Painting Your Scooter Panels

I ventured out into the land of painting.  It wasn't very hard and it will make your scooter look like new.  You can also remove scratches or other imperfections when you paint.

Setup Your Paint Area

To setup your paint area you will want to have a enclosed space (hopefully a garage) to setup.  I used the rail for the garage door as my hanging location and put down a large plastic sheet to cover the floor.  This needs to be done in a well ventilated area, otherwise you will get high from paint fumes.  I have a picture of my area before I put down the plastic sheet.  I was trying to use newspapers, which would have been fine, had I put down a lot more paper.  I already had the plastic drop cloth so this was much easier.  As you will see, I believe it was best to hang each part so that I can properly coat each piece without having to wait on each side to dry.  This allowed for a much more even coating of paint.

Prepping Panels

First you will want to remove each panel.  If you leave it on the scooter or motorcycle then you will have a much harder time getting a proper coating and you will have to tape off a bunch of stuff to keep from getting paint all over everything.  I HIGHLY suggest removing the panels.  If you have a Honda CH80 then you can go to the manual that I have posted and find screw locations for removing each of the panels.

After removing the panels, you want to clean them.  So clean all the grime off with soap and water and also remove any pieces to the panels that are different colors (if possible, on the CH80 it is very easy to seperate the black highlight panels from the main panel).  If you have scratches that you want to remove then you will start with a 200-250 grit sandpaper.  Sand until scratches are smooth.  Next you will sand the entire panel with 350-450 grit sandpaper.  After you finish this sanding you will want to remove all the dust that accumulates on the panel.  I did it by putting some goof off on a paper towel and rubbing the panel down.  You should have a very smooth surface that is clean.

Note: If the panel does not have scratches then the only thing you need to do is use the fine grit sandpaper to remove the clear coat.

Painting Your Panels

This is obviously the most important step.  First you will need to choose your paint.  Both Krylon and Rust-Oleum have specific types of paint that adhere to plastic.  If they don't make it in the color you want, then all you have to do is buy some plastic primer and use it before painting with color.

First you will prime the plastic if needed.  To do this you will make smooth sweeping motions from left to right.  You will want to hold the paint can about 8-10 inches from the panel and work your way down the panel until you have covered the entire panel.  These layers need to be very thing which will keep drips from occuring and the paint will dry faster.  I did 2 coats of primer and let each coat dry and then hit it with the paint.  You must be very careful between coats because it takes a few days for the paint to completely harden.  The paint will be soft and will scratch very easily.  This will go away after it is completely dried and the clear coat has been applied.

A note on clear coat.  You need to be very careful when applying clear coat because if the underlying paint has not completly dried, the paint will wrinkle or spiderweb and ruin all the work you've put in so far.  This happened to me with three pieces because I sprayed all three with clear before they were ready.  By the time I got done with the third, I looked back at the the first piece and it was totally ruined.  After a few minutes, all three pieces were ruined.  This required me to sand them all down and start over.  AVOID THIS at all costs.  It sucks, badly.

Final Pictures

Before and After