Rattle can paint job on Harley-Davidson Sportster fenders complete (with pictures)

Earlier posts covered the sanding and prep work. Saturday I built an improvised paint booth out of a beat-up easy up we've had. Using plastic sheeting for walls I semi-enclosed the easy up and then hung the rear fender from the roof supports. One problem was the weight of the fender and the strength of the easy up-if I was going to do this long-term I'd reinforce the cross beams.

I then got the cans of primer and primed the fender. I used both filler primer and regular metal primer out of two older rattle cans. Here's a picture after the coats of primer. One issue is the filler primer was running out of paint and ended up orange peel like in appearance. I touched it up with some wet grit sandpaper but not enough.  I then started painting it with the semi-gloss rattle can paint.  I could quickly tell the primer was going to leave a textured look and some sanding marks (actually the smoother areas) would be left on it.  As I laid the coats on, I knew I would have to make a choice when done-sand it again and repaint, or see how it looks on the bike.  I let it set up for about 2.5 hours and then moved it to a plastic storage shed we have to let it finish "curing".

 

I then hung up the front fender and two trim pieces I'm making for the Connie and painted them as well.  The problem was definitely the emptying can of filler primer, as the front fender came out much smoother.  I did hit one area a little hard and have a small run there, but not too bad and since I don't always run the front fender I left it for now.

Monday morning I got started mounting the rear fender by assembling all the parts and ensuring I had all the fasteners and tools to tighten them.  One challenge is the sissy bar bolts are mismatched from side to side and even Harley-Davidson used different size bolts (both 1/2 and 9/16th for example).  I took a break to help my father-in-law with a project and also take care of some other work.  I also polished the chrome fender bracket covers well-they even had some overspray from some "in bike touch-up work" I had done and that buffed out too.  When I got back to the bike, the rear fender actually went back on pretty well.  Two spacers/fender grommets fell out and I tried reinstalling the turn signals without them but they don't tighten up enough, so I found them even if beat up and reinstalled them too.  I'm pretty happy with the look, and for about 3 hours of prep time, just over an hour of painting and about 2.5 hours of reinstalling the rear fender, lights and sissy bar, it's not too bad a project.  I shot some video clips and I'll try to figure out how to merge them and post to youtube but for now a picture will have to suffice.  Time to run the gas out of the tank, take it off, prep it and paint it to match!