Painted Rear Hugger

[SirIsaac]

I thought you might be interested in my experience getting a color-matched rear hugger for my ‘07 Red FZ6.
Right after I got my FZ6 and found this forum, I started seeing pictures of bikes with painted rear huggers, and eventually found some sources, for example this TCP. I really liked the look, but $325 seemed a bit pricey, so I did not seriously consider buying one. Then one day I was rooting around one of the on-line parts places and happened to look at the price for the stock rear hugger. It was only about $17, which got me thinking that maybe I could buy one and try to paint it. If I messed it up, I’d only be out $17 and I’d still have the old one on the bike. So I clicked on “buy” and soon had a new black plastic fender hugger. (Actual cost was about $23, including its share of the shipping on the order.) To make a long story short, in order to attempt to get good results, I decided to take it to a local body shop that has done good work for me a number of times. We jointly decided to use paint from ColorRite Distributing, which was the source given to me by my Yamaha dealer for color matched paint. The cheapest option (which was still quite costly) was to use aerosol spray cans. After two orders of paint (the shop ran out the first can of the top-coat color, so I had to order another), I picked it up last Friday. The quality of the paint job, finish, etc., is excellent; I have no complaints with the work done by the body shop. Unfortunately, despite buying the purported matching color from the right source, the color is not really an exact match. I went ahead and put it on yesterday to see if it is close enough. So far, the jury is still out. Since I know about the mismatch, my eye is drawn right to it and I notice it. I don’t know if a casual observer would notice it. If I had it to do over again, I would have the shop just try to match the color tone as closely as possible with their paint, and not worry too much about getting a metallic finish. If you would like to try something like this yourself, I’d recommend just buying various colors of red spray paint from Krylon, Rustoleum, etc. until you find a decent match. You could probably end up with something that looks pretty good for a lot less than I spent.
I also installed the wheel stripes I got a while back. To my eye, they look a little too “orangey”, I may have to get the deeper red color that I believe was available. All in all, yesterday was a bit of a disappointing day as far as mods go. Here’s a couple of pictures of the results:

[reiobard]

looks very very good!!!

[Damnitsjeff]

Great! looks good.

[chuckfz6ryder]

I think it looks great. Since you pointed it out, it looks darker than the tank, but could be the angle or shadow, because the grab handles and side pods look a little darker in the same picture. Had you not said anything about the color mismatch, I probably wouldn't have noticed.

[Oblisk]

awesome dude that makes the bike look real sporty

[bikerider]

Very nice

[aussiejules]

very nice, its hard to colour match when painting metal and plastic, it also depends on colour of under coat.

[CHEMIKER]

Looks amazing from here!

Is your plate really FZ6???

[SirIsaac]

Thanks to all for your kind words. I think it will be fine, but I like getting positive affirmation!

Originally Posted by CHEMIKER

Is your plate really FZ6???

Well, not quite. In Ohio, you can get simple letter-number combinations for only an extra $10 per year, and you can check availability on-line. Some rat-bast**d (who hopefully does not frequent this forum!) already had "FZ6". Mine is close, but I thought it would look cool to alter the photo, and to see if anyone noticed.

[AlanB]

Dude, that looks HOT! (But, um, er.... get the FE kit.)