Re Spray

[dustyw]

does anyone know a good place to get bike frames re sprayed or a god way of doing it yourself...i would rather get it done properly and pay a bit of money....I have an onza t pro and see that lots of people have them and they all look the same, i wanted to make it look different maybe white and red or something like that....all answers appreciated

[Radfax]

its been a long while since i have wanted to paint any frames but years back when i was looking into it i thing there was a place names argoscycles.co.uk or some thing like that. If you type the name into google some thing will pop up.

But i would say do it yourself, when i did my first frame i was a bit causious but just go for it if you screw it up take it off and do it again its not that hard. i have painted car sections with rattle cans and i know some one who does it all of the time and as long as you take your time and put some effort into it it will turn out fine. Just spend as long as you can on the prep of thr frame because if you want a half decent finish you need to put a lot of effort into the prep, bad prep = bad overall finish!

you dont need to take all of the paint off of the frame just take all od the stickers off of it give it a good old clear and scrub over make sure you get all of the sticky crap of ect. then give it a going over with 600wet and get all of the scratches and chips smooth, this may take a while and a variation of paper grades but a bit of elbow grease and it wont take to long. Once its all gone over with and flatted back wipe the frame over with white spirit and leave it got a good 12 hours as this will remove any impurities from the frame grease much and crap which you may have spread onto the frame from your hands ect.

now you come to paiting the frame with primer, loads of people i have spoken to say "oh you much use ech primer blah blah" but the only time i use etch primer is when i use filler or hammerite/rust prefention pain on car pannels as they some times react, but i find that your bog standard grey or white primer does the job well. When it comes to applying the primer i find that sitting the can in warm water helps the flow of the paint come out better as the heat compreses the paint in the can, also give the can a good old shake for approximately a minute, i didnt think it made any differance untill a bloke at work showed me the differance it makes. anyhow, when you come to apply the paint give it short bursts do not contioniously hold down the nip and just spray willey nilley. you should not cover the whole frame with each coat you apply if that makes scence. it is up to you how many coats you apply but i apply enough untill there is a solid primer colour with no imperfections. i would leave approximately 10 minutes between each coat, this is so that the last coat is tacky and the next coat will stick better. If you make a run in the paint wait for the frame to dry and then use 600 to take the drip go and then apply primer again in the same fashion. when it comes to applying colour again use the same technique that you have used to apply primer, its that simple. again leave approximately 10 minutes between each coat and you stop applying coats untill you are happy with the finish.

Now we come to finishing the frame off. here you have two options and one is usually more preffered than the other. you have the choice of applying laqure to the frame to give it that shine, on this front i can not give you any advice as i have never applied a laquere to anything that i have painted. Instead i use 1500 wet and then apply a compund known as guricela(sp?) G3 which i feel gives a better effect than a laqure, and then you can wax your frame and it looks spot on.

I know that a lot of people will read through that and think wtf! but that is the way i am comfortable painting frames and its the way i find easiest to do it.

I would advise you to stay way from vynil based paints aswell as pealecent operlecnt anf flick type paints as they require specalist primers which cost big bucks and you can only really buy then in tins for guns ect. i used a gliter type paint once and although the finish wasnt crap it wasnt amazing either....

Right i currently have a shit system uploaded to the pc, its kinda like Mac based but its ubber shit and wont let me go into properties to recive the urml for the image so i will have to link you!

http://www.trials-forum.co.uk/forum/index....i&img=14396

http://www.trials-forum.co.uk/forum/index....i&img=14394

But like i say, take your time and you will be fine!