Temporary Bodywork - An Overview

This post has been building up for quite a long time. The purpose of it is to show you the entire process of producing my temporary bodywork in one, large, post. This is one of the Scootering promotional shots I took along the way and when you see what I started with, I hope you can see the hard work I've put in.

The sidepanels took a long time to prepare! Their purchase even pre-dates that of the ex-DKS spare bike. They were seen at Wicksteed Park Scooter Fair back in late 2011 and were purchased with the intention of having a spare pair of "rough" panels (to be used for track days, practice etc). In all honesty, the more I did on them, the better I wanted their finish to be.

For a start, they had been down the tarmac their fair share of times and had been trimmed in places unsuitable to me. However, after a kind dose of fibreglassing and filler, I had got them to a much better state. I even went to the trouble of strengthening the weaker places at the same time.

As with most fibreglass panels, they did sit quite high on the frame loop, so using a router we had the flanges at a depth much closer to the original metal parts. As you can see from the photos, a fair few layers of paint were added in addition. I decided to leave them in their matt 'pimer' white, giving them the mandatory numberboards in blue. I also manufactured some decals from some special printer paper, giving the bike that well-prepared, professional look.

After a bit of satin black paint on the inside and the panel louvres fitted, they are ready for fitting. Here is the photo set of the progression:

The Legshields were another area where I spent a lot of time. I struggled to find any cheap temporary legshields locally, so decided to use the ones from ex_racer 81. However, there were a few things to fix first, for instance, there were a number of damaged areas that needed weld repairing (thanks to Replay Scooters). Aside from the time spent straightening these out, luckily after a handfull of hours of preparation, I started to paint them. Again the progress can be seen in the following shots. My favouite parts were definitley the finishing features.

There were a few other bits which I had put aside for spares which I decided to use for this paintwork iteration, these being the Horncasting and Front Mudguard. As such, very little was one to these, nothing that a little elbow grease wouldn't sort out anyway. The spare floorboards were recycled from the DKS ones and were given a coat in satin black to blend in with the rest of the scheme.