Hi all, is there a way to remove the Triumph stick on emblem that is on the tank of a Street Twin? I tried the hair dryer method and it didn't work. I've done it once before on an Indian but this emblem doesn't seem to peel.
I’m pretty sure that the Street Twin logo has been lacquered over, so there’s no easy way to remove it without damaging the paintwork. I don’t like it much either but it’ll mean a whole-tank paint job to get rid of it.
You are correct it was lacquered over. I learned the hard way but I ended up sanding my tank and I am pretty happy with the results.
Presumably you had the tank repainted after sanding or did you do something else with it? I don’t know enough about the painting process but l wanted to scrap the original logo and replace it with a custom version, which would have needed painting on. I was hoping to avoid a full respray, although l don’t know if that would have been possible.
I thought about taking a picture last night but it was raining and almost midnight and I had a few in me already. So here is a pic from this morning, still raining so a little bit of a cramped shot in the shed. Edit 1# It took quite a bit of work to get the stock paint off but I got it down to the metal and applied a 2K clear coat.
So you’ve created a brushed metal finish, is that right? Exactly what did you use and how did you do it?
I used Aircraft remover at first. If you see the videos on YouTube they apply and leave the remover on for about 30 minutes and scrape the paint right off with a plastic scraper like if it was slicing though warm butter. It did not work for me like that, the scraper would just glide over the paint and not remove it no matter how hard I pressed so I used a metal scraper instead. After 3 coats of the Aircraft remover and the metal scraper I was able to get a lot of the paint and primer off but I knew that the Aircraft remover had done all it could. That's when I started sanding, I used a 100 grit at first to get the paint off and then a 120 to smooth everything out. Now mind you I was not looking for a perfectly smooth finish, if not I would have gone with a finer grit. I wanted the tank to look a little rugged and brushed, which it does if you look at it closely enough. After all that I used a high quality 2K matte clear coat and it actually smoothed the tank out pretty nicely. I did 3 coats of clear. Truth be told it was my first time doing anything like this to a tank. When I did the clear coat I did it outdoors and with the wind it was kind of hard for me to tell if some parts clear coated so I over sprayed in a few spots and there are imperfections. Now that I have the multiple layers of paint off (which was by far the hardest part) and the experience of clear coating I might sand it down again this summer and clear coat it again to even it out...indoors. Oh, and very very important, make sure you use the right type of respirator not those little white paint masks if you are using either one of those products I mentioned, they are lethal. The triumph triangle decal I got from Ebay.
