I mean to post this a while ago, oh well, life is busy….
Last summer, Alex inherited Hope’s old bike. He wasn’t all that fond of the orange colour and the flowers, I thought it was a great excuse to try painting a bike!
I am lucky that I have a friend/coworker who is a wiz with bikes and doesn’t charge much to strip/rebuild/replace/fix, etc.
So I took the bike to him, and he removed everything but the chain. I did some research online to get a plan, then set out to change it to flat black.
Step 1: Clean it well to remove the dirt and any grease. I just used dish soap and microfibre cleaning cloths.
Step 2: Remove any decals – I used a razor style paint scraper – this was a pain! (they didn’t just peel off!)
Step 3: Sand gloss off – I used sanding sponges of various shapes, regular sand paper, and Dremel sanding attachments. Gettinginto the crevices was the hard part here. (wash well afterwards)
Step 4: Tape anything you don’t want paint on, plug holes with tape/newspaper (like seat hole, pedal area, threaded hold for brakes, etc.)
Step 5: Prime with gray metal primer like Tremclad – did a couple of coats with one spray can.
Step 6: Paint with flat black metal paint – did a couple of coats, I think that was just over 1 cans worth.
Step 7: Coat with clear coat, two coats – about 1 can.
Note: Follow all directions about drying time between coats for best results so the paint can dry/cure properly. In retrospect it would have been better to remove the chain as it go in the way.
Step 8: Have your friend put it all back together.
Step 9: Apply decals you found on the internet!
I learned that this is a long process, not particularly hard, but detailed and long. It took a few weeks, mainly because of the paint drying between coats.
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