Advice on restoration

[Tricky1977]

Hi, I want to get my 93 Palisades up to scratch and wondered if there was some general advice or how to’s on restoration. Even cleaning advice would be a start
What’s the best way to strip and clean a bike?
What restoration can I do easily? Should I just buy NOS or do I send bits off to be chrome plated or re-anodised?
Is black hammerite possible to smarten up chipped paint?

I’m a bit of a noob

Current condition:

 

[enc]

Re:

Guess it depends how deep you want to go. From the pictures you posted, the bike looks pretty tidy to begin with. A total strip down and deep clean would be s good start .. once you get rid of those pedals that is :shock:

 

[xxnick1975]

Re:

Don’t need to do much to that

Take it apart

Degrease it with degreaser or petrol

Wash it with soapy water

Polish it up with polish of choice, I like the autogleam stuff

Clean and Polish the alloy bits, again petrol bath, then autosol or Maguire’s

Put it all back together, grease/copper slip on interfaces

Replace consumables if needed, if you going to use it seriously, or you can probably reuse what’s there if you are just leisure riding with the kids of a weekend

Jobs a good un

It’s a really decent bike as is, you won’t really improve it throwing cash at it

 

[jimo746]

Re:

Do you want to just get the bike looking better? Usually a good clean and polish can make a huge difference to the appearance. Use a degreaser to remove the stubborn grime on the drivetrain and give the bike a wash. A bit of T-Cut carefully used to remove paint scratches followed by a polish, and Autosol or similar metal polish for brakes, cranks, hubs etc...
New cable inners should improve shifting/braking feel.
You can replace the headset with a new black one, or remove the locknuts & cups and spray with black hammerite paint to get them looking better.

If you want the bike to look like new then you’d be looking at NOS parts. Or new modern parts if you’re not fussed about it being fully “retro”.

Generally I’d say if you need quite a few parts then it’d be easier to find a donor bike and take the parts off that. But looking at your pics the Palisades you have seems to be in decent condition to start with.

It might be worthwhile keeping as many original parts as you can, once you get into re-anodising or re-plating parts it becomes prohibitively expensive, it’d be easy to spend a few hundred ££’s on doing up a pretty basic mtb!!

 

[Tricky1977]

Yeah pedals and saddle are fixed with originals now
Some more pics of problem areas; tarnished hubs, spokes and some wear/rust:
(Edit; wrong photo)



New headset? Paint it?


Anodising or touch up paint:

 

[Tricky1977]

Thanks guys, I wasn’t sure about petrol but I recall it’s a good degreaser - been using carb cleaner, probably not ideal!
I also didn’t think to polish anything, will buy autosol.
Have used moly grease though, especially on Seatpost
I’ve stripped and cleaned my donor biketo sell the parts, most of which have had no interest so I might put those back on as they’re clean and one or two are in better nick.

 

[CassidyAce]

Re:

Good advice above. All I'd add is: make sure you have the right tools for each job. Halfords have a good range, aimed at the amateur enthusiast, and they offer a lifetime guarantee on many of them - so don't lose the receipts.

 

[enc]

Re:

I'd be very careful of hitting that frame with t cut (I'd be careful of hitting any frame with t cut :? )

It looks to be a matte or satin finish .. the wrong type of paint restorer, polish or wax could do irreversible damage to such a finish. Maybe somebody with experience of Marin paint finish could advise further. But DONT use t cut

 

[Tricky1977]

Also good advice but from attempting to do cars over the years I’ve got a garage full except maybe the B.B. tools.
And yes I have quite a few of the professional Halfords range, very good indeed

 

[PopsTrippin]

Re:

The hubs and spokes will come up like new with fine grade steel wool followed by a little Autosol.

For the frame (after cleaning off the rust) i usually use Humbrol model paints manually mixed to get the right shade, it can take a while to get right but once achieved is very satisfying... apply gingerly with a fine tipped brush then go over the area with a little T-cut. (it won't hurt)

Finally the purple components can be tidied up using nail varnish.. i used dark blue mixed with violet for the closest match, again a fine tipped brush is best. (Ignore the stares you'll get shopping for nail varnish in BOOTS on a Saturday morning)

Have fun, you'll soon get it looking nice for next to nothing.