My wife found a pair of Razor Powerwing scooters at a garage sale for $11 each and picked them up to give to our sons on their birthdays in a couple months. Both were in good condition, but one was black and one was pink.   I decided to repaint the pink scooter to avoid the inevitable fight over who has to ride the “girl” scooter.

Disassembly was straightforward; everything was held together by bolts that accepted a 5mm hex key (plus a few Phillips screws underneath the foot platform inserts). Dissassembly took about 15 minutes; the hardest part was sliding the handlebar grips off.

I removed all the stickers and scuffed up the paint with some 150 grit sandpaper.

Then, I taped off anything I didn’t want painted. The trickiest part was the braking mechanism; it’s riveted into the front fork, so I didn’t want to remove it entirely, which meant I had to do extensive masking.

The wheels were actually pretty easy to tape. I just layered tape all over them and then cut off the tape covering the spokes with a utility knife.

This project was my first chance to use my newly-constructed spray booth. It’s made out of 1″ PVC pipe and a roll of 3-mil plastic sheeting.

I added a crossbar across the top so I’d have a place to hang things that I’m painting with a sprayer. To avoid having to cut very short pieces of PVC (and also to make the crossbar movable and removable), I modified some T-joints to allow them to click into place anywhere along a solid piece of PVC.

I hung the main parts of the body and gave them a coat of paint from a can of Red Pearl Duplicolor that I had left over from touching up our car’s bumper. (In this photo, only the handlebars have been painted.)  The color isn’t drastically different from the original pink, so any scuffing or scratches that eventually happen shouldn’t be too noticeable.

For the inserts from the foot platforms, I happened to have a can of a rubberized spray sealant that was just perfect. The black looks really nice against the red, and it provides traction for the rider’s feet.

I gave everything two coats of red and added an enamel clearcoat on the metal pieces. (This was left over from my satellite dish shield project.)

Reassembly was straightforward since there were so few pieces, and the assembly instructions are available online as well. The only problem I have now is that this scooter looks so much better than the one that I didn’t paint, so I might end up painting both of them.

The time from when I removed the first bolt during disassembly to when I tightened the last bolt during reassembly was 38 hours, and the cost was $0.00.

P.S. My sons’ birthdays aren’t for a couple of months, so don’t tell them about this post. :-)