A previous owner had removed all the decals from the bike. Personally I prefer the look with the original decals, so I'd like to put them back. However, to do that I need to clean and ideally polish the fairings first so the new decals will stick to the surface correctly and not just peel off. I didn't know how long this would take, so I had a look on eBay and managed to find a couple of tank shrouds and side panels, all in white for £30, bargain!
The fairings are in fairly good condition, with the odd scuff or blemish here and there.
Not too bad, but need some work.
This is after I've washed them with some car shampoo and a sponge.
Marks, scratches, dirt - the usual stuff.
Bilt Hamber - Surfex HD. Never used this stuff before, but it was recommended as a good cleaning agent for fairings. It's a powerful degreaser.
The other thing that was recommended was Magic Eraser. You can't get them in the UK, so I got these generic ones off Amazon UK instead.
Spray the Surfex on to the sponge and have a go at the marks on the fairings.
Wow, it made short work of the marks, pretty impressive. But... I have never used these before and I don't think I used enough water / surfex because it took off the gloss finish and made the plastic matt.
No more dirt or grime.
You can see the matt finish most clearly here.
Here's the other fairings off the bike. This is after washing them with car shampoo and a (normal) sponge. You can see the ground in mud on the white panels. The shampoo and sponge wouldn't remove this dirt.
Next trying the Surfex and the melamine sponge (Magic Eraser).
The ground in mud is gone.
It's taken the shine away (not as badly as before, since I made sure to soak the sponge this time).
There's some UV damage on the black panels. I was thinking to use some Back to Black or a similar product on them, but they are not supposed to be gloss.
I tried scrubbing with the melamine sponge and this removed a lot of the UV damage, but it took a very long time, and didn't remove all of it.
When the panel dried you could see some of the white UV damage was still there, but it wasn't as bad as before.
This stuff is amazing for polishing plastic. It doesn't work on paint, but as the name suggests it works really well on plastic.
It takes a while, but you can get amazing results by hand without using a buffing machine. This is after the first application. You work in very small areas rubbing it in with a cloth, then you use a clean cloth to shine the surface.
More polishing.
There we go! It's not all perfect, but this is sooooo much better than before. The results are amazing.
Next, time for the decals. These are not Honda OEM, they are copies. The Honda decal set is hundreds of pounds. These were £35 off eBay.
This is where they go. The decals only go on the tank shroud.
This one is easiest to apply as it goes on in one piece.
And the other side.
And the other side.
Applied to both sides.
This clear sticky plastic is needed to apply the different pieces of the Honda logo.
Stick the clear plastic over the decal making sure to cover at least part of every piece. This will be used to transfer the parts to the shroud.
I can now position this on the shroud.
I've lined this up with a line running horizontally along the bottom of the shroud and a line running diagonally on the shroud. The decal is not 100% the correct size, but I doubt anyone would notice unless my bike was parked next to another bike with the OEM decals and they had a tape measure.
I stick the bottom down to use as a hinge.
I fold the decal forward so I can get to the backing paper.
Peel the backing paper off, making sure not to take any of the smaller pieces with it.
All the pieces still stuck to the clear plastic.
I carefully fold this over and check that it's still in the right position.
Once I'm happy it is, I start to stick the decal down.
Once it's stuck firmly, I peel the clear plastic off. Making sure to pull back, not up. I'm not trying to pull the decal off the shroud.
Clear plastic removed ready to use it again on the other side.
Smoothing out the decal.
Looking good.
Do the same for the other side.
I have another go at polishing the side fairings to try to smooth it out better and get even gloss across the panel.
That's better. This took about an hour on just this panel though.
I give this another go with the melamine sponge, but it's getting tiring. This has taken about 5 and a half hours so far (for all the panels and applying the decals).
Right side fairing reassembled.
Left side fairing reassembled.
Ready to go on the bike. Excluding removal and refitting, this took about 6 hours all in, but my side fairings were pretty bad. The Greygate polish is amazing, the Surfex HD and the melamine sponges worked really well to remove the dirt and grime too.
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