This FS1E Yamaha panel carries a very 1970's french theme. My client is restoring an early FS, and wants this metal work finished in Yamaha popsical purple. That paint description is as 70's as you can get.

The early FS1E's had fitted tank badges

Popsical purple

This is the present mason purle restoration project, a beautiful little French made Motoconfort from 1949.

Its a 1949 scout or AT2 and its dimensions are extremely petite. A rigid rear end with girder forks the attention to detail on this little bike are amazing. I love the pinstripping that is every where even down the frame tubes.

I'm looking forward to painting this little beauty which is 100% complete. Its that small you could stand in your living room as an ornament when its not popping along the lanes.

I've always got a restoration project on the go. For me they fall into two catergories. firstly my own personal restorations, these are the bikes that I wouldn't sell and secondly my mason purle restorations. The mason purle restoration are the ones that end up on the market place and finance the 'next' project.
I thought you might like to see my present personal restoration project, its a Motodd Laverda.

I love the look of the Motodd which is the brain child of Phil Todd who is still racing Laverdas on the classic scene. Phil designed the frame and swinging arm to take the standard Laverda running gear. The exhaust is also a Todd design influenced by an early Laverda endurance racer.

There is a bit of fabrication work to be done and I've still to make a decision on the paint design and colour, although the iconic silver frame and orange paintwork always looks great. I think I will play with the names Laverda and Motodd with the emphasis on Motodd. 

I don't want to upgrade anything using modern kit, for me any add ons would have to be 'of the time' hence the Teleflex fork brace. The seat unit is a fibre glass replica item from the Laverda SFC 750, Phil told me that usually a 500 Monjuic seat unit would be used as it offered a bit more room but I like the look of the SFC although it needs its base extended about 20cm and re-upholstered as it stops short from the tank. Time will see all these small but visually significant issues addressed.

cardboard mockup infill

Standard XT tanks being prepared

New job in just being prepped up. This involves a bit of a conveyor belt approach as my client brought me three XT 500 tanks. I like the XT's they are an iconic bike of their time. Big single thumpers. I advised my client on two approaches for the standard tanks, one using the readily available vinyl graphics, as per bog standard. The second is to replicate the vinyl graphics in paint, airbrushing them on. The one that gets me going though is the third one, this plastic aftermarket tank from ACERBIS. I have advised my client on designing and then applying all graphics via the airbrush. Keeping with the standard XT colours to maintain a 'factory' finish but taking the design development of the graphics and final layout into a typography led theme.

Note the raised ACERBIS logo

All tanks are stripped back to metal by hand

Thirty years ago I would have been using cellulose paint. Today its becoming increasingly difficult to get a top coat cellulose and even then it depends on the make up of the paint i.e straight colours as opposed to metallics.
When I started out it was not uncommon for my local paint supplier to give me tinted cellulose clears in order to replicate the then new japanese candy motorcycle colours, today it's "got to be" an acrylic product and often a three stage paint system otherwise known as two pac. So whats it all about.
I was watching a documentary about the culture of coach travel in the UK and there was lots of footage showing coaches from the fifties, obviously I was drawn to the old vehicles and one clip showed a guy hand painting a coach. The finished job looked stunning, no spray gun, just a brush, a tin of coach enamel and a lot of know how.
The coach painter and the traditional oil based coach enamel  paint became obsolete over time and with it the loss of a particular skill base. You can still buy synthetic enamels that can be applied by brush or gun but over time the coach painter was replaced by the spray painter and enamels applied by gun were usually confined to big commercial vehicles. The automotive world was ruled by cellulose. A new skill base was called for, cellulose comes out the gun 'dry' so you needed an understanding of the paint and skill to work towards a 'wet finish'. and then a polish to bring up that deep lustre finish. Drying times were drastically shorter then using enamels, mistakes could be rectified quickly making cellulose  commercially more viable, more cost effective. Commercial vehicles were usually finished by gun with air drying synthetic enamels and this paint allowed the painters the flexibility to touch in chassis misses by hand with a brush.
As with the traditional oil based enamels the finishing top coat was the colour. With enamel you worked towards a high gloss brush finish minus the brush marks. This was achieved through understanding the viscosity of the paint and its run out nature, but the finish was gloss much like the paint you would paint your front door with.
With cellulose you built up your colour layers, flattening off between coats,  finishing with a wet top coat but usually needing to polish the cellulose up into the high lustre gloss finish.
Today cellulose is becoming harder to get and acrylic clear over base paint systems are the norm. In later blogs I will talk about the confusion between fact and fiction in relation to what is 'best' for the end user, thats you. And remember when I talk about the end user I'm not talking about motorists I'm talking about motorcyclists.

Clear over base is as it says on the tin a coloured base that dries to a matt finish and a clear lacquer to finish. The clear can be a single pac acrylic or a two pac. The two pac contains isocyanates and must be used in a strictly controlled environment.
I purchased this MVagusta limited edition Senna in 2002 the panel you are looking at was subsequently repaired by me in 2004 using two pac after a spill. What I became very aware of was that although the Senna looked stunning in its deep lustre finish if you carefully looked 'through' the lacquer to the base coat you could see a multitude of surface imperfections that were hidden unless looked for. The beauty of acrylic lacquers, they can cover up a lot of sloppiness, so beware.
In later blogs I will share with you my take on automotive paint development and how this impacts on you the classic motorcycle restorer.

This is a recently finished R76 BMW boxer twin. Finished in a clear over base acrylic system. The pinstripes on this finished job were applied with an airbrush, originally they would have been hand painted at the factory, usually by women. My client wanted the tank, side panels and fenders to be finished in BMW's 'Nuremberg Green'. This match was an early Honda car colour, I used a single pac lacquer on this. As you can see all my jobs are taken back to metal by hand. All metal work is etch primed prior to high build primers going on.

These technical information stickers are no longer available so this one is the original one that was retained.