Going through my photo gallery the other day, I came across a project that I’m surprised I have not written about yet. It was such an interesting project, I should have gone into detail about it a long time ago.

    The project involved three main players, the client which was Giovanni Wheels, Von Dutch Choppers were the builders, and custom body and paint work by Huntington Beach Bodyworks. This interesting little alliance of ours, coupled with how well the final project was received by the SEMA crowd, made this one of my more memorable projects.
    Oh, yes, by the way, the job came with one huge condition—a 72-hour deadline! The bike had to be at SEMA in three days. That’s seriously pushing it for even the simplest of paint jobs. Once I saw the bike, I knew I wouldn’t be getting much sleep for the next three days.

   The concept was to make a chopper version of the new Mercedes SLR—complete with all its tricky shapes and angles. The project was further complicated with steel grill accents incorporated into the design of the gas tank itself. The tank had to pivot on its top mounting point to show off a gauge cluster configuration under the tank.
    In addition to all that, the frame itself was customized. All of these parts were brought to me in raw metal form to be picked up 72 hours later with a show stopping finish. This bike was going to be on display next to Lamborghinis, Ferraris, and Bentleys. So the paint job obviously had to be pristine.
    I had to use nearly everything I’ve learned and picked up over the years for prepping bare metal to get this bike ready. First of all, the welding needed to be completed before I could even begin the prep work. A lot of the tank, in particular, had been spot welded, but not completed. So I started by breaking out the TIG welder and finished welding all the seams, then ground them down. This needed to be done first or the duraglass would sink in the cracks. With deadline imminent, I didn’t have the time to continuously add and sand duraglass.
    To prep the metal, I used a brillo pad disc for excess weld material and to generally clean up the welded areas. I blew off all dust and residue and feathered the edges with a DA sander, 150, and 320 grit sand paper to give the polyprimer something to bite on to.
    Use a red Scotch-Brite pad for any areas the DA couldn’t reach. Do not leave any excess weld material, dust, or residue or you can pretty much count on the paint lifting and having adhesion problems.
    With all the welds finished and ground down flush with the contours of the tank, I began the process of filling the high and low areas with duraglass. I wasn’t quite ready to tackle the grill areas, because these were going to take some extra attention and some different tricks. I also didn’t want my duraglass pouring into the grill areas and making a mess in there.