A few months ago I bought the bike I've wanted for years, a
2005 ZX6R. It was not quite as pretty as I might have liked, but it was VERY
well cared for and a great price (plus I enjoy doing body work, so I don't mind
buying ugly).
Anyway, here's how she started out - the day I brought her home:
The first thing I did was to take off as many of the decals
as I easily could and replaced the stupid windscreen and put on some new
rubber. Very quickly I discovered, to my dismay, that the Monster logo still on
the bike in the picture at the right, as well as the "Cabron" and the star
seen on the pictures above were not decals, but painted on. I was planning to
leave some of this work until this winter, but vulgar hispanic slang isn't the
kind of thing I want painted on my vehicle...so I started work sooner than
anticipated.
I initially planned to just sand and prime the lower
fairings (to rid her of the vulgarity), leave the Monster logo, and leave the
rest of the work until winter (which is why the lower piece is missing in the
above picture)...but I had so much fun that I that I just didn’t want to
stop…so I started stripping everything off of her to sand, prime and eventually
paint.
By this point, I had already come up with the “concept art,”
if you will, and knew basically how I wanted her to look once all was said and
done. In order to accomplish this, as this stripping, sanding, and priming was
going on, I ordered a whole bunch of extra goodies to go on to her. I ordered
Kawasaki Green rim tape, gold shorty levers, black and gold bar ends, gold
windshield and fairing bolts, carbon fiber triple tree decals, plastic stencil
sheets, carbon fiber vinyl, a HID conversion kit, and some supplies to modify
the headlights (make it so that both are used for both high and low beams).
Most of these little accessories went on as I got them in the mail with the
exception of the windshield and fairing bolts, of course.
While everything was taken apart, I also took the
opportunity to install a SpeedoDRD, a Gorilla 8007 alarm, and lime green Core
stainless steel brake lines. I also took the opportunity to remove the
PowerCommander 3 the previous owner had installed (so I could sell it and buy
more goodies), flush the brake fluid, flush the coolant, change the oil, and adjust
the suspension.
The idea for the final look was to make her a bright
metallic/pearl green and put some carbon fiber vinyl on as accents. The paint
came from a local place that mixed it up custom for me (and pretty cheaply).
When they handed the paint to me over the counter, however, they told me that
it would really be best to paint it over white otherwise the color wouldn’t
turn out right. Since everything was already primed and finish sanded, I just
sprayed two coats of white over all of it and called it good.
When it finally came time to actually lay the paint on, I
invited myself and my grandpa over to my
dad’s house to use his garage and yard
to work in. The green went on much thinner than I expected and, consequently,
we ended up doing extra coats on many of the parts to make sure the coverage
was complete – which it was in the end. After taking a break for lunch, we laid
down two coats of clear (which needs to go on much thicker than I’m used to
putting anything on) and I let the parts all hang overnight.
When I came back the next day to pick everything up, I
couldn’t have been happier with what I found. Overnight, the clear coats had
self-leveled as they dried – which was expected – but had done so to a much
greater extent than I had expected. When I took a part out into the sun to
check out the final product, I swear if it wasn’t lime green I could have used
it as a mirror it was so smooth!
The whole thing was finished off with the carbon fiber vinyl bits I cut out in the hopes that it would work well with the green. I really wanted to stay away from the boring black or white stripes and stuff that everyone else does with Kawasaki green.
After putting all the carbon fiber vinyl decals on their respective panels, I put the whole thing back together and this is how it turned out:
The first thing I did was to take off as many of the decals
as I easily could and replaced the stupid windscreen and put on some new
rubber. Very quickly I discovered, to my dismay, that the Monster logo still on
the bike in the picture at the right, as well as the "Cabron" and the star
seen on the pictures above were not decals, but painted on. I was planning to
leave some of this work until this winter, but vulgar hispanic slang isn't the
kind of thing I want painted on my vehicle...so I started work sooner than
anticipated.
By this point, I had already come up with the “concept art,”
if you will, and knew basically how I wanted her to look once all was said and
done. In order to accomplish this, as this stripping, sanding, and priming was
going on, I ordered a whole bunch of extra goodies to go on to her. I ordered
Kawasaki Green rim tape, gold shorty levers, black and gold bar ends, gold
windshield and fairing bolts, carbon fiber triple tree decals, plastic stencil
sheets, carbon fiber vinyl, a HID conversion kit, and some supplies to modify
the headlights (make it so that both are used for both high and low beams).
Most of these little accessories went on as I got them in the mail with the
exception of the windshield and fairing bolts, of course.
While everything was taken apart, I also took the
opportunity to install a SpeedoDRD, a Gorilla 8007 alarm, and lime green Core
stainless steel brake lines. I also took the opportunity to remove the
PowerCommander 3 the previous owner had installed (so I could sell it and buy
more goodies), flush the brake fluid, flush the coolant, change the oil, and adjust
the suspension.
The idea for the final look was to make her a bright
metallic/pearl green and put some carbon fiber vinyl on as accents. The paint
came from a local place that mixed it up custom for me (and pretty cheaply).
When they handed the paint to me over the counter, however, they told me that
it would really be best to paint it over white otherwise the color wouldn’t
turn out right. Since everything was already primed and finish sanded, I just
sprayed two coats of white over all of it and called it good.
When it finally came time to actually lay the paint on, I
invited myself and my grandpa over to my 
