Painting

Before I even started thinking about ho to paint the zebra I looked at photos of zebras to see which way their stripes went and created a mock up in Photoshop (hand drawing the stripes in).

Photoshop sketch of Africa Twin with hand drawn zebra stripes

The zebra came with a spare tank, so that and all the plastics came off and went to my dad’s where we (well, mainly dad) peeled off the decals, repaired cracks and sanded down the worst of the rough edges.

I left my dad to paint them all white, using Hammerite (the first coat needs to be diluted with thinners but after that it paints on OK).

We ended up with:

White painted nose cone, tank and rear

white painted side panels

White painted side panel hanging on wall to dry

I did then consider masking it all up and spraying it, so I assembled it on the dining room table (much to annoyance of my wife):

Plastics assembled and covered in lines of masking tape

View from the front

Doing this properly would have made a very neat job but

it was tricky to get the masking tape just where I wanted it
the bike was going to be crashing left, right and centre so the paintwork would get damaged

So I scrapped that idea, removed all the tape and, using some images of zebras taken from the internet, drew the lines on with a pencil:

Outline of zebra stripes drawn in pencil

nose cone from the front with zebra stripes drawn in pencil

lines drawn on the fuel tank

Then everything was put back on the bike and assembled:

Bike all in white viewed from its left

Bike all in white, viewed from its right

Bike all in white, viewed from the front, right

And, foolishly, on a roasting day in bright sunlight I hand-painted the stripes in black, undiluted Hammerite that set almost as soon as I brushed it on, due to the heat. And I got sunburnt painting it.

The result was: