It’s a few months since I finished the dry build of this bike (July 2025 in fact) as I acquired and rebuilt the DOHC 250 engine, put it in an available chassis and then rebuilt the engine of KTT 581.
Anyway, the plan is to complete the final build – painting, plating and powder coating of the 2 KTTs and the DOHC 250 during the summer months. So, KTT 305 is back in the workshop
which, after a couple of days, was reduced to this.
The components are segregated into boxes for (1) powder coating, (2) “something needs doing” (eg chemical blacking or plating) and (3) “no further work required”. The items for powder coating have gone a few miles up the road to my powder coater and, as we had a day or so of good weather, ie warm, dry and not much wind I have started on the paintwork. I always spray the petrol and oil tanks but have decided to add the frame and forks to the items to be painted for this build.
I describedsome years ago what I do for painting so won’t repeat it in detail here. In summary, after preparation, the parts to be painted are suspended between 2 step ladders in the middle of the lawn. Primer is applied first
followed by flatting with 800 wet-and-dry and the black 2k top coat is sprayed a couple of days later.
Just in case you are wondering, this assembly of bits is not left in the garden like this for 2 days – everything is disassembled and then reassembled – it only takes a few minutes.
I use 2 compressors, one for the paint and the other for an air-fed face mask. There are a number of things that need to be satisfied before embarking on this: the weather – temperature, wind and humidity need to be OK and no neighbours outside in their gardens having a BBQ; we have a large garden and our neighbours don’t seem to spend much time outside so that is not a problem. It is completely legal (but not recommended) to spray 2k paint outside in the UK although with 2 compressors running and leaping around in a mask trailing 2 air lines around the garden like a demented Darth Vader could attract some attention.
One little issue that did occur this year for the first time was that after completing the spraying and sitting on a bench admiring my handywork, a wood pigeon alighted on the long piece of wood between the ladders. Now, I like the wildlife in the garden and won’t harm them, but I have found that pigeons can be quite destructive in their clumsiness, particularly for the damage they cause in my plum tree. They are also quite stupid birds (compared to, say, magpies or crows). You may notice a bird bath in the background of the above picture – just to the right of the hanging Velo frame, and the pigeons not only use it to drink they also poo in it!
Anyway, I needed to leave the sprayed parts dangling for a while to cure the paint before moving them and I did not want pigeon poo on my freshly-painted tank. I had things to get on with and didn't have the time to sit in the garden all morning so I moved my Pigeon Defence System, aka ScaryMan, from the plum tree to the middle of the garden.
It seems to have worked OK in keeping the pigeons away for a couple of hours and it’s now back on plum tree duty and the parts are back in the workshop.
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