Inspired Arcade 'paint'

[Topsy]

I decided to repaint my Arcade (2014) as I never really wanted a black bike anyways.

Now when removing the BB and headset an attentive chap at the bikeshop noticed that the 'paint' cracked weirdly and left rings at the BB which he found weird. Upon closer inspection we noticed that it actually burns away to dust when confronted with fire and immediately goes gooey with a heatgun.

We then tried some paint stripper and could remove two layers, the last one seems to be sturdy paint, along with the logos, which both can't easily be removed with the stripper.

The paintshop first wanted me to just sand the top layer a bit so they can spray over that/don't have to prime > less costs for me, but I'm not going to have my new paint on something that I don't know what it is.. (plus, 2x paint is a bit daft isn't it? :p)

Anybody know what kind of paint actually was used? I'm kinda thinking it's some plastic coating?

I'm now using more stripper and sandpaper to remove it anyway but I'd really be interested in knowing what you'd call that paint/painting process or whatever it is..

 

And yes, I tried calling Inspired directly but they thought they didn't fancy picking the phone on Friday.

[Mark W]

I'm not 100% sure, but from what I can remember it's a layer of ED coating (which is essentially a rust proofing kind of thing to my knowledge), then the paint setup they use followed up with some matte lacquer to give it the matte finish it has.  From my experience it does have a slightly brittle kind of quality to it, so you can sometimes get that type of paint cracking around where the BB cups have been against the frame, or where the headset's been pressed in.

If you want to strip it, I'd recommend going for something like Starchem paint stripper as that seems to be similar to what Nitromors used to be like before they had to change the chemicals they put in and made it shit   That'll get the paint off (eventually - it'll still take a bit of work as the paint's pretty durable), although I'm not sure what you could do about the ED coating (assuming they have that, anyway).  That coating shouldn't be much of an issue though - you could easily paint over it with no hassles which is basically what's been done with the frame from new anyway.

[Topsy]

Cheers!

I thought it had to be some kind of paint, even if it didn't feel like proper paint.

It's all down to the ED layer now I think.. Not easy to tell as it's all the same colour anyways.
Hope the paint shop will accept it like this. And then.. it'll probably look a bit like a Console...