Fuel Tank project

[Rat]

It was a fire extinguisher, I would have left it alone in it's original coating if it wasn't for the evident rust bubbling along the base rim and all the general wear and tear to it... the red would have went well with my Ducar.

Im undecided on the answer, The question remains; Paint, or Polish?

If I paint, I'd like to see if I can find the original "Honda Racing Red" to keep true to the fire extinguisher origin, but also because the red Ducar tins.

If I polish, I don't think I'm going to aim for mirror quality due to some cosmetic factors, although a large part of those will buff out.

 

[Denny]

And polish is on the lead!

 

[Rat]

And polish is on the lead!

I was leaning towards polishing, but I think if that's the direction I'll stop at 3000g pad... I don't like dealing with polishing pastes.

I figured I'd start with a 600g or 800g foam block to smooth out the few rougher gouges (dings add character, I'm not going for prestine) and get the sureface finish evened out before stepping over to a 1200g wet/dry [wet of course] and move to 2k grit wet before going over it with a 3k polishing pad.

That's a metric sh*t ton of elbow grease but I think a nice near chrome (like an antique nickeled bumper) will be a nice look. I'm not sure it would be the same attention grabber as painting it Red or like Nitrous bottle (that might get the wrong attention too fast ) but any of the options is nicer than the experiMental junkyard dog builds I like to do

 

[Rat]

I have reached the limit of 1k grit abilities

Now for 2k grit

 

[Rat]

I'm done... 3k grit and all.
It's just not going any further without using polish pastes at this point

 

[Denny]

Make it shiney.

 

[Rat]

Make it shiney.

I avoid polishing pastes, I usually don't even try to polish parts.
That was all done by hand, so it turned out pretty damn amazing IMHO

Due to the small capacity of the rear tank tucked under the rear rack I'm running a dual tank