Hi guys, my 899 fuel tank had two pretty deep gashes on the paint when I bought it. I bought some touchup paint from eBay just by looking at the picture of the 899 in the description. BAD IDEA! It turned out to be "tangerine red" Anyways, I have the correct "Anniversary Red" paint on the way now, what's the best way to should go about fixing this?
There is tons of stuff on the web about this - it's not that tricky. But in brief... 0. Spray something you don't care about, just to check that you actually have the right colour(!) 1. Clean and de-grease thoroughly 2. Fill if it needs it with a tiny speck of filler 3. Rub down - 600 grade, then to about 1200 or finer (it really doesn't take much rubbing down - you're only smoothing the surface. Don't press hard and take your time 4. when you're happy that it's dead smooth and there are no visible scratches, mask off everything that you don't want painted. (don't do this tight in to the damage - you want as little hard edge there as possible) 5. Spray lightly; wait for it to dry and then give it another very light rubdown. 6. repeat 5 and check that the damage is now pretty well invisible. 7. Now spray with lacquer - and rub lightly and spray again. 8. Remove masking. Feel the 'edge' where you masked and feel slightly depressed... 9. Use some rubbing compound (I used stuff from Halfords that worked OK for me), rubbing lightly to remove over-spray and the 'edge'. 10. Take a good, critical look at your handiwork. If you're happy, have a well deserved drink. If you're not, then think about whether you could improve things by rubbing down and doing it again. If 'yes' then do that. If 'no' then take El Toro's excellent advice. ... but it seems to me that if you've bought paint already it would be foolish not to have a go. But first, look at some of the very many YouTube videos, which explain it all very well.
