Seat lettering

I bought a Burton Hump seat and i need to remove the gold lettering and repaint it silver. I have ordered a stencil on fleabay. Does anyone know the best way to remove the existing lettering? The solvent i used to remove the existing lettering on my Interstate seat damaged the vinyl a bit so i don't want to make the same mistake on my brand new seat. Any thoughts?

I have the same seat, love it very comfortable but be patient as the gold lettering will fade away very quickly or just do the silver over the gold.

Ashley

I intend to move the lettering down lower. I am still completing final assembly and then have to start on the electrics.
It really has to be Silver as Gold does just not look right. I want it to look correct before i get it on the road after all this time. Cheers.

Tinsy,
Nice bike! I can see why you want it silver. Have you tried using brush cleaner or white spirit? Paint strippers are not as aggressive as they used to be, so perhaps test on a spare bit of material under the set and see if it attacks the vinyl? Acetone would definitely remove it but would attack the vinyl I think.

By the way which bars are those?

Cheers,

cliffa

I tried white spirit to no effect but guess what worked. Schwarzkopf Hairspray! I keep a can in the garage which I use to put handlebar grips on and seeing as I had tried everything else I gave it a go and the lettering came right off and it didn't damage the vinyl. I remember my Mother brushing tons of that shit through her beehive. Who would have thought it . By the way I think these are the bars I have. https://andover-norton.co.uk/en/shop-de ... i-western-

Well i never...

Hairspray, that's one to remember!

Thank for the info re: the bars. I have some new 06-1046 Semi Western bars in front of me now but yours look taller to me. Maybe it's just a trick of the light or they'll look taller when I've fitted them

Is that a T140 taillamp? I was thinking of doing the same thing on mine, but did you have to drill extra holes?

Cheers,

cliffa

Very nice bike indeed! I can see where I'd want the Norton logo on that seat, and it's much lower down, glad you found a solution. BTW I note that your colour scheme is silver on black, mine's the same but I've been told they never left the factory that way ... I can believe it, but would be interested to hear if you or anyone else knows different. I actually prefer the silver on black, it's a personal thing but I think it looks right against the Commando metalwork, in a way that gold on black doesn't. Sorry if that's a heretical thing to say, but there's no such thing as thought crime! :wink:

The tail light is a Lucas 679 fitted on Triumphs and BSA s from mid 60s early 70s. A lot of Norton's have their tail lights either sloping downwards or pointing towards the sky. I made number plate and indicator brackets out of stainless and also ran the wires up inside the rear mudguard and down towards the front of the swing arm as i hate the way the stock wires are cable tied to the rear frame rail. Now the whole assembly sits level and looks much neater without being too Custom. The bike was imported from the US with a dodgy non original paint job so i painted the bike myself with a scheme i thought looked the best. I don't like gold very much. The bike is not a restoration as such. I just wanted to build my interpretation of a good Norton and make some improvements along the way. That's why i have an Interstate tank with Roadster side covers ect.

So a home-brew paint job – you have great taste! :wink: The tail light does look much smarter than the black fibreglass original ...

That is on fine looking Norton.
Please post up picture of new Silver Seat lettering when done....

I agree on the gold versus silver. I removed the gold from my 75 Interstate seat, and painted the logo on in silver, because mine had a silver tank. I used some silver Dupli-Color vinyl spray from the car parts store. The gold just never looked right. I used brake cleaner (very lightly on a paper towel) to remove mine. Seems like I did it in several tries, not to wet down the vinyl too much at one time. Came out just fine, no damage. Another thing I didn't like was that the gold logo was far from what I would call "centered".

The hair spray was probably lacquer based: some are, some aren't. So essentially you were using a weak lacquer solvent to remove the letters. PROBABLY straight lacquer thinners would remove the paint. But I'd recommend that you first check it with a test sample on a piece of vinyl under the seat.

Stephen Hill

Much better. Old lettering still left a faint shadow so i sprayed the whole seat with VHT Vinyl Dye Paint and then did the lettering in Silver and it came out OK.

Excellent job, well done! Where it should've been in the first place ...