To paint or not?

Hi guys- looking for opinions. Bike is 1980 kz440, 4800~ miles. Tank is pretty marred up as are the side panels which drives me nuts every time I look at it, I'm debating repainting the bike either in the colorrite "factory" color or another brands bright red or kawa green. I don't really have any intention of selling the bike- but at the same time I don't know if a repaint is going to affect the bike's value negatively or not. I don't know the desirability of this model- I would imagine it's not very high to anyone outside of the customization crowd- because that's all I see of them.
Thanks for any opinions you can offer .

I would repaint it, if that's a deep gouge on the right panel i'd find one in better condition before re painting & stripping, IMO, Pete

I wouldnt bother. If you have to take it to a painter itll probably cost you a wadge. If you could find the colour code, you could buy some touch up paint .

Try these people;
www.rsbikepaint.com/

Sounds like you're a lot like me in that you don't like riding a rat bike. If you intend to keep it then you won't go wrong by having it painted. It will also help resale value if you go that route but don't expect to get all of your investment back.

I would tackle improvements in this order.

1) Clean the grunge off everything. Nothing will help resale value more than a clean bike. Wipe the frame down. Clean the rust off things and polish up the nuts and bolts. Remove your clutch cover and clean the grease from around your sprocket. Take the fenders off and clean them underneath. Yes, I know no one looks at them but if you ever need to work on things you'll have a clean machine to start with.
2) Paint. This is usually the first thing people notice. I've lost count of the number of people who have approached me to tell me my bike looks just like theirs did when they bought it new back in the day.
3) Chrome. If it's rusted so badly that you can't make it shine then maybe consider replacing it. But this isn't something that would be high on my "to do" list. Most people understand that 40 year old chrome will have a few scars.

Just my opinion.

Personally I like old paint.

To me it is more important to have my bike running right first and then work on the cosmetics.
a few years back I found an original 78 tank, tail and side covers , the tail is faded, the tank is very clean inside but had some issue like yours on the out side, I found that a Toyota black touch up pen worked real well on the scratches and the little bit of rust damage around the emblems.

Is it perfect? far from it but it is still original and that's what I like, so do a lot of other folks,
they get up close and see that it is original paint , then they look at the mileage and smile ,
When you get on the thing , push the starter button and she comes to life with out hitting the gas then you roll away and they be watchin makes me proud.

I'm not against painting body parts and I will have to on my new build because I don't think that I will be able to find original paint parts for a 77 and there are a lot of cool colors out there to chose from .

Go with what ever makes you happy

I'll look for some finished shots but right now she out in a cold garage and it's night.
Going on 4 years and the touch ups are holding up fine


Note; Borrowed from PaintWorkz's customer photos, I hope that's OK

Today 10:32 #794304 old greek
The previous owner had the bike parked with some kind of toxic liquid dripping down onto the seat,and then onto that panel- the paint was actually eaten away, but the panel is fine. I found a new seat cover after 6 months of hunting and came across a seat repop company on ebay that makes old seatcovers and actually had the OEM seat copy- first I'd seen since i got the bike. Was surprisingly reasonable too.

davido

Great link- I love their paint selection! I found what I think is the stock color on colorite, they have it in a bug bomb so if I go with the original color it will probably come from them. Not worried about cost, I'll be spraying it myself.

hardrockminer

I can't stand a ratty bike or car, just got done rejetting the carbs and spent 3x longer on the job than it should have taken because of all the sludge dust and scuzz I found when accessing the carbs. Honestly I won't be happy until I strip the bike and clean every single accessible part and at that rate I may just go and have the frame powdercoated and reassemble. Maybe next year or late this winter if time allows. After 38 years, there's even dust on the top motor mount under the tank.

bluej58
Been through "almost" every aspect as far mechanical on the bike- had to chase down charging problem right off the bat and started replacing other worn out stuff from there. It even had the original tires on it (which I did keep for some reason) last job was rejetting the carbs. At any rate- one of my major concerns is the 2 panels seem to be a darker color than the tank, and they don't have the pinstripe so I'm not really sure if it's paint fade or if the tank or 2 panels were replaced. I haven't seen any photos that don't have the matching pinstripe on both panels and tank. I didn't want to redo just the panels and still have unmatched stuff. If the situation were just a little better I'd probably skip the paint but it looks pretty bad in person as it is.

Red is a tough color to match, way to many veritable s , black is black for the most part.
I'm not knocking a flesh paint job, if you like the stock colors cool, if not I wouldn't worry about hurting the value by going custom.
I like looking at all the cars out there and picking a color I like.
My bike was Cadillac " Fire mist Bronze for many years, before that it was stock Black :whistle:

Great looking bike bluej- and thanks for the inputs, I'm looking at paint colors now. Gonna go for it.

I did like bluej, when my original paint job faded & started peeling , it was called sundance blue, i had it repainted mercedes silver & gray but kept the same scheme as the original