There are no less than a million or so ways that you can trick out the look of a stock Harley. A long frontend, new sheetmetal, or new wheels can help, but there isn't anything else that will provide the visual bang-for-the-buck that you get from a custom paintjob.
You can add skulls, stripes, tear-away graphics, and anything else your mind can possibly conceive to enhance your hawg. Unlike engine hop-ups or other things that are stuck within the confines of reality, a custom paintjob can conjure up visions of things that cannot possibly exist outside of your imagination. And, with the many new masking and spray techniques that have been created in recent years and the ever-increasing number of painters found in every metropolitan area, getting a quality paintjob is much easier than it was four or five years ago.
We've seen so much fantastic work coming out of Deano's in Tempe, Arizona, throughout the years that we felt the shop would be the perfect choice to show us the right way to paint a bike. The Deano's crew took a stock '02 Fat Boy and turned it into the bike its owner had always dreamed of riding. Grand Canyon Harley-Davidson of Belmont, Arizona, sent the bike to Deano's because the owner of the new bike requested a Deano's paintjob before he accepted delivery of it -- nothing else would do. Follow along as the skilled staff at Deano's handles everything from disassembly, prep, paint, graphics to reassembling the bike.
What ends up leaving the shop is a huge improvement from what came in, and the owner couldn't have been more pleased with the results.
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Before
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After
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1. The first step was to wheel the bike into the shop to remove all the sheetmetal.
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2. All decals, stripes, and logos are smoothed away with an abrasive wheel.
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3. To give the finished pieces a smoother look, all the rivets and the unnecessary tabs ar
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4. A little Bondo is used to remove any surface irregularities. As soon as the Bondo is dr
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5. Now the parts go to the polyester booth. All surfaces are shot with a polyester coating
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6. The polyester was followed by a few coats of primer, and everything was carefully wet-s
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7. It's time for the first coat of color. Deano's starts by shooting a black basecoat over
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8. This part is really cool. Deano's uses a trick masking spray called Grip-Mask by AKZO N
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9. The Grip-Mask is peeled away and the remaining material will act as a masking tape as t
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10. We're back in the booth to watch as a little yellow is applied to the sheetmetal.
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11. Some more Grip-Mask is applied, and a few coats of orange are laid down.
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12. Deano's has a custom CAD (Computer Aided Design) program that allows them to reproduce
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13. While the logo is being done on the rear fender, another Deano's employee is busy work
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14. We're ready to peel off the Grip-Mask to see how things look.
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15. "Yeah, I'm cool. What about it?"
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16. After the paintwork is approved, it's taken into the spray booth for a final coat of c
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17. As soon as the clearcoating is dry, it is sanded with a dual-action sander and an 800-
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18. A small amount of buffing compound is added to a buffing pad, and all the parts are bu
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19. A healthy dose of undercoating is added to the lower surface of the fenders, and the p
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20. After a rigorous inspection, everything is carefully bolted back on the bike.
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21. And that's it. Look at the incredible change to the bike's appearance that was brought