How to paint on a vintage Honda motorcycle simulated stripe.

Instead of applying the real decal, we opted to paint it on.
The below steps and pics will show you how to achieve an almost identical painted stripe to the original decal.

Once you prep the tank, you'll need to mask up the area that will contain the stripe.

Here we did the black color first. Spray this on and let it sit for about a 1/2 hour or so.

Now you can do your 1/8" tape. You can see we used orange tap to go directly on the edge of the tape you saw in the previous picture.
The reason for the green 1/4" is insurance just in case we left a hairline gap between the edge and the orange tape.
This is important to do this. You can use any size tape to do this, but the main goal is to go directly OVER where the both tapes meet.

Once you do this, we add what we call 'guides'. We use cheap 18" masking tape to again go directly against the orange tape. This will be our guide to make a near perfect 1/8" line. One you put your guide down, add another 1/8" orange against the guide.
Now remove your guide tape (see above). Presto, you have a very nice 1/8" stripe.

Here you can see our graphic is just about ready to paint.
First have have to cut where the two pieces of orange tape meet at the rear of the stripe.
I normally cut anywhere where two pieces of tape right before painting. This way it doesn't move on you and you end up with a botched area.

I have the factory decal sitting above our masked off stripe to give you a better idea of where we are heading here.

We've matched our gold to the factory stripe. Now we need to spray it on.
This covers the original black good, but you still have to be very carefull not to add too much gold. Otherwise you'll end up with some nasty edges.

Let dry for about 10 muinutes before removing the tape

And here it is, our custom painted stripe.

Another pic of the stripe.

Now clearcoat and you're done!