I've been debating if I should paint my bike myself, have a pro do it, or order a whole new set of painted fairings.

DIY - Probably cost around 250 and I will screw it up several times
Pro - Costs 500-700 and I will be without a bike for a while. I'm a daily rider
Plastics - I'm kind of skeptical about spending $500 on something on ebay like a whole new set of plastics. Has anyone done this?

I'm look at these on EBay - Fairing for Kawasaki 2007 2008 ZX 6R 636 ABS Plastic Injection Mold Set New AA10 | eBay

 

I repainted a 92 Ninja 500 using Dupli-Color's Paint Shop paints - IIRC it was about $60 for the paint. I already had a spray gun that I paid about $40-50 for, and I have a good compressor that will keep up. If I didn't have the compressor and gun, it would have been more expensive, but my hard costs were under $60, and it turned out very well. I've painted 2 pickup trucks using single-stage and base coat/clear coat (one using each) and it was much harder to spray properly without getting drips, runs and sags. the Paint Shop went on easily without runs or drips. I would say that the quality of the end result wasn't quite that of a professional job, but if I'd wet sanded between coats, or even between the base and clear it would have been better, pretty darned close to a pro looking job. I don't know about longevity, since I sold the Ninja soon after. I suspect that it won't last as long as a pro job, but at 1/10th the cost and only a few hours of my time, who cares?

 

Thanks for the reply and input. I think I'm going to go ahead and buy a compressor and paint gun - I rather invest in tools than services. I'm also thinking about painting it with a plasti dip for a matte black and non-permanent solution.

 

I think the same way, I'd rather spend almost as much, sometimes even more, the first time around by buying the tools/equipment and doing it myself than paying somebody else to do it.

Plasti dip also works quite well and is relatively cheap, as long as you want a matte finish. I painted the plastics with Plastidip on my 2011 KLX250s because it gets a fair bit of off-road use and the plastics were getting scratched up. I like having the capability to just peel it off if I want to. Where I'm from, it's about $20/can for Plastidip, and took at least a full can to paint the plastics on my KLX250s. The plastidip is fairly durable - thickness/number of coats seems to make a substantial difference in durability, though - but won't last forever and will need to be re-done probably in a year or two. Nice thing is that if there's a spot that's scratched off, you can just respray over that spot to cover it back up. My handguards are plastidipped and if I drop the bike and it scrapes a little plastidip off, I just respray that section and it's fixed.

 

Yeah I think I've decided on going the plasti-dip route. I want matte black so it will work. I haven't been able to find very many cons for the plan either. All around, people seem to really like plasti-dip as a product.

 

You'll often see people being ridiculed on on-line forums for using PlastiDip, but never with any substantiating reasons, so I don't think that there's any reason for the ridicule other than the typical poor forum etiquette (read: immature posters) that sometimes happens.

With that said, I really like the PlastiDip product, although I haven't had a lot of time to see what the longevity is like and long-term durability, but so far it seems to work pretty well. Considering I PlastiDipped the handguards on my KLX250s and fell down several times, once right onto a mix of rock and dirt right on one of the handguards, and it only scraped a 1/8" size piece off, I'd say the outlook is pretty good. I really like the idea that I can just peel it all off if I want to go back to how it was...