Paint Chips and Damage

[i-am-iron-man]

Hi all

Looking for some ideas. One of my "go-to" bikes has racked up quite a few miles; it also nursed me on a tough coast-to-coast ride where the weather was all wrong, driving rain and floods.

Consequently it has quite a lot of paint chips, and a nasty incident involving a platform pedal whilst my bike was stored in a van means one of the stays lost most of its paint.

I touched it up myself using enamel paint to stop it from getting rusty, but I'd like to get it looking pretty again.

Two things to consider:
- I have no inclination to tackle this myself. I would like to pay somebody that knows what they are doing.
- It has distinctive decals and I can't get hold of replacements. I'm not going to get reproduction ones made either, so I would not consider a full repaint.

Any ideas?!? - I don't think a car body shop is the answer...

 

[torqueless]

Re:

Good question.

Does anybody do this kind of work on bikes on a commercial basis?
I don't even know if the usual suspects- Argos, Mercian, Bob Jackson and others- do this kind of thing? If they do I can't imagine it's any cheaper than a total refinish, probably quite the opposite. Do they blast off the whole finish before they do frame repairs, or just get the paint off the area where the brazing needs doing, and touch it up afterwards?

I guess most people who need this done do it themselves. A touch up with enamels doesn't have to be ugly, although if you are after 'good as new' it helps if your bike doesn't already have (where it's still intact) one of those knockout paint jobs that are very difficult to duplicate.

 

[Johnsqual]

Re:

Having retouched a frame recently, I can say it is a pig of a job and most bike painter would probably run a mile from it.

Matching the paint is very very difficult, because unlike car paint, there do not seem to be many standard colours that are still in production (except maybe Bianchi Celeste, Gios Blue and a few others). You basically have to go to your local car shop and try and match the colours they have for sale. Sometimes you get lucky, others not. Mostly not.

Also, the job of blending the new paint into the existing paint is a pain in the @rse on a bike frame with its curved and irregular surfaces (I was working on a Gilco tubed Colnago, which added to the fun...). It was ultimately satisfying to get a reasonably good result but it was a lot of work and took a few false starts.

Generally, I think these problems make it uneconomical for a bike painter to offer this service. I suppose a lot of customers would expect a perfect result which would be really difficult to achieve. Cheaper and quicker to just strip and respray.

I did read that better car shops offer a paint matching service which produces a rattle can of paint matched to a particular colour, which could help in your case. Not sure what it costs though.

Good luck,

Johnny

 

[Midlife]

I wonder if this is something Chris Marshall might have a go at if it has a unique paint job?

Shaun

 

[oonaff]

Re:

or even 'jocasta innes' .it could be a tricky one.i mean you go and get a rattle can mixed from
tiny squares in a colour chart £18 and its not right so you get another and its another balls.
maybe, an artist who does airbrush work on motorbikes or scooters could help.


kevin

 

[half cog]

Re:

+1 for Chris Marshall.He is a very skilled bike finisher but I dont know if its the sort of thing he would want to do. Best ask him. He is at Keighley Yorks
Tel 01535 691073. The workmanship would be A1 if he will do it
Regards
Peter

 

[barry2017]

Re:

You have to ask yourself what's in it for a professional. Consumers would expect perfection, and that's just not possible. Paint changes colour when it's on the frame.
Hard as this is to live with i think it is better to leave the marks and let them tell them the bike's story. These machines were meant to be used.

 

[oonaff]

i agree, im far from a perfectionist these days.but looking at the op this guys got some really expensive stuff.and he did say the story was that it was mullered in the back of a van!
surely a quality paint sprayer would look for an overview and take into account age fading.
ive had a go on my lemond which is electric blue stove enamel on chrome. i used a darker blue touch in paint
you have to get fairly close to notice but its ok for me !another place on the frame has had chain rub it is fluo
green and orange fade.im not buying 2 rattle cans for £14 when i can get humbrol 99p tins and dab with a piece
of sponge. i did consider shrugging my shoulder's and saying 'augh its behind the chain wheel,so what it doesn't matter.so i suppose i am a' half a perfectioinist '

 

[i-am-iron-man]

Hi y'all

Thanks for the replies! Here's the cycle in question ...

