Katana Owners Club U.K.

Hi all .

As the winter sets in I'm looking at doing a top end rebuild on my 550 katana . I have a donor engine which I will use the barrels and cylinder head as replacement parts . However the external condition of these are not great to look at and I'm hoping you can tell me how to prepare these for paint and which paint to use . I also want to get the same colour match which is silver ,so any ideas as for which silver to volume for .

Any help will be gratefully received .

And I'm sure their will be many more questions to come .


Many thanks

Bruce

550 katana at wusseyKat

Hi Bruce good to meet up with you at Wusseykat.
I have use soda blasting on my cafe kat engine which worked well and you can get the whole motor done without stripping it down as there is no nasty stuff that can damage internals however you will need to blank off all inlet and exhaust holes etc. If you are stripping it down prob best to get it chemically dipped by someone like Ribble technology up in Preston comes out spotless and doesn`t damage anything.
For the paint on my big kat I used vht silver and it went yellow when i cured it in an oven. Resprayed it with spherex engine enamel looked good but washed off when petrol spilt on it, needs curing again before its petrol proof finally put on smoothrite silver goes on real nice looks good and once its dry doesn`t wash off with petrol spills no curing needed too, well I didn`t and its all come out good.
So thats what i`d recommened def use it again but not sure how it compares to original finish though.

Nige, does soda blasting take it down to the bare metal?
And did you need to use a special primer before using smoothrite?

Hi Nige

So soda blasting seems the way to go .
Now as its only the cylinder head and barrels that im changing and repainting I dont think it will look good without doing the rest of the engine as well .
So if I get the whole engine done when i remove it from the bike how will the non painted parts i.e the clutch cover ect cope with the soda blasting ?

Soda blasting does take it back to bare metal and you will need a etch primer first if using smoothrite on ally.
Mask off any non painted bits otherwise you will you will have a matt finish which will be a pain to polish up again.

.... and the soda WILL get into all the nooks and crannies... although a lovely clean finish you will still need to spend a decent amount of time cleaning off the residue from everywhere....

VHT do heat resistant primer.

Hi nige

I'm now ready for painting . I had the head and barrels soda blasted and they have come up a treat .
What primer did you use as the VHT needs cureing and I'm not to sure how to do this . Is it a case of putting it in the oven ?

Bruce

dipped Head

F***I** crap, "to big to load", OSS lets me do it anytime GRRR


you need pics of results of dipping PM me e mail address i'll send pics,

Really can't be ***** with having to "photobucket" anymore


H