Aerosol Spray Can Motorcycle Paint

If you are here, you have most likely chosen to go the aerosol route on your paint project.

Your angle should be as close to perpendicular. Test this on a piece of cardboard to familiarize yourself with your spray pattern as it will just always be slightly different. From here you can also do your sprayout as mentioned earlier. This is part of our color match guarantee, and something you will want to do. Use these tests to get a feel for the 3 big elements that are going to determine your paint application:

• Speed of pass- The speed you move the can across the paint surface while applying paint.
• Distance from surface- the distance between the aerosol paint can and the surface.
• Angle of can- The angle of the can relative to the paint surface. THis one can get tricky when working with as many curved surfaces as a motorcycle has.

Here at VMR paints, we use the industry standard aerosol can and fill them in our own packaging facility. To get started begin shaking the can for 2 minutes.

For our Premium Basecoats and Tri-Color Systems, you're going to want to test spray for volume, spray pattern and required coats needed prior to application. Due to unique chemistry in the Candy basecoat aerosol, apply light coats approximately 12”-14” from surface. Allow 5-10 min flash time between coats. The paint will flash as a dull color requiring a clearcoat for a gloss finish.

Here is what your typical aerosol setup will run like:

Shake can repeatedly for 2 min vertically in a circular motion.

Apply 2-3 MEDIUM coats of your basecoat over primer with a 50% pattern overlap. Walk long objects, with many shorter sweeping passes to feather any overlap and make the layer as uniform as possible.

Avoid dry spraying, as loss of adhesion is possible. When this happens, The surface will look granular and no gloss will be noticeable on the paint. This is usually because of improper technique, but can also occasionally come from improper chemical mixing.

Allow dry time before Candy is applied, usually 15-60 minutes and not longer than 4 hours. Top/Midcoat within 4 hours.

Apply 2-3 MEDIUM coats over metallic basecoat with 50-75% pattern overlap, or more coats until desired color shade has been achieved. You can achieve different shades of your color based on the number of coats. Again, MEDIUM coats work best. Allow flash time between coats.

Allow dry time before you apply your clearcoat - usually about 30-60 minutes and not longer than 4 hours. Top/Midcoat within 4 hours.

A word of advice here: Make sure you shake contents frequently while spraying If the color contains flake and/or pearl to avoid spray nozzle from clogging.

The shelf life on our paints is approx. 4-8 months. at 70 deg room temperature. The application life depends on the ambient temperature. Higher temperatures lead to shortened life and lower temperatures lead to longer life.

Want to know about spray gun painting? Click Here to learn more.

Or you can go back to the Motorcycle Paint How to Guide.