What To Do With A Faded Dirt Bike?

As expected from a red Chinese bike stored outdoors, the hawk 250 has started fading badly, and I’m looking into options to make it look better.

The first thing that comes to mind is to just rattle can it.

I’ve seen some bikes done in rattle can that looked really good. Those guys typically used relatively expensive automotive paint and clear coat and did extensive prep work but that’s not the route I plan to take. That looks great initially, but given the application it would get scratched up quickly and would be a pain to touch up. I would probably just scuff it up and then hit it with some flat tan, black, or grey rustoleum. Could even go all in and do a camo pattern. Wouldn’t look as nice as it potentially could but it would be easy to do and more importantly easy to touch up as needed.

Option 2 is plastidip.

I’ve never messed with plastidip but on paper it seems like it retains most of the advantages of spray paint but oftentimes looks better. Not much else to say here at the moment. I’ve never worked with plastidip but it seems pretty straightforward.

Option 3 is a universal graphics kit or wrap.

I’m amazed at how well quality graphics kits tend to hold up but I’m not sure how well a cheap “universal” graphics kit would last. I’m also not sure of my ability to pull off a clean install to begin with if I’m being honest. I’m decent with a can of spray paint and if something doesn’t turn out it’s cheap and fairly easy to fix it, but with graphics you pretty much only get one shot. Especially when you’re cutting up a sheet of vinyl wrap or a universal kit to fit. I could be over complicating this, I just have no experience installing graphics kits or vinyl wraps.

Option 4 would be stickerbomb.

I’m not stickerbombing it. At least not all of it. I might do the headlight shroud since it’s small enough that I can pick individual stickers that I like but I’m not doing the entire bike. I briefly considered it while writing up this poll but after googling pictures of other bikes I reached the conclusion that truly sticker bombed dirt bikes (not graphics kits) are consistently cringey. Not sure why I’m even including this as an option but I might as well.

Feel free to make other suggestions or leave advice in the comments. I recognize that all of these would normally hurt resale value but in the case of the hawk there isn’t any resale value to begin with so no harm is done in that regard.