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Take a look at your bagger, better yet, take a look at any bagger we’ve featured. Of all the custom accessories and beautiful chrome parts, what do you notice first? It’s the biggest thing on the bike: the paint. Motorcycle and automotive paint technology has changed over the years. Interestingly, some of the big flake and psychedelic styles that hit the scene in the 1960s and ‘70s have made a full comeback in the custom motorcycle world. What’s different today is the way paint is formulated, applied, and sold. Bike painters of yesteryear, spraying their lead-based paints outside in the driveway while the neighbourhood children looked on might be surprised to learn about today’s water-based paints and legally required booths. Just compare any of today’s SVO Harleys to anything The Motor Company was coming out with during the Shovelhead era, and it becomes clear that the paint industry has changed – for the better. Let’s take a look at our official 2014 Daytona Bike Week giveaway pictured below. Some lucky raffle winner gets to cruise around on that stunning beauty, its paint job basking in the sun. The main colors on the bike, Burnt Orange and Light Yellow, hail from PPG’s Flamboyance collection, but a great custom paint job doesn’t stop there. Bob Folz, founder of Toontown Kustom Paint in New Jersey handled the spray and bodywork. He started with a Deltron DPLF epoxy as a sealer and did the basecoat right on top of that. A bit of True Blue form PPG’s Liquid Crystal collection eases the transition from Burnt Orange to Light Yellow. Next on are the graphics followed by a clearcoat layer of Deltron DCU2042 (sprayed to seal all the graphics down) that’s then wet-sanded to remove any orange-peel. After that, a second clearcoat, this time using PPG’s VC5200 Custom Clear, goes on to protect the paint job from anything the road can throw at it. It, too, gets wet-sanded, plus it receives a buffing to ensure the finish is like a glass. “That’s a glamour clearcoat,” Jennifer Boros, segment manager, Solventborne Products at PPG, says of the VC5200. “It gives a lot of build to cover tapelines and flakes. It’s real nice, high-gloss, glamour appearance.” Even though custom work accounts for only a portion of PPG’s business, the company is moving forward full throttle with new type of paints, and some great new relationships. Readers might recognize Dave Perewitz, who has been using PPG paints for years, and is now an official spokesperson for the brand. “We love having Dave as a spokesperson for us,” Jennifer says. “When we’re looking at some of these new flakes to try out, he gives us some feedback on them.” Two of the hottest PPG collections he’s using, among others in PPG’s arsenal, are the Crystallance and Starlife collections. Crystallance is offered in six base colors which feature glass flakes for lots of “shimmer and sparkle.” Starfire features rich, aluminium pigments. So the next time you see a custom bike with a killer paint job on the road, at a show, or in the pages of your favorite magazine, chances are the PPG’s team of experts is behind it. - Tyler Greenblatt Match colors with your every ride. Have your own custom painted helmets to suit every ride you have.
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