tank painting

[laxy]

This may be of use to someone who has a nice shiny tank but isnt confident enough to line it by hand and dosent have the money to pay a pro.
This is the route I went along with the tank off my single.
Send off to the spares scheme for the tank lining details for your bike.You will receive a scale drawing showing the shape and colour of the pinstripe/s
Next check with the Roy Bacon restoration book that you have the right details.[It took me three attempts]
Now look in yellow pages for a company that does signwriting on vehicles.Years ago this was done by hand by a bloke with a small paint brush in one hand what looked like a stick with a golf ball on the end covered in soft cloth in the other hand and a woodbine hanging out his mouth.
Nowadays things are more hi tec and its all done with sticky vynil
graphics.
What you have to do is hot foot it down to the signwriters clutching your tank and lining details and what the guy does is feed the details into his machine press some buttons and your pinstripe shows up on a screen correct size/colour.When youre happy the machine prints out the pinstripe in vynil on a paper backing.
Next step is the signwriter[are they still called that?] carefully fixes the vynil to the tank.There comes a difficult spot when the stripe tries to negotiate the double curve at the front of the tank but this can be over come by cutting the stripe once and joining it back up again.Make the cut at the lowest possible point of the curve and only you will know its there.
The end result for me was a perfect size colour and [D]shape double pinstripe on my tank.
The downside? well being hand painted at the factory the original pinstriping was never this perfect.Also if you feel with your finger over the tank you can pick out the thikness of the vynil tape[just] Iwould say this could be rectified by laquering the finished tank.
I havent bothered with the laquering bit and at about five quid a side Im delighted with the result.
P.S.can you still get woodbines?

[raljan]

Thanks for that, I am trying to locate a signwriter in the NE and to obtain R Bacons book, pending this I got a template from the club which I think shows a painted panel sitting on top of the chrome tank but all the photos I have seen on tke club site and the net for a 56 G11 show the whole tank painted other than 2 oval areas of chrome left on each side of the tank, obviously there is such a lot of work goes into this tank finish I want to get it right

[Keetowah]

TextI own a 1956 G11 Sporttwin it has a 3 gallon chrome tank with painted top panel and painted side panels lined with a white pin stripe. Upon researching I've discovered that 4 gallon tanks painted red with chrome side panels were on the Soper Clubman and the clubman model hd a painted only tank My tank is Identical to the G9B and the G80CS models except that some had black stripes while mine has white stripes

[Keetowah]

Well I stand corrected as I have just been shown an advert from Cooper Motors of a 1956 Clubman with a chrome tank.