* White Wall Tyres At The Stroke Of A Brush Suzuki C800 / C50 *

First off a big thanks to Sim, for having the balls to be the first on suzuki800.com to try out white wall paint & the advice he has given with regards to this modification. I wouldn't have done this modification or written this stage by stage instructional thread if it wasn't for you




Black Wall To White Wall Tyres, At The Stroke Of A Brush!

To start with if your going to do this modification to your tyres, don't skimp on the basics. By that I mean buy a quality white wall paint that has good reviews & I do not mean the ones on the sellers site, independent ones are the ones that are the real ones. I chose Mr White Walls tyre paint.




The first thing to do is to remove the hundred or so centimetre long, millimetre thick threads that are left over from the injection moulding process. I was pulling them off at first but quickly gave it some thought and borrowed the wife's nail clippers. This was much quicker and gave a better result.




Before applying the paint you will need to prepare your tyres properly to except the paint, clean them thoroughly . I used what I had to hand which was ProClean, it works miracles on my dirt bike at getting out ground in shite, greases and oils off so I used that. You may want to use one recommended by the white wall paint seller but as already said I used what I had to hand. I was shocked knowing how good ProClean is at removing ground in shite, that I actually cleaned my tyres 4 times before I was really happy that they were properly clean and all the ground in shite that the tyres were holding on to was finally washed out.




The next step in preparation was to put a key in the tyre for the paint to adhere too. Sim used a metal suede brush to get his key but as I don't
have one, I reverted back to basics and sanded the area in question.
This part is equally as important as the cleaning part, as when you look at your tyres closely you will see that the tyre wall is extremelly smooth & shiny. Although the paint may stick to an unprepared tyre at first, sooner or later it will come off due to lack of key and centrifugal force.
The little bit of tape you can see was a short tester strip that I used to see how well it would curve, we will get on to that soon.




I very quickly got bored sanding by hand and reverted back to power tools So I got out a Dremmell wire brush attachment and popped it in to my battery drill. I used the battery drill so that I could control the speed as the Dremmell is too fast for this job.




The next step is for getting a clean outer edge to the white walls, I ended up using electrical tape.
I tried a few different tapes for the white wall outer paint edge on an old tyre and I gotta say that electrical tape came out streets ahead of the competition. It goes on very well, will bend to the shape of the tyre extremelly easily & sticks to the tyre really well. You will probably find a slightly raised bead that runs around your tyre for you to follow with the tape, the one on my tyre was raised about 0.5mm.





I found that due to the very fast curing time of the rubberised paint, that by the time I had painted all the way around the outer edge, the tape really needed removing straight away. The result given is really really good, There is no way I could personally have got a sharper edge than I have any other way & I am extremelly pleased with it. I would advice that when pulling the tape off after painting, that you pull it off really fast, this will give a cleaner edge.




This is the result after 1st coat.





This is the result after 2nd coat.





This is the result after 3rd coat.




Close up of 3rd coat.





And here is a shot of the bike after after a 4th coat.
I found that as every coat went on the brush strokes seemed to disappear more and more, until they were almost invisible on the final coat.




The final step is to seal the white walls, this step is really important as it will protect your white walls from discolouring from ultraviolet light and from the shite it picks up from the road. I wanted to use "STP son of a gun" as the white wall protector but Halfords don't stock it, so I picked up some "Simoniz tyre protection treatment", which is to all intense and purposes the same stuff. You really do need to use a tyre protector on the white walls before your baby hits the road but allow 24 hours minimum for the white walls to cure properly before applying the tyre treatment.

The price difference between shop bought white wall tyres and the DIY version is not that much when you consider the cost of the tyre that you are painting as well. However if your on a budget and or would like white walls but can't justify buying new ones, when the ones on your bike still have a lot of miles left in them, then this is the way to go.

To do the front wheel on both sides took about 4 hrs in total, from preparing the tyre through to finally applying the sealant. However the project was done in stages to allow everything to cure properly over several days.

Looks amazing Dave Cracking write up as usual, Mr Whitewalls looks better paint than I used ? thinner and more usable, Great job it looks very neat I bet your made up

Thanks for the detailed write up Dave, and thanks Sim too. Looks very nice and impossible to tell from a new whitewall tyre. I actually really like the look of your tyre with that red strip of tape around it. I wonder if they do different colours of tyre wall paint...

Well Dave you have made a very good job there m8,good write up as usual.Sim credit to you to m8, for being the guinea pig.A good point made there about the price,Joe you can get coloured stripes for your bike wheels you will find them on ebay.

Nice one Mr I, fantastic job done and an excellent walk through on the job. Thumbs up to you to Sim

I can't believe how good they look after being painted & its a real credit to you

Thanks for the positive comments guys, really appreciated
Sim, Mr White Walls paint did seem to be a really nice consistency & very user friendly. I did find that it went on really well but didn't like being played with for very long, in fact it seemed to cure faster the more you manipulated it. Speaking as someone that isn't very good at painting, I highly recommend this paint for its usability.

