We Custom Paint Bicycles!

Its always interesting when people ask me about painting carbon fiber bicycles. They wonder if it can be done. The answer we give them is of course! We do it all the time and the results are always incredible. Last year we had the opportunity to paint Heather Jackson's Cannondale Slice. It was the bike she was going to ride in the Ironman Championships in Kona. 

Heather's racing kit colors were a bright green and black. So we used PPG Deltron to come up with an amazing neon green. And this neon green won't fade. Using SATA Spray equipment's SATAminijet 3000 B HVLP spray gun made it easy to get smooth, even coverage. That gun has been redesigned and the results are mindblowing. I even used the Ladies Edition Minijet. 

Heather had a great design, and I cut out the stencil on a Roland Plotter and used FBS Distributions Promaskers to get the job masked off fast! We had a brutal deadline on this job and we had to save minutes wherever we could. The ProMaskers are the best time savers in our shop! That's a SATAgraph 4 airbrush I'm using. Its a workhorse that can spray a fineline and it never lets me down. Its the best airbrush I have ever used. 

Clearcoating the finished frame with a SATAjet Mini 3000 B. Man, it felt great to see this finished! 

 

Here it is with the forks mocked up. Now it was ready to be packed up for shipping out to Heather! We put as mch care into packing our projects for shipping, as we do in painting them. The parts are wrapped in cotton flannel so keep that clearcoat pristine and then we wrap plenty of bubble wrap around the parts. Then they go into a box with lots of foam peanuts. We pack those boxes so survive almost anything, especially being dropped. We have over 20 years of experience shipping painted parts.

Here's a closeup of the artwork on Heather's bike. 

Here's Heather on the road in Kona competing. She finsihed 5th! We also painted Heather's helmet. Got a bicycle you need custom painted? Send us an email and we'll happy to answer any questions! joann@crazyhorsepainting.com

Whats New!!

Its been a long time since I posted here on this blog, but there's been a whole lot going on. I'll be posting every week, trying to catch you all up on the wicked cool projects  that are coming through the shop. One thing we did, we built and painted a totally badass 1967 Firebird. Check out that purple color. The car looks black but the sun hits it, it lights up purple! I love painting real fire flames, so of course I had to paint them on our shop car! And we get a lot of comments on the Rocket Booster Wheels and the Coker Redline Tires. I fell in love with those wheels the first time I saw them and knew I had to have them on the car. 

This 1950 Merc is another sweet real fire flame project we did last year. We had a blast doing this one. Our customer, Capt Larry is super fun and he had us cracking up laughing most of the time we were there in Florida doing this paint. Yes, we travel to paint flames and graphics, so if you have a paint project and don't live in the Carolina's, we can come to you. If you have your car in the body shop getting painted, we just bring our paint and airbrushes to that shop and work with them to get the job done. 

This is my buddy Bogi. She's awesome! You might know her frm her tv show, All Girl Garage. Bogi is the real deal. She is an ASC certified mechanic and much more. She owns her own shop in Arizona. I don't get to see her as much as I'd like to. We are both so busy. But I did get to work with her on the project in the next photo. 

This is Karen Salvaggio. She's another awesome friend of mine. And that is one wicked cool motor in this picture. Its going into her 1969 AMX. Last year we were working her car, we started the project working on the car in Florida, doing the paint and body. Then it made a stop here at our shop in Waxhaw, where we installed the motor and tranny. That's a Keith Dorton Motor you see hanging off the hoist with a Tremec Transmission hooked to it. The AMX project was very intense and I'll save the details and more pictures for another post. 

Here are my favorite rally stripes I have ever painted and they are on that AMX. Oh the stories I could tell about that project! Man, it was unreal crazy. Well that's all for now. its getting late, and I have to work on some drawings for a real fire flame paint job for a 32 Ford. I have a ton of insane paint project pictures from last year and this year that I will be posting. I also have a Pinterest page now. 

Wow what a year! It went by so fast and so much happened. The SEMA Mustang Project, working with Ford Motor Company, working with PPG, getting to work in the wicked cool Hot Rod Garage at Source Interlink this summer, the amazing projects we did this year, the Musclecar TV show, and of course the wild ride that was this year's SEMA Show. There's lots of new pictures on the website, up to date info on the Facebook page, great advice I'm giving on a really great website with Forums on all things auto paint and body. The Factory Five 33 Hot Rod we painted, seen in the picture above is on tour with the Autorama Shows. Plus we are now the official custom painter for Factory Five Racing. Dave Smith is a great guy and we are excited to be working with him. I have lots of new things coming up and I'll try and post them there as well as on FB and Twitter. 2013 is going to be amazing year.

Hot Rod Flames on TV

Next weekend, Saturday Sept 15, 10:30 am on SpikeTV, be sure to watch PowerBlock TV's Musclecar Show. Want to see some wicked cool flames that were painted with waterbased paint?

