Was front forks originally painted?

[alexdecker]

Mine looks like this. Like paint is flaking off. We’re they originally painted?

[Oddjob]

Painted and lacquered Alex. If you've ever sanded the lacquer off instead of using paint stripper you can see the layers as they come off. The paint hides quite a few casting faults in my experience.

[AshimotoK0]

Hmm... I know they clear lacquered and prior to that, the bare alloy treated with a 'conversion' surface treatment  on the Honda 4's (like Alodine used in the Aerospace industry ) and I think based on a chromate system. But never heard of them being painted with silver. Exceptions are the smaller and 1960's  bikes like the S90 and 450 bomber that were painted. May be wrong of course but it's definitely not what Vic World uses on sandcasts.

[Oddjob]

Still doing it today Ash, the casings are also painted and lacquered.

If you've sanded as many casings and such as I have you can see the layers as they sand away.

[McCabe-Thiele (Ted)]

Mine looks like this. Like paint is flaking off. We’re they originally painted?

Mine were just lacquered on my 400/4 so I stripped the yellowed stuff off then just polished them.

[Oddjob]

That's my point Ted, if you use stripper you never see the silver layer as it comes off with the lacquer. If you look at the pic, the bright areas is the paint, the dark areas are the alloy.

[Trigger]

Hmm... I know they clear lacquered and prior to that, the bare alloy treated with a 'conversion' surface treatment  on the Honda 4's (like Alodine used in the Aerospace industry ) and I think based on a chromate system. But never heard of them being painted with silver. Exceptions are the smaller and 1960's  bikes like the S90 and 450 bomber that were painted. May be wrong of course but it's definitely not what Vic World uses on sandcasts.

You are right Ash. I have never seen any painted from the factory. Even up to the 90's, the fork manufactures were just a lacquered surface treatment.

[AshimotoK0]

This is what Vic World does 

[Oddjob]

Why not just try sanding one and see?

[heli_madken]

I would agree with Ken on this one. Having stripped many alloy casings myself in my time you will notice the surface imperfections that just didnt appear to be there before, because they were hidden by silver paint. 

Costs would have prevented Honda investing the time and energy into polishing the castings to a good enough standard to then cover them just with clear coat.

[Oddjob]

Spot on Ken, the castings are actually not as good as they appear to be, when it's stripped you can see all the little surface imperfections that the paint covered up, getting some of these out so you get a nice polished look can sometimes be extremely difficult. Same applies to frame parts which were painted, strip them and you suddenly start to see weld splatters, parts of welds missing etc that the paint covered up. It was Hondas way of disguising sub standard parts, not sub standard in that the part was dangerous, just unsightly. It also gave a consistent look to the parts which I doubt you could get with bare alloy, even with great care you never get the exact same standard of metal everytime. 

[Sesman]

Is there a matching silver paint we are aware of?

[Oddjob]

I'm not sure Phil As I've never looked. It's quite a bright silver, maybe it's the same as the engine paint but the lacquer makes it look brighter?

Funny how nobody disputes the engines are painted and yet those are the same alloy as the casings yet they think the casings etc have been polished, which when you think of it would be an incredibly time consuming process for a result that a layer of paint would achieve far simpler and at a much greater cost.

I'm doing a carb mounting bracket at the moment and the tooling marks and casting faults are excessive, yet they look so good when mounted.

Another thing the paint covers is alloy welding, we think the fork sliders are cast in one piece and they aren't. The front caliper adjusting screw mount is welded onto the slider for instance.

[AshimotoK0]

Why not just try sanding one and see?

Are you sure its silver paint and not the chromate conversion coating that was used to make the lacquer adhere to the alloy?

[Oddjob]

It's a layer Ash, would chromate conversion do that? TBH I've never heard of before you said, I'd expect it to be really thin and as such not really be much use in covering up tooling marks etc.

I've just bought a NOS fork slider for the 500 as the one I was working on I wasn't happy with. I'd take some pics as I sand the lacquer off and maybe that will help clarify what it is, whatever we are seeing is NOT the alloy underneath no matter what anyone says.