Hitchcocks Forum

Hi all,
The paint on the tank of my 2005 es army bullet is in poor condition with the lacquer peeling off and a small patch of top coat missing all this on the top of the tank. It looks like i might have to bite the bullet(if you pardon the pun) and either go for a respray which will be difficult because of the pin striping or a replacement tank,bit expensive.I would welcome suggestions or does anyone have a spare tank in army olive green hanging around their looking to unload?(must be in good nick).
regards chris

I use a firm that does the paintwork for the national motorcycle museum. He does the pin striping as well, the finish is first class. ( concourse ) and he only charges £300 per tank. You only get what you pay for, I expect others will tell you that you can get it done at the fraction of the cost and they will be right. It all depends on what finish you want. Of Course the cheapest way would be to do it yourself with a spray can. Best of luck with whichever way you go all the best alan

Whilst it isn't the proper way to do them. I have made a pretty good fist of pin striping my tank. I used a car finish which is a colour base coat with a two pot polyurethane clear top coat. I put a clear finish over the colour coats without transfers or pinstripes and then matted (once it had dried) the gloss finish off with 0000 steel wool. I then masked the pinstripes using thin strips do masking tape that I cut with a Stanley knife. I then brushed them in using the appropriate dagger brush and a Humbrol enamel. The water slides were then applied and once the whole thing had dried right off I sprayed another top coat. There was no issue with incompatible media and whilst if you look with a magnifying glass you can see the pinstripes aren't completely smooth edged the overall effect is pretty good.

Yes Simon, you can get a good finish yourself.
Couple of tips;
Steel wool is OK but you generally get a better result with wet and dry (wet)
You can get pinstripe masking tape - stick it on then peel the middle bit out. Very easy to use.

--------- Does a genuine Army bike have a pin-striped tank ??........Surely plain, drab olive ( No, not her from On the Busses !!) would be appropriate ??-------- Where's SCALY when you need him ??

Yep 1000 or 1200 wet and dry is good for de nibbling and sanding out orange peel prior to polishing but I just wanted and evenly matt surface for adhesion. The trouble with the 2 pot poly is that if you let it go off too hard before re coating or don't mat it off you can get delamination. You see it out here with our fierce sun all the time big sheets of clear peeling off the base coat. The 0000 steel wool doesn't even up the surface nearly as well as an oil sand with 1000 grit but it does leave it evenly matted off and so far the adhesion has been perfect. The fine line masking is excellent too but I found that the eyechrometer worked well enough . If you check real freehand fine lines they are generally pretty varied in width so I wasn't to fussed on absolute accuracy. You can judge the results for yourselves:

Thanks all for your replies some good technical advice there to and some examples of excellent paint finishes.I would love to have a go at painting it myself only the pin striping worries me but maybe i will have a crack at just doing it in plain olive green to start with at least it will tidy it up for the summer.If your out there scaly, is your tank plain olive green or does it have the gold pinstripes?I am aware that it could have been repainted at some point.I would love to chuck it at someone else and say get on with it but finances wont allow that im afraid.
Regards chris

Hi SPENCE --------------- just to illustrate the idea, here is a WW2 Enfield in Army colours >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>