Carbon Fiber paint your Buell

[cronus1987]

First off let me just say that i take no credit for the tutorial. I can only add a few things that i learning in the process of following the guide in the video...

I can, however, give you pictures of the end product.

I personally can never leave well enough alone (I don't think i'm the only one here ), and i really couldn't afford to drop a few hundred bucks every time i want carbon fiber parts, so i round up the supplies, watch a vid and whuala.

I really wasn't going for super realistic looking cf. I just wanted it to look like it at a glance or from a few steps away. In person, on a sunny day it does look near perfect and i've had one person actually ask if it was cf.

Anyway, here's the actual how-to. This guy is really good, so go check out his other vids too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kv1MZ8WYklk
(maybe some one can imbed this? it doesn't seem to be working for me...)

I didn't have access to a paint gun, so i used duplicolor spray cans from autozone. The checkered mat i got from lowe's.

The list of supplies:
duplicolor primer
duplicolor flat black
duplicolor charcoal gray metallic (i'd go a little lighter in hind-sight)
duplicolor clear coat
Tool Box liner (i got Kobalt brand from lowe's)
masking tape
red scotch bright pad or the gray in between coat scotch bright pad.

I pretty much followed his instruction to the T, but i can add a few tips.
1. if the checkered mat won't lay flat, mask off sections and do it that way. The bezels for example pretty much have to be done this way..just let the paint dry for 2-3 hours before you put tape on it.
2. when he says to fog over it, just hold the can 10-12" away and barely pulse the spray nozzle until you get what you want. ALSO do this with a full or mostly full can 'cause it'll speckle it if it's near empty (had to redo a bezel after learning this)
3. spray fairly heavy coats of clear coat. the more depth you can add to it, the more realistic it'll look.
4. PRACTICE on some scrap first. spraying through the mat is tricky and it's really easy to spray too much and have the paint run. You need to hold the can pretty close to the mat to get a good checker pattern.
5. on the bezels make sure you sand off all of that coarse black coating before you start painting.
OH! and the bezels are just stuck on with double sided tape. heat them with a hair dryer for a while and they'll come off a little easier. They are pretty brittle so be careful with them. I broke both of them in the process, but some JB weld fixed it pretty easily.

I hope you all enjoy your finished pieces as much as i did!

 

[dave_xb12r]

That's pretty cool! I have everything at home already, I think I'm going to give that a try. I'm going to do a few things different. I'm going to spray a black matte and then silver over the top at a 45 degree angle, then I'm going to rotate 90 degrees and spray the black, then follow up with a clear coat. Hopefully I'll get that 3D look.

 

[xtremelow]

My buddy paints drag cars ( the big dogs, Like the Army's, not just local ones), anyway, since many cars either run composits or magnesium they use the same process to give a CF look to tge drag cars and at 200+ mph no one can tell the wiser.

Plus they paint these patterns all the time so they have it down where it looks damn real.

 

[ramjr55]

Awesome technique. I'd have to get all the air brush stuff but def an idea.

 

[Baal]

This is pretty cool. There is also some pretty realistic CF film out there; it's a fair amount of work to get it conformed to curved surfaces. It'd never work on the heelguards because of the holes. Thanks for the pix!