Great job - looks like a bought one! How long would you say it takes to do one wheel complete - both sides? That's 2 members done this now - I FANCY THERE WILL BE MORE!!!

Remembering that it is done in stages, rather than all in one hit. I would say I probably spent about 4.5 hrs doing the front of mine but that is over a couple of days. Its not quick by any stretch of the imagination but its very gratifying.

Mr Intruder wrote:

Its not quick by any stretch of the imagination but its very gratifying.

I should think you are really chuffed - with a result like that, time does not really matter!

I agree with you John.

nice job dave looks good mate

Yeah I suppose time becomes irrelevant when you consider that isn't just your bike, it's your hobby. All the same the feeling you must have got when you finished must have been great

Nearly 4 weeks on now from when I first did these and they have been gradually starting to go browner and browner. I thought oh well lesson learned because I had read that they could go a milky brown. However I have just been out and cleaned them thoroughly and although they had tainted from the original bright white slightly they actually came up really good. So I guess the moral of this story is if you have white walls on your bike they will need regular cleaning to keep them bright.

Another excellent "white" up, if you want clean oil and road grime off your tyres spirit wipe is really good this can be obtained from any car paint stockist and is used just before the first spray coat, with those white walls one of these would look really good as a stripped down Bobber, who will be the first to do it ? regards to all Doc Cox

Plenty have aready done that Doc

Nearly 6 months on Mr I how are they looking now? I've just had a Metzler white wall put on the front of my trike (£89 plus fitting ) and it looks fantastic against the silver and white paintwork. Now i need to consider the rear tires, car tyres obviously, there are some around, quite expensive and i'm not sure it would warrant changing them as there is loads of tread left. Most of the various sites mention how brown the tyres go after using the paint, has that happened to yours?

I have found that if I spray them occasionally with a spirit based product and then rinse off, they stay very white. I am very happy with the product but my bike does very few miles.
Sims bike will be a better gauge of the white wall paint as his bike will have done a lot more road miles with the paint on as he also used a white wall product.

If your tyres are worn in and not new they'll be ok Bill, Mine have stained before but it only takes me about 30 mins now to paint front and rear tyres, I went to the bike shop for a recall today and thought mine looked creamy but when in the shop there was a HD with genuine white walls and I compared them to mine there wasn't much difference, The mechanic took some pictures of my bike for his mate in Spain and asked where I'd bought my tyres so it must be me who's over critical about the colour,
I originally gave mine three coats when I first did them, I've give them one coat since but probably could have cleaned them as Dave did.
this is how mine look still

Oh she is looking good, from back to front.

Guess what Mr Postman brought today  

Mr Whitewalls got another customer.

I'll try to take it a bit further and attempt to clean the tyres completely...no markings, lettering, nothing...just plain smooth white strip.

Dremel + sanding cylinders should do the trick. If not, well I'll know soon enough.
Washing the tyres tomorrow and begin recording the whole process.

I'm toying with the idea of custom lettering or pattern but to be fair I've no idea at this moment what it would be. That's an easy one to take over the top.

Cool! should look good  Have you got the IRC tyre's on yours Marcin?

Honestly, no idea...didn't bother checking the brand so far.

Good on you Marcin I am sure you will do a great job and i will look forward to seeing them finished
Sim I very much doubt he will have IRC's on as his bike as its a 2003 model and they would have gone in the bin years ago i would have thought

captain crash wrote:

Sim I very much doubt he will have IRC's on as his bike as its a 2003 model and they would have gone in the bin years ago i would have thought

Just had a look at Marcin's bike in the showroom? IRC tyre's lol, 10 years old possibly  Better for painting with the white wall tyre paint though  No probs with the tyre's Marcin, Unless your turning into Valentino Rossi in the near future  

ps. Just for reference? There is a square on the side of all tyre's with the month and year it was manufactured. it will say for instance 0596 meaning 5th month of 1996.

Oh well they are at the end of their recommended life but that is OK, they can't go from good to bad at the stroke of midnight. Crack on with the painted white walls mate, I will look forward to seeing your pictures.  Older tyres will bleed less into the new white paint and will probably look better.

Square says 3702???

I'm not sure now if to go forward with painting. There's plenty of thread on them but at this age it's the compound structure that can start failing.(?)
I guess I could keep a close eye on them regularly but if I apply rubberised paint on sides, even if it starts cracking the chances are that paint will just stretch and I won't see it.

Hmm....

Begs the question how the trader could sell a bike with tyres that are over 10 years old...

Ah I know now... 3702 - 37th calendar week 2002.
11y old tyres :S

Oh wow, that's a job well done!

Marcin wrote:

Begs the question how the trader could sell a bike with tyres that are over 10 years old...

The answer to that is, because he is a trader.

Lowey wrote:

The answer to that is, because he is a trader.

 Spot on