Restoring old paint

+1 maybe nicer than when Ma Kaw sent it out the first time if I was a betting man.

Thanks guys, I pulled the trigger on that tail, should have it next week.
The next thing I need to work on is the tank, the paint is faded where gas over flowed and it looks like someone may have clear coated it and got thousands of little bumps in it :pinch:
My plan is to mask off the stripes and wet sand , hopefully I can take care of the problem before I get into the black.

If it looks anything like my tank in the pic did its the factory clear coat that deteriorated. I had no choice but to repaint since the color faded as well. You just have to be gentle sanding, you'll see when you get through the clear. Keep in mind these are factory paint jobs and are very thin, you don't need to remove ALL the clear, just what has lifted. If it's just black I would consider doing what I did using some Duplicolor black and finish with Spraymax clear.

You can see how the blue is very dark and dull compared to the edge where the seat covered the paint.

Maybe test a small out of sight bit first for reaction problems if you don't know what it was cleared with.

I find T cut followed by hand glaze polish then wax will improve things a lot. Careful about going through the thin colour coat, 2k clear wet sands off milky white, it is very easy to sand through to the basecoat particularly on edges and swage lines

If mixing and matching bodyparts remember black is one of the hardest colours to match.

The tank looks very good for its age inside and out except for these little clear pimples for lack of better term and the gas blemish :dry:
Big snow storm coming tonight I might have some free time to do some wet sanding this weekend.

Given that without a paint thickness tester you don't really know how thick the paint and clear is, maybe go really fine wet sanding at 1500 2000 2500 G3 compound finally hand glaze. Lots of 'pro' and factory paint jobs can be improved no end with careful (time consuming) finishing. Don't sand though to the basecoat!!!