Tank Latch and Brake/Clutch Reservoir Caps
I was finally able to get my hands on my first powder coating gun which was the Eastwood Dual Voltage gun and had absolutely amazing results from it. In this article I am going to be going over the whole process I went through powder coating my motorcycle parts from start to finish. As you can see from below these parts desperately needed to be refinished.
I began by taking off my fuel tank latch and brake reservoir caps. I did this by using a phillip’s head screwdriver to take them off. I followed this up by wrapping my brake/clutch master cylinders with aluminum foil so that way no particles would get into my system that could potentially compromise it. After I had gotten the parts off I had then put them in my Eastwood Benchtop Blast Cabinet, where I used a glass bead media to clean my parts.
Once blasted I got some stainless steel wire and hung the two caps on the rack for the oven. Then I proceeded to bake them to 425 degrees for an hour to get any impurities out. After they were baked I cleaned each piece with Eastwood Pre and made sure to use gloves when I handled them so no grease or oils from my hands were transferred to the parts which could potentially effect the powder. After the two caps were baked I then cleaned and hung the tank strap from the rack also. I did the baking in the Eastwood Powder Oven.
Once everything was hung, we were ready to do some powder coating. I used the Eastwood Paint and Powder Stand to hang the oven’s rack from so that I was able to cover absolutely every angle of the parts. I then did a final wipe down so I could finally lay down some powder.
I used the semi-gloss black powder to give them the subtle pop that they desperately needed. I began by going over all of the edges first, then going over all the main surfaces making sure I fully covered each of them. Once fully coated this is where the hardest part comes in; moving them to the oven.
I set the oven to 425 and left it until the parts had reached 400 degrees. To regulate what temperature they were at I used a Eastwood infrared thermometer. Once the parts got to 400 degrees and had flowed out I put the oven down to 400 degrees for 20 minutes to let the parts cure.
Once the 20 minutes was up I took the parts out to let them cool. Once cooled, I was able to put them back on my bike. As you can see the results speak for themselves.
