Harley roadking

[roth79]

I am now to all your worlds, I did purchase the new 110v DA after reading alot here and used in on a 2007 caddy and it came out freaking great. I read till my eyes bled and used uc with yellow pad and black pad for hte polish and nxt2.

Now my question I have a 99 road king 2 tone, blue and silver and have read these and other forums. I want to detail the bike and am scared to death to use the da on the paint but I have read here that you can. It does have a couple of scratches on the gas tanks and fenders. Do I have to do this by hand and should I, or should I get an aadaptor for the small 4 inch pads and use the new da. dont mind a little hard work juts dont know if its going to be enough to get done by hand. Also it has decals under the clearcoat, do I stay away from them? Sorry if the questions are stupid but I really dont know.

Any Paint and chrome advise would be great as well and thanks for all the great reads regarding this.

R

[Shawn T.]

Re: Harley roadking

For bikes, I would go ahead and either polish by hand and/or invest in some 4" pads for the DA. There are so many curves on a bike that a machine may prove difficult to use.

Nick (Tuck91) has several threads in the Show Off Your Latest Detail section where he has polished out bikes by hand. Let me see if I can find them......

http://meguiarsonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=46738&highlight=harley

http://meguiarsonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=43471&highlight=harley

[Michael Stoops]

Re: Harley roadking

You should be just fine using the smaller pads on your Harley - just keep in mind that the aggressiveness is increased when using those pads on a D/A, so just ease up a bit. Don't let that scare you, just be aware of it. It that means using a little less pressure or a slightly lower speed to start, then do that. Respect it, but don't fear it.

[TLMitchell]

Re: Harley roadking

Now my question I have a 99 road king 2 tone, blue and silver and have read these and other forums. I want to detail the bike and am scared to death to use the da on the paint but I have read here that you can. It does have a couple of scratches on the gas tanks and fenders. Do I have to do this by hand and should I, or should I get an aadaptor for the small 4 inch pads and use the new da.

Clearcoat is clearcoat, whether it's on a car, truck, bus or Harley. There's no big secret to polishing bikes. Just some different techniques and products you might consider. Unless you're getting overwhelmingly aggressive around the decals there's nothing there to be concerned about.

It's a lot easier to work small areas and tight spaces by hand. In some instances I've gotten better results by hand. On tanks I've used 3" pads with the best machine results although they're extremely difficult to find. It's pretty tough to use a 110 or PC on the fenders just because there's no room to work between the forks or around the rear taillight, turn signals etc. If your scratches absolutely have to be done by machine you might try a spot repair and then finish by hand.

DO mask off the rubber console gasket on the tank or better yet, pull the console and replace it after polishing. That rubber just won't clean up if you get polish on it and it's next to impossible to remove swirls or marring up tight against the console with it in place.

UC finishes pretty well on H-D paint as does Swirl X.

Bit of trivia... H-D clearcoat is actually clear powdercoat.

TL

[cnfowler]

Re: Harley roadking

Polished this 2009 Street Glide with a DA. Some areas where done by hand. I highly recommend going at it with the DA. Four inch pads will help tremendously.












Colin

[roth79]

Re: Harley roadking

Damn, CN what did you use , UC, swirl x what, Im ordering the 4 in pas for the 110 today, thanks for the advise, BTW what the hell is clear powdercoat...

[cnfowler]

Re: Harley roadking

Damn, CN what did you use , UC, swirl x what, Im ordering the 4 in pas for the 110 today, thanks for the advise, BTW what the hell is clear powdercoat...

I mostly used M80 Speed Glaze off the pro line and a polishing pad by DA. The front fender was off a newer Harley and had extremely soft paint. On that I used Meguiar's Paint Cleaner off the consumer line and a finishing pad by hand.

Harleys have notoriously super soft paint. Your best bet is to do a test spot to find out what works for you. After doing this Harley, I can't imagine touching the paint with anything more aggressive than M80.


Colin

[TLMitchell]

Re: Harley roadking

Harleys have notoriously super soft paint. Your best bet is to do a test spot to find out what works for you. After doing this Harley, I can't imagine touching the paint with anything more aggressive than M80.

I've found some out-of-the-box thinking produces good results with H-D's soft clearcoat. M80 worked well on mine when it was only lightly swirled. Couldn't get 205 to finish without marring no how, no way. Ended up using a super soft finishing pad and M105, of all things. Really works excellent!

TL