About That Paint

By David Cohen

The first time I saw the bike

When Brum rang and told me he wanted me to do the first shift on the Heavy Duty Chieftain I tried my best to maintain composure.

‘Yes Boss – I’d be honoured’ I replied. Waiting to till after the call to do the fist-pumping YES!!!! - As I bounced off the office walls.

After stints aboard at the launch and with the test bike, the Chieftain has quickly become one of my favourite rides and plans for the magazine’s new flagship were already well advanced when I took the call.

The bike had been delivered to the Brisbane Indian HQ and its bodywork removed and dispatched to Mark Walker at Queensland Motorcycle Panel and Paint for one of his outstanding custom paint jobs.

First assignment was to head out Logan Village way for a chat with Mark and a run down on the painting process.

When I arrived at the workshop he was blue applying blue masking tape to the rather large surface area of the Chieftain’s rear guard. There was an image of a 40’s Chief on the workbench beside him too.

We started talking about the job.

Mark Walker

‘Everybody is on a budget these days, so what I wanted to show is that you can get a stunning result by just jazzing it up with a two-tone effect, so we’re keeping the black base and applying colours as an overlay.’

‘It’s a challenge. It’s not the type of bike you can do a full pimped out graphic design on, like a radical slammed bike. It’s quite unique. So I looked at some historic images and worked on fitting that style with Brums brief for some purple metalflake to be included.’

There are about 20 hours involved in the process and naturally depending on the type of job, prices start at ‘around $1000 up to the sky’s the limit’ also depending on how intricate the client wants the job. All up there are ‘about 10 coats of paint on the average job, counting clear coats’.

Most of Mark’s work comes from word-of-mouth and referrals from satisfied customers an there are plenty of them.

He’s recording the process as it develops so look for it and the finished result in the next issue of Heavy Duty.

Mark has a range of designs on his web site and facebook page: www.qmpp.com.au

And then we go riding!