The devil, as they say, is in the details. I've written this page to show you some of the more subtle points of my scooters. (Well, if you can describe anything on these scooters as subtle!) For example, I've shown how seemingly similar paint schemes on the front mudguards are different, and I've highlighted how my ideas had changed over three or so years. Over the years I became more concerned with trying to blend in the paint schemes of the various parts of the bikes in a more coherent fashion. For instance, on Interstellar Aubergine I had managed to blend the vertical stripes of the legshields into the horizontal stripes of the front mudguard in a pleasing manner. I wanted to change the stripe layout for Lucifer Sam 4 but still keep this coherence. Both bikes worked well to my eyes. |
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Notice how the broad band of Aubergine blends into the same colour on the mudguard, and how one of the vertical white stripes blends into the white on the mudguard. I was happy with this outcome although it could have been improved, possibly, by widening the central vertical aubergine stripe. It would have been too big a job to respray the legshields only to find that there may be no improvement. |
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You can also see from the photograph above how the 'hockey-stick' vertical stripe on the horn cover is continued onto the centre stripe of the mudguard. This was my 'trade-mark' which I had on all my bikes from Lucifer Sam 2 onwards. The only slight exception was that for Blue & Yellow I incorporated a double-stripe, which blended into the double centre stripe of the mudguard. However, Blue & Yellow was not as successful as I had hoped regarding the integration of legshields with the mudguard. I thought long and hard about this bike and used much paper in the process. But it proved to be so difficult to arrange this vertical/horizontal integration, without copying one of my earlier bikes, that in the end I ignored it and just sprayed the legshields as I saw fit. It did not work too well though. The outer part of the legshields blend in well with the mudguard, but something about the inner yellow stripe is wrong. I think two thinner yellow stripes finishing on the yellow stripe of the mudguard may have been better. The mudguards were a superb design, with the the narrow coachlining, and had I kept the bike I might have re-spayed the legshields. But by then I was in the process of buying a car. |
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Here you can see that although some of the vertical stripes blend well with the horizontal ones, the inner yellow stripe hits the blue horizontal stripe of the mudguard. I was thinking of re-spraying the legshields with a wider vertical blue stripe to blend in better. |
| Mudguard Details |
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This was a brave attempt at spraying the mudguard but I don't think it was very successful. What was successful was the way I had extended the side sweep of the horncover stripe onto the top of the mudguard. I used this technique on Interstellar and Lucifer Sam 4. |
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To my eyes this mudguard paint design was much more successful. The double down-stripe complemented the slimmer GP mudguard shape and enhanced the appearance of forward motion. |
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This was quite a plain mudguard. I had some fancy ideas, but in the end I decided that the rest of the bike was flashy enough and making a fussy front mudguard might push it over the top. If you look carefully you will see that there was a fine orange coachline above the main stripe. Perhaps a fine coachline around the black area on the side may have helped. |
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This was my most plain mudguard. Note that there was no central stripe. All my other scooters had a central stripe running from the horn cover to the tip of the mudguard. Blue and yellow had a double central stripe. |
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This bike was one of my most plain, but at the same time the mudguard was the most intricate. Note the fine coach-lining each side of the main stripes. This was also my only scooter with a split central stripe on the mudguard. |
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Here is a photograph of the front of Steve's Lucifer Sam 3 showing the GP front mudguard with the three fine horizontal stripes. |
| Sidepanel Details |
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This was a very eye-catching sidepanel design when I first put Sam 2 on the road, but compared to my later bikes it was quite plain... |
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This sidepanel was my second most fancy. I think that I made reasonable use of the shape of the panel - see how the angled arrow shape in the centre is complemented by the sweep of the line from the front. I don't know what the half-line is doing below the letters 'inter'. I believe that I was experimenting with masking tape to see whether it was a good idea to add another stripe. It wasn't, but I had forgotten to completely remove it before the photograph was taken. |
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I think this was my favourite sidepanel design. Notice that I used the idea of complementing the SX flash shape, but this time with a narrower sharpened flash from the front. You will notice that I blended in the handles by painting them the same colour as the background. I also painted the petrol and choke switches black to match the frame colour. |
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I was not completely happy with this sidepanel - I found it more difficult to form an impression of thrusting forward motion with the Li style panel than the SX style. However, the bright lime green paint colour helped cover this up and in the flesh it looked pretty impressive. |
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This was a case of reverting almost to an original design; the main stripes were very similar to standard GP200 stripes. However, looking closely you will see that I have painted around the top, front, and rear edges of the panel with the same colour as the bike frame to enhance the slimness of the design. Also, there are two pairs of very fine coachlines above and below the main stripes. If you look at the bottom photo on the Blue & Yellow page you will see that I increased the thickness of the top line of each pair at a later date. |
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Welcome History Restoration Devil in the details Lucifer Sam 2 Interstellar Aubergine Lucifer Sam 4 Andromeda Lime Blue and Yellow Questionaire This site is part of |
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