owned by a customer in Virginia. I did the coating, but he did the magic on assembly. I'm probably as proud of his bike as he is.


Anyway, the get down to nuts and bolts. A customer contacted me about coating his bike and we worked out a deal so here we go.

These are the pieces I'll be working with.


Got some rust to deal with.


The way I do that is to thoroughly sandblast it and use a filler powder. The filler powder is designed to flow smooth over pits and rough areas, just like normal filler primer that painters use, except mine is powder instead of liquid.



I always remove the decals by hand sander rather than media blasting. It takes too much dwell time with a blaster to get it all off. I prefer to keep the blasting as minimum as absolutely needed.



I'll remove the ID tag from the headtube so the area underneath it gets prepped and coated as well as everything else. It takes a bit of effort but the customer gets a nicer product with no masking lines are future rust worries.


He brought me new shocks (Chinese aftermarket units). I disassemble them so I can get the shrouds off for coating. There's a lot going on it this picture. You can see the frame ID plate there that has been removed. Also, some plugs there to show you what I use to mask various threaded holes to keep powder out of them. Also, the reading glasses that show you I'm rapidly approaching 40 years old.


Then everything gets dipped into the vat of stripper. I use Methylene Chloride which removes paint in about 30 seconds and powdercoat in 3 minutes. It's bad, bad stuff. Every time a drop lands on your skin, there will be a permanent scar no matter what you do. Then out of the vat and spend a lot of time pressure washing it to remove all traces of the stripper. After that it's in to the oven for an hour to further assure nothing remains in the seams.


Next installment should be interesting. There's a lot of prep work to do before any powder is applied. Much media blasting, masking, plugging of holes and the like.

[Buellboy]

The picture of the CT70 in Ruby Red is an exact match for my first bike. It is stunning.
My next bike was a 4 speed CT70H in Orange metallic not the teal green you strip here.
Either way, over 75 bikes later, it is a walk down memory lane. Thanks for sharing.....

[cjeter]

That looks real good

[donroger1]

Like I said before, You do Pretty Work!!!!!!

Makes me wish I had a project!!!

[wanabeguru]

You do beaudyful work[take-off from add here]

[Ayers Garage]

I started with the pretty work today. I like to do these in two stages. One stage the frame and the other stage all the rest of the parts.






I wish the sun was brighter to really get the pop in the pictures.

[wanabeguru]

Use flash on camera? Still looks great, though!

[owtcast]

Nice.

[shipman]

Looks gorgeous! Has me contemplating frivolous things like ditching the plastic hubcaps on my wife's Nissan and having the stock steel wheels powdercoated in a similar finish, but copper! Then some chrome lugs, center caps, and... Wait, who's paying for all this?

[focus frenzy]

I can't get the vision of a candy ruby SV1K out of my head!!!

[wanabeguru]

Leon: It is only money!

[Ayers Garage]

Another job, ready to go back to the owner for assembly.

[Ayers Garage]

Tomorrow I start restoring some Honda CR250 engine pieces and another Honda job, but this one a Mini trail 50. Should be fun. And the Royal Enfield dealer needs some work done too. Busy, busy.

[AustinJake]

Really beautiful work.

[MSl77384]

Beautiful work there!

[Liteitup]

Awesome. Forgive my ignorance, what does the owner have to do to keep that shine? Wax?

The luster and sheen is some of the best I have ever seen!

Quality work indeed.



RB

[focus frenzy]

what would it run do do a couple ZRX wheels in gold?

[therealbigman]

, still getting stuff ready for you Kev , Time is my worst enemy ,

another top notch Job,