Its not the car above but its even cooler looking. I can't post any pictures of the car until after the show airs, but these flames are brutal cool. You will have to tune into the show to see them. In July, Powerblock filmed us as we painted and flamed a Factory Five Hot Rod using PPG's Envirobase paint. The car was in primer and we sprayed a rich, deep black, and painted brutal hot rod flames over the black, then clearcoated to a mirror finished. If you wondered about the reality of waterbased paint as a custom paint, then be sure to see this show. Set your DVR, your Hopper, and see us in action. They are unlike any hot rod flames you've ever seen due to the wild glowing effect of PPG's Envirobase paint. We had a great time filming at Musclecar's Studio at RTM productions. It was an amazing week that has been condensed down into a 30 minute tv show. Until then check out out work at Crazy Horse Flame Shop

Adventures in Custom Paint

2011 has been a very intense year for our shop. We got a great deal of paintwork done and out the door. but there was cery little time off. Very few weekends at the lake. One thing we did this year is custom paint Corvettes. We airbrushed real fire on Corvette and airbrushed flag graphics on another. The only thing better than working on Corvettes is working with the people that own them. My Corvette customers are some of the best people I know. But we've got some pretty incredible hot rod paint work lined up for 2012. Some very cool projects. If you have one, chekc our website and give us a call. We'll be happy to discuss your project.

Chekc out website www.crazyhorsepainting.com for more pictures on our latest work. Those pictures can be seen in the Hot Rod Callery. I've got many more pictures to post so check back. Thanks for reading Crazy Horse Flame Shop!

We love to Flame Hot Rods

If I had to pick my absolute favorite thing to paint, it would be flames on cars and trucks. It is pure creativity. Even though I always do pre paint drawings for the customer in order to plan out the flames and fine tune them to the customer's desires, once I am airbrushing, the flames decide exactly where they're going to go. I just let the airbrush start working its magic and the flames start to dance across the surface of the car or truck. I just watch it happen. It always intregues me.

This T bucket was a pure example of that idea. Painting these flames for Paul Reeves was a pure joy. Paul's little shop down in Alabama was peaceful yet full of fun. Paul and his family were awesome hosts and their fun attitudes definitely affected my mood when painting these real fire flames.

Jerry Pigg was another customer who pretty much let me loose to create something very powerful. His rose colored street rod needed something to wake up the color. I tried out various kinds of flames and colors in the prepaint drawings and found that traditional hot rod flames gave the car the impact he wanted. He took home a First Place trophy in the first show he entered after the flames were done.

The goal of our custom paint is the make the hot rod, street rod, classic car or truck as impactful as possible. To make people walk across a parking lot to get a better look. And no other factor in a custom car or truck will have the kind of impact that custom paint will.

Is custom paint affordable? It sure is. We work with our customer's budget to try and get the most bang for their hard earned dollars. Give us your budget and we'll see what we can do for that budget. Email us at joann@crazyhorsepainting.com and see what we can do for your custom project.

We will be adding many more hot rod and street rod photos to the website. Including new photos of Lee Novakoff's '33. Lee has another very interesting project in the works and we look forward to working on it's artwork design.

We have some wicked cool projects coming up in the next few months, including a brutal cool Corvette with Lambo doors. And adding photos of another Corvette that we flamed with real fire. This vette belongs to a fireman.

Hell yes, Spring is in the House!

Unless you are skiing your ass off, winter sucks. The cold zaps energy and creativity goes out the window. But the shop was busy and somehow work got done. I kept a good attitude about the cold for the most part but by the end of Jan, I had an insane yearning for warm weather. And my prayers were answered. Winter here in the South is over. No more frost in the morning. No more trying to keep the studio warm. We had some amazing projects we worked on over the last few months. We've been painting quite a few baggers over the last year and the past month was no exception. Painting a bagger is a whole lot different than simply painting a tank and two fenders. Think about it, the surface area of one saddlebag is bigger than the average tank. plus you have the lid. if you are painting murals or artwork, that's three artwork areas. Plus there's the insides of the parts which have to be carefully masked off. Add two saddlebags, two lids, and two sidecovers more than doubles the amount of work than painting just a tank and two fenders. Add a tour pack, tour pack lid, fairing and the amount of work as well as paint, has tripled.
We've become bagger painting experts here at Crazy Horse. So check out some of the paint jobs we did below. There's more to come. I feel renewed thanks to this incredible weather and the work is flowing. We've got some pretty interesting projects coming up, including a very cool Corvette and a very rare 69 Camaro SS RS.
Right now its time to let the dogs out, have a breakfast and then into my sweet little studio. I am digging this weather!!!!

This is a wicked cool paint job for a Marine. Check back as I will be posting pictures of the assembled bike. I can't wait to see this bike together.

This was a wild job. We had 5o hardhats to custom paint in 4 days. Ths shop was crazy. But we got the job done and delivered the project by the deadline.

The flying eye ball grill shell gets flamed. I'll be posting pictures of Bill's T bucket once he sends them to me.