I love to learn stuff so I searched around for powdercoating shops so they could refer me to "Self-Serve" sandblasting cabinets. I was lucky enough to get refered to a place about 20km from my place!!!! The place has self-serve cabinets and are only available to referes people ;)
They explained the process and 10 minutes later, I was on my own! It was amazing to see all the Yamaha blue paint being vaporised by the power of sand!!!!!! If you love to try out new things, it a little pleasure to sandblast with professional grade equipment! They came back frequently to provide me tips and tricks but overall I was doing a great job ;p. The end result has a clean and smooth surface, rwady to receive the charges powder particules.
Once the bike frame and swingarm were completely stipped from it's original paint, I went to the Powdercoating facility in the industrial section of the city. They are not too advertised but managed to find it.
I talked to the owner and offered him to do all the the prep work so I could save him time. In fact, I also wanted the lowest price ;) I used the bike bolts to fill all threaded parts of the frame as suggested by the owner. He said that the powder will get in the nut threads and once cooked, it's a problem to get the bolts back in there without "tapping" the threads again.
Also, he kindly provided me with high heat tape to cover the serial # and neoprene plugs for different holes.
He showed me the numerous colors and prices ... I wanted to go back with the Yamaha Blue color but to save $, I opted to join an order of semi-gloss black. The frame would be powdered
and cooked the next day!!!!
Update:
The frame came back and it's gorgeous . Here are the pictures.
Note that I kept the original stickers for the looks but I can always recreate the sticker with photoshop and stick it over the existing one if required. I'll take my decision later ...
