Our little painting project

[Shifty]

Ok well as we all know ZZR250s are pretty bulletproof little thing and tend to suffer a little body-wise due to owners either being beginners or tightasses (or both)!

I bought my ZZR from RG and although it presents well in photos if you get within about 5 metres of it you can see it has had a VERY hard life! I have no idea what I'm doing, but I've decided to paint it.

I've put in a lot of hours so far, and will shortly post up some "before" and "progress" photos... hopefully the "after" result will be liveable

[Shifty]

Ok well this is how it looked before, but it's had a couple of stationary drops from a certain learner since then... but even so if you look closely you can see the duct tape holding on the front guard, and the clutch-side mirror is barely attached at all (dodgy fibreglass job)... so the aim is to fix these things up.

[mike-s]

If in doubt with fibreglass, tear the stuff right off, sand back to the plastic & start again! I've seen some jobs and by god they are just horrible!! I haven't seen my old GPX since i sold her, but i imagine the glass job under the front guard and in the bellypan is still holding up spectacularly, given the thorough job i did to make sure it would last a long time (it lasted the 18 months i had her after those repairs without a single problem).

Oh and once you've finished up the surface to your satisfaction, here's a link to d.i.y. repainting. I may start following this myself sometime soon in an effort to redo the tank on my 250.

[Shifty]

An example of the great existing fibreglass work is attached... as you can see it's a fantastic finish

[Shifty]

So I ground back all the fibreglass (note: wear mask! that shit is nasty!), which separated the part that was actually completely broken off, and started from scratch.

[Shifty]

After considerable effort & plastic welding, I have this!

[Disco]

If in doubt with fibreglass, tear the stuff right off, sand back to the plastic & start again!

So you can repair plastic with fibreglass .Sorry about my nOObness.Will definatly follow this thread to learn a thing or two .....

[Disco]

Very impressive shifty I was a pvc welder for 3 years when i was a wee lad....Looks like you have it covered

[Shifty]

I'd always wondered where you get those indicators that sit in the tail fairing... as it turns out, they're just painted over!!

A bit of time with some sandpaper and they came up a treat.. just need to get some 2000 onto it.

[Shifty]

Pic 1: Lots of tedious and fiddly little bits need to be addressed with patience...

Pic 2: Starting to feel like I'm making progress now that a lot of the parts are in primer... although you'd be surprised how hard it is to find a shop that has more than one can of grey plastic primer in stock

Pic 3: Me posing with the camera, while the real trooper does the work!

[mike-s]

If in doubt with fibreglass, tear the stuff right off, sand back to the plastic & start again!

So you can repair plastic with fibreglass .Sorry about my nOObness.Will definatly follow this thread to learn a thing or two .....

Yup, though ideally you should plasticweld the part first so it has its on inherent strength, and then if still required, reinforce the repair with fibreglass.
Basically on the front guard on gpx750's there is/was a common design flaw that caused the guard to crack just in front of the forks in a little recess in the guard. I stripped the front half of my guard down to bare plastic, glassed it up on the inside and bog filled the outside (i hadn't heard of plastex and i knew that any plastic melting repair was likely to end in tears if i was involved)

the front guard had been fully repainted in this pic (small pic, large pic).
the guide i wrote up & put on another forum (ocau/mc).
see this thread where hows & why's are discussed.

[robertharding]

i have a lil gpx 250 and thinkning of doning the same.... but honestly i think it may be easier to source out a decent fairing from a wrecker as i have done welding but never even heard of plastic welding..... is this process similar to regular welding???

[mike-s]

uhm, there are two ways to do plastic welding. both involve prepwork of cleaning up the area of paint & glue or whatnot
The first is to use a soldering iron and having some donor plastic (i.e. broken fairing bits) and melting the two together to bridge any gap and to make a strong bond between the two peices.

The second (and the one i've had more luck with" is to use a product called plastex and prepare the area like you do for using a soldering iron as well as bevelling the edge of the gaps, the rougher the finish on the job the better for binding purposes (a dremel type grinder does the job perfectly) and using tape or something to fill the underside of the gap to prevent the powder or liquid from escaping. apply the powder to the appropriate area, use the liquid applicator and put drops of the liquid on the powder. Let it set, (give it a hour or so to thoroughly cure) then grind out the other side to a shallow v channel again and repeat the performance.

[Damon Z1000]

Get that mask off ya softcock!

Mate, I got some you beaut epoxy 2 part paste you can have if ya PM your address and details.......... easy peasy, abraid the back of the parts, line em up, hold in place with tape, butter epoxy to back of part and allow a good 24 hrs to cure.

Good shit, your call

Damo

[Shifty]

I don't squid, even when sanding! Actually I'm an asthmatic so that dust and shit is pretty nasty... not to mention the fact it probably causes cancer anyway

Most of the repairs are now done, although I'm annoyed as one of the big repairs I did broke when I did it up - turns out the metal bracket it bolts to is bent, so when I did it up it tried to pull it out of shape which resulted in a nice 'crack' sound... thankfully I was really tired and didn't have the energy to get mad at it! I'll send you a PM, as it might be handy to reinforce the back of the repair when I redo it.