Launch cancelled: motor paint a no go.

After months of indecision, much hemming and hawing, and more flip-flopping than a a politician in sandals, I've decided NOT to paint Elrich's F2 motor. Instead we decided that the raw aluminum will best match the rest of the bike so we're sticking to that.
The rough sanding marks made in preparation for paint are going to be tough to overcome, but I think it'll be fine. Here's everything laid out for your viewing pleasure:

This little guy might still see some paint,
just to make it easier to clean off when we have to change the chain.
Also it will be a lot easier than having to remove all that stock paint.

I took the liberty of sanding and polishing the faces of the
shifter and rotor cover. They had some bad pitting on them.

I also removed and checked the cyl studs.
Some weren't properly torqued, and this can cause leaks at the gaskets.

Don't forget to use thread locker when re-installing them.
Just a dab'll do ya!

Voila! Studs are stud-ly once more.

Stay tuned. I have a feeling that this project will go much faster than the last one.

Decals & Indecision

The neverending quest for good decals continues.
Here's some more ideas, I'm still undecided on what I like.

The wing will of course wrap over top of tank.

Edit 5/12: added more.

Edit 5/17: So after all that... I think we're gonna settle for something like this.

More K3 paint progress

Updates for the sake of updates. Spraying on the K3 is done but I still need to sort out the decals.
Here's how the bike currently looks:

Yeah there's paint on the gas-cap, and yes it was purposeful. Well, not so much on purpose as I'm too lazy to mask this part. It's chrome and paint remover will wipe it right off. In the meantime It will keep glare down.
Currently I'm trying to illustrate some decals to go on the tank. I have no idea what I'm doing so any recommendations are welcome and encouraged (please help me).
Here's some rough sketches of what I've been considering so far:

Update 5/11:
I taped the lines of the tank and took some pics to help me draw some decals.

More painting - CB750 tank and XS650 teaser shots

I came back from Texas to find the weather here in VA had warmed up significantly.

Last couple days were perfect temperatures for painting so I decided to take advantage of the nice weather.

I started (re)painting Joey's K3 CB750 tank and finished up Tommy's XS650 motor. Here's a couple teaser shots:

First coat of metallic cast iron went on really thick (and kind of runny).
I'll be sanding it all even before the second coat.

The paint area as it sits currently.
That's the XS650 left engine cover in the way back there.

Decals for the fuel tank and sidecovers.
I'm still considering something else instead.

Oh yeah, they're REFLECTIVE vinyl. Pretty cool right?

Custom mixed a gold/bronze-ish metallic
engine enamel for the YAMAHA inlay.

It's really hard to properly photograph the metallic paint.
So here's some more pics.

It looks slightly more gold in person. 

This is the side engine cover before.
It's funny how just a slight difference can really make the motor  pop.

There's more to come very soon. I'll be posting the other side of the XS motor as well as the final product of the K3's gas tank and matching sidecovers in the near future.

Hidden gem

So I found this WICKED RAD paint job hiding under the black spraypaint on Elrich's F2.

WHY IN THE NAME OF CHRIST WOULD YOU PAINT OVER THIS?!?

I wet the sidecover down to give you an idea of what it looked like new.

XS650 Motor Paint - Part Deux

Tommy's motor is almost done being painted. There's no new updates since the last post other than I spent 4 hours sanding the left engine side cover (alternator cover). However, I was slightly less than lazy last night and decided to take some pictures. Here you go:

The first attempt at painting this went horribly wrong.

So I stripped it all and sanded it down.

I wish I had taken some before pictures to show the
nastiness and discoloration / pitting of the metal.

After about four hours of sanding and steel wool-ing to a mirror finish,
I realized the paint would NOT stick to that surface.
So, I had to rough everything up with a wire brush.

The motor hung like this for the majority of the spraying.

At one point the motor came down to spray around these areas
where the straps and motor mounts got in the way.

There were a lot of very hard to reach areas on this motor,
making it very difficult to apply paint evenly.
It took 4 coats and a LOT of sanding to get it right.

Sanding the fins on the head and bottom case between coats was tedious. 

Spraying between these fins turned out to be harder than expected.
Most of the difficulty was due to my over-sized HVLP spraygun.
It was totally inappropriate for this level of detail and crevices. 

I even tried to sand off the tiny little bumps;  imperfections left from
the casting process. This proved to be insanely difficult
so I just left 'good enough' alone.

I'm not sure why, but the paint went on a little thick right here.
No worries though, that spot is completely hidden by the starter motor

To be frank, the top of the motor
turned out a hell of a lot better than I anticipated.

Miraculously I managed not to get any paint in any of the threaded holes
that I forgot to mask off.

This should give you an idea of how evenly the paint was applied,
even after four coats.

We're not out of the woods yet. I still need to CAREFULLY peel off the
tape from all the masked areas.

Painting the socket cap screws without taking them completely off
was hard but somehow worked.

Surprisingly this turned out to be the hardest part of the motor to paint.
It still doesn't look quite right. The metallic flake in the paint seems to
want to stick to itself and run down the side in this area.

Also, because of all the gouges and scratches that wouldn't sand out,
the paint was applied unusually thick to hide them.
It's not my best work, but it doesn't look hideous.