Badges, stickers or paint

[Runout]

Hi,
I'm refurbishing an old Sport tank and wanted some informed advice about the tank badges. Back in the eighties I had the standard badges and the paint bubbled up around the clip recesses, which is something I'd like to avoid if I'm having it repainted. Of course back then the bike was my only transport so got ridden in all weathers, which is something that won't be happening in the future so it may not be a problem but I thought I'd canvas opinion on whether to stick to the plastic ones or fill the recesses in and go for decals or even paint. Any thoughts? I've also seen some adhesive ones which seem like a solution but how well do they stick?
Many thanks for all input
Simon

[morini_tom]

When I bought my k sport the badge clip recesses had been filled with body filler by a previous owner but the pinhole leak soon got through that, so I had the tank completely stripped and had the recesses lead loaded before a repaint.

I had Alan Fox do my tank restoration and paint. I’m not sure if he is still taking work on but if you can persuade him I can’t reccomend him highly enough.

I got some of the metal badges from Malcolm Anderson in New Zealand which are the best repros I’ve ever seen. He’s stopped doing them now but if you ever see any for sale snap them up. Those badges are quite heavy and are stuck on (no pins). I was quite sceptical at first but Malcolm reassured me they would be ok and sure enough, the 3m adhesive backing supplied has kept them well stuck. 4 years and counting- so plastic badges, original or not should be more than capable of being stuck on. I think one of the problems with some of the plastic repros in times gone past is they didn’t fit the curvature of the tank very well and so tended to peel off, but I’m sure better ones must be available now. The ones from Start Gomma look pretty good but I’ve not had any myself.

So, in summary, in my experience filling with filler is not a long term solution but proper metal filling is the way to go and also means more surface area for sticking stick-on badges on.

Before, during and after photos of the work done on mine:

[Parker3865]

I printed some badges for my 250, held in by brass screws that screw into the fixing holes (cut short so they don't pierce the tank!). Not 100% accurate but close enough for me. Happy to 3D print some more if you want have a look at some or the files are here:
https://thangs.com/designer/richard%20p ... dge-816677

3D print badges.jpg (62.67 KiB) Viewed 89 times

Definitely not as nice as Tom's.

[Runout]

Thanks both, I think I'll probably go with the metal filling but I'm very impressed with the printed badges.