Painting the Tinware 1 - Preparation

We're onto the last major area of the restoration now, with the refinishing of the "tinware" - fuel tank; mudguards and side panels.

The bike was originally supplied in "Maroon and Chrome", something like this gorgeous example we saw at the National Motorcycle Museum:

However, I decided at the outset that I didn't have the budget to rechrome the tank and mudguards, so I am going to follow that same pattern of tank "inlay", but using colour not chrome. 

Almost every other Crusader I see is red and I have a thing about old British bikes looking good in green so that's what I'm doing! The actual colours (according to their pantone swatches) are as below, with the main body being a British Racing Green and the tank panel and mudguard centre stripes being a mid grey. 

There will be a gold pinstripe at the junctions, which I am hoping to do by hand (sort of) but with a plan B to use tape if it all goes horribly wrong.

I've opted to use Halfords spray enamel, as I've been using the black with some good results and it should be easy to touch up if it needs it in future. Remember, I'm not aiming for a concours restoration here; just a good looking, presentable bilke that I can turn up to shows on but also not be afraid to ride.

I have previously had all of the panels media blasted. The side panels and front mudguard are in pretty good condition and will need no repair work. 

The rear mudguard has a couple of spare holes that look like thay have been carved out with an ice pick - I'll be filling those - and also the metal around the seat mounting bolts has been damaged so I'm going to reinforce that area.

The tank needs the most work. The original chrome plating has been pretty badly rusted in a lot of places and there are loads of small pinholes where it has started to rust. I need to do a lot of work on that to make sure I have ground away all the loose edges of chrome and got to any creeping rust underneath. That is going to end up needing a lot of filling!

Mudguard Repair

Firstly, I wanted to reinforce the seat mounting holes. The metal in this area was generally a bit beaten and misfigured. As it will be largely hidden under the seat, I wasn't precious about getting a perfect finish, but I did do a bit of rough "panel beating" to get it back to something much more like the proper shape. I used a cloth over a bag of wet builder's sand to form a shape to beat against, which worked surprisingly well!

After grinding back the metal on the underside to get a shiny surface, I shaped a couple of repair washers to form a curve matching the profile of the mudguard and then epoxied them in place. 

I mentioned above that the rear mudguard has a couple of spare holes that serve no obvious purpose - possibly a different non-standard saddle was fitted at some point? The metal had peeled back on the underside, so I started by removing those protrusions with a cutting disc in the Dremel.

Then, while the epoxy was out, I stuck some aluminium mesh over the redundant holes.

I applied some filler over this area and smoothed it on, not for the aesthetics but to avoid creating a water/mud trap.

Tank Repair

This is the biggest challenge I think! I know that I will end up with filler over a large area, and the aim is to minimise that but get the shape right.

This is how the worst part of the tank was before media blasting:

So, some deep pitting; flaking chrome and lots of small rust spotting, most of which had also broken through the chrome. There are also a couple of dents in the top of the tank where the badly fitted handlebars had hit the right hand side. These are fairly minor - about 3mm deep - and have been filled previously.

After media blasting, things were looking a little bit better.

I know that this is going to get a lot worse before it gets better! I set to with various implements of destruction - wire brushes in the drill and Dremel; grinding stones and, most usefully, a couple power file. To try and keep some motivation going, I broke the job down into three areas - the underside and "tunnel"; the front mounting plates and the top and sides. As I got each area rust free, treated it with a rust converter gel to try and make sure I didn't have any remaining bits of rust left in small crevices etc. Then I gave a light protective coating of primer to that area.

The bottom required the least work really (probably as I was happy to accept a lower standard of finish with it being less visible).

The hard work was in the top and sides! Here is the lunar surface remaining after the first pass of rust grinding - not a pretty sight!

After that, I used the power file to try and get a more consistent surface. An awful lot of the chrome has actually been filed away in this process, which is a good thing in terms of rust removal and paint adhesion. I'm pretty pleased with this, as I think it will only take a thin skim of filler to get a smooth shape back.

Then I applied a thick coat of the rust converter gel and left for a day to do it's stuff, before washing off and then immediately drying thoroughly with a heat gun on a low setting.

After a good clean off, this was the raw result - definitely a trip required to Halfords for some filler there! There are two or three fairly large dents in the top right hand corner and then all of the scarring from removing the rust to deal with.

I went through two or three applications of filler; rubbing down between each and a smoothish surface gradually appeared.

These last three photos are just before applying primer filler. The actual depth of filler is quite small in most areas - it looks worse than it is.

The mudguards and side panels didn't require very much filling at all really - mostly just a thin skim where there had been rust pinholes in the chrome. 

So finally it's time to apply some paint. I set up a makeshift spray booth in part of the workshop and made a stand that I could mount parts on and rotate them as I was spraying.

Then I applied several fairly thick coats of primer filler to everything.

I was pretty pleased how well this covered. I wet flatted the primer filler back on the mudguards and side panels using 400 grit emery, ready for grey primer as the correct colour base for the finishing colour coats.

I thought the tank needed a bit more work though, as it is so visible and any defects would really show up. First off, I applied a light guide coat of black.

Then I wet flatted this back, again using 400 grit emery but on a flat block for most of it, so that it showed up any low spots where the black remained. You can see this below. I found that there was enough thickness of the primer filler to let me "regularise" the surface ready for grey primer, without having to go through another fill/rub down process.

Finally, everthing is ready for painting proper to commence.