50 shades of grey (less 48... and one of them's actually black)

It's cold, cold sucks. Cold sucks in general, but cold really sucks for painting. So this is my wifes little bathroom heater drafted into block heater duty. There's nothing wrong with rattle can paint if you can apply it right. It's thin which isn't a problem as long as you can put enough coats on. You can't catalyze it but you can cure it in other ways if it's formulated to do so. This VHT is supposed to be cured in an oven at 200 degrees for an hour.

One thing that you don't want to do though is paint with cold paint, or paint a cold surface, it inhibits curing, adhesion, and pretty much everything that you don't want inhibited. That's why I'm heating everything up.

Most of the parts that I painted got sandblasted, but these lower cases I wanted to keep out of the blast cabinet because I was afraid that I'd never get all the sand out. Instead I used a lot of q-tips, paper towels, rags, solvent, carb cleaner, and patience.

Crank up the Nickleback, and bring out the strippers!

So apparently it's been orange, yellow, and then red in its life.  Why bother removing the decals, just paint right over 'em! (don't do that)

 I harbor a bit of animosity towards chemical strippers, they make a huge mess, and it's all really hard to get rid of. So typically I'll try and do the lions share of the work mechanically. That's where the DA comes in, I've found it's pretty sad running on my little compressor though, but it does work.

 Back at the shop, the two 80 gallon compressors have no problem with the DA.

 This is where Junior put in the cap from the other 750 tank. He did an awesome job bu there's definitely a bit more work to be done in this area.

75 cent coat

After Junior welded up my tank there was still a bit of crud shaking around in there so to knock it around a bit I added 75 pennies and shook the living daylights out of it. It's a good idea to keep track of how many you put in and try to get that many out again at the end.

Next up was a good rinse with solvent and acetone, after which I needed to make sure it was good and dry.

Then the Red Kote went in. This stuff is new to me, but Junior swears by it and he's done a lot more bikes than I have and usually knows his stuff. In the past I've only used Por15s tank coating (that's what's in LoudBike) and have had no trouble with it, but this stuff's a bit thicker, and the 750 tank's a bit rougher. So I'm hoping this will take care of the couple of pin holes that are in the tank.

 And then it all comes out.

 Like red candy in there.