Does anybody do this kind of work on bikes on a commercial basis?
I don't even know if the usual suspects- Argos, Mercian, Bob Jackson and others- do this kind of thing? If they do I can't imagine it's any cheaper than a total refinish, probably quite the opposite. Do they blast off the whole finish before they do frame repairs, or just get the paint off the area where the brazing needs doing, and touch it up afterwards?

Not that I know of, and it's a negative for Argos, Mercian and BJ's - blasting off the paint and re-enamelling is way quicker and easier. When they do a repair they repaint the whole frame.

If I could get hold of decals I'd be more inclined to consider it. But I'm really not interested in making up repro decals, and the other complication is the design on the inside of the fork leg (you can just make it out here). I'd have to get the carbon fork re-painted too and I really don't like that idea either.

Having retouched a frame recently, I can say it is a pig of a job and most bike painter would probably run a mile from it.

Generally, I think these problems make it uneconomical for a bike painter to offer this service. I suppose a lot of customers would expect a perfect result which would be really difficult to achieve. Cheaper and quicker to just strip and respray.

Totally agreed. I would no more attempt to do touch-up work on my bike than I would attempt to braze something onto it.
It'd take a long time with a tiny file and an airbrush to achieve something that's not perfect, so I wouldn't expect it to be economic. That said, I realise the paint will never look new again and I'm not looking for it to be perfectly colour matched. My problem is that I've got blobs of (now) cream-coloured enamel paint sitting in little craters where the original paint used to be. It looks awful, and is in really obvious places - one is on the top-tube, so I see it every time I ride it.

or even 'jacosta innes' ... maybe, an artist who does airbrush work on motorbikes or scooters could help.

Who is Jacosta Innes ...?
Regarding air brush people, that's most likely what I am trying next. I paid through the nose for a motorbike painter (that does restorations, air-brush art on helmets, that sort of thing) to paint a Salsa a while back. I am planning on taking the frame in for him to look at, but it didn't sound like he was keen in it when I ran it past him - it sounded like he'd be happier to strip it and doing a fancy job of reproducing the graphics.

+1 for Chris Marshall.

Good to hear from you Peter! I hope you're still riding the Kona Kapu. I thoroughly regretted selling that bike and bought another one but it isn't as nice a frame as yours (does not have the fluted seat tube).

You have to ask yourself what's in it for a professional. Consumers would expect perfection, and that's just not possible. Paint changes colour when it's on the frame.
Hard as this is to live with i think it is better to leave the marks and let them tell them the bike's story. These machines were meant to be used.

I agree with what you're saying. The practicalities of painting onto an existing paint-job and all the problems it'd bring with it are why the painter I originally approached said he wasn't keen on taking the work on.

Do not agree to leaving it as it is though! - if it was a MTB you'd want it to keep its scars, but my blobbed-on cream-coloured enamel to stop it from rusting looks dreadful. Also, as much as some of the damage has been caused by use, some I'd like to forget about - for example, there's a 50p-sized chunk of paint missing from the seat-tube caused by an iron (!) getting dropped on the bike... plus there's this:

the story was that it was mullered in the back of a van!

... definitely not the usual damage you get from putting in the miles!

If it was anything else I'd just sell it and move onto something else, but I'm way too attached to this bike. That I never intent to part with it is one of the reasons I'm inclined to spend the money and let someone that knows what they're doing address the chips (and most of a chainstay).

 

[i-am-iron-man]

... I did find some stuff on the interweb that was quite interesting, with some good examples of paint repairs:
Paint my Bike
Kane Bikes

Both are way too far away to consider, but they do show that it's do